Collage Launches to Bridge AI-First Studios and Hollywood

Former UTA agent Dante DeSario and media investor Michael Lambert, who left UTA's independent film group in March, launched Collage, a Beverly Hills management and investment company for AI-first studios. Its first clients were Asteria, Natasha Lyonne's studio, Native Foreign, Obsidian and Jason Zada's Secret Level, and it helps them through the parts of Hollywood that a model cannot: guilds, studio dealmaking, copyright questions and technology demonstrations, with an investment arm on the side. DeSario dated the idea to February 2024, when he saw an early demo of Sora. "It's not pushing a button," he said. "I just want to help filmmakers get their projects made."

The seed round's backers read like a list of the people AI filmmaking had been trying to reach: Black Bear and Fundamental Films as founding investors, AGC Studios, producers Roy Lee, Marty Bowen, Todd Lieberman and Todd Garner, and director Ric Roman Waugh. Agencies had represented individual AI artists for a while; Collage was a firm built to represent the studios.