Former Prime Video UK managing director Chris Bird has launched two AI businesses aimed at independent content creators.
HawksHead AI, a predictive data analytics platform and CineMe, an AI-powered visual development tool co-founded with Bafta- nominated director Dan Hartley, are aimed at writers, producers and filmmakers.
Both are designed for use in early-stage content development.
HawksHead AI helps content creators predict how their projects will perform with audiences at script or synopsis stage, suggesting how to adjust a script, casting, or creative approach to improve its resonance with target demographics.
Bird’s second venture CineMe is co-founded with Hartley whose credits include HBO/Sky feature documentary The Boy Who Lived. CineMe takes a script and automatically creates a visual storyboard of photo-realistic images.
It is pitched as enabling collaboration between producers, directors, production designers, DPs, locations, costume designers and VFX teams. As the platform grows, it plans to introduce generative AI VFX capabilities for productions to create visual effects through AI.
Bird and Hartley are also launching the CineMe Future Fund, which will provide 5% of the company to a charitable trust to support the existing film and TV workforce and new talent amid the AI transition.
The businesses are both privately funded by UK-based tech investors and are now Beta testing with a group of production and distribution companies.
Bird stepped down from Prime Video UK in March 2025 after more than 14 years with the company.
“The old ways of commissioning, based on who you knew and what talent you could attach, are changing rapidly,” Bird suggested. ”Streamers and platforms have for years used sophisticated data analysis to make investment decisions, and that data was their exclusive preserve. Now, through HawksHead AI and CineMe, we’re levelling the playing field, putting that same power into the hands of British filmmakers and content creators at the point where it matters most: before a single frame is shot.”
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