A new AI startup called Quilty is making bold claims that its software can predict whether a film will be a box office hit or a flop just by analyzing a screenplay. Founded by film producers Simon Horsman and Daniel Wood, the platform assigns scripts a score from 0 to 100, factoring in narrative quality, commercial viability, audience resonance, and projected production costs. The pitch is that screenwriters, producers, and studios can get a crystal-ball glimpse at a project's chances before committing millions of dollars to production, potentially "democratizing" Hollywood by giving emerging creatives data-driven feedback to shop around to producers.
But the results so far have been, to put it mildly, unconvincing. When industry insiders actually tested Quilty's tool, the system predicted that the script for "Christy" would outperform the script for "Sinners." The reality played out almost exactly in reverse: "Sinners" went on to become an Oscar-winning blockbuster, while "Christy" fizzled into a box office disappointment. That kind of high-profile miss raises serious questions about whether Quilty's underlying model can actually distinguish between a future hit and a dud, no matter how sophisticated its scoring system might appear on paper.
Skeptics have noted that Quilty doesn't appear to be doing much that's genuinely novel under the hood. Instead, the product seems to function largely as a jumbled combination of preexisting AI systems stitched together, with no clear evidence yet that the technology has the analytical depth or creative judgment to make reliable predictions about storytelling and audience taste. The company is betting that traditional studios will eventually treat Quilty scores as a standard part of the greenlight process, but until the tool can stop wildly misjudging which scripts will succeed, that future looks far from guaranteed.