Staircase Studios AI — the film, television and gaming studio launched by “Divergent” franchise producer Pouya Shahbazian — has announced its investors and shared plans to produce more than 30 projects at budgets under $500,000 over the next 3-4 years. The company will be using a proprietary AI workflow it invented called ForwardMotion that the company says will revolutionize film and television production. The company has acquired multiple pieces of IP, including more than 20 scripts that have appeared on the Black List, which tallies the most popular unproduced scripts.

“After packaging and selling 150 projects into the studio system over the past 15 years, I’ve borne witness to far too much inefficiency to continue the status quo,” Staircase CEO Shahbazian said in an announcement. “Over the past year, I’ve dedicated myself to pairing ethical AI usage with our industry’s most underutilized assets — overlooked stories waiting to be produced from fantastic writers and directors.”

Staircase released a sizzle real that includes its first feature film, “The Woman with Red Hair,” directed by Brett Stuart from Michael Schatz’s 2016 Black List script. “The film traces the true story of Johanna “Hannie” Schaft, who dropped out of college to join the Dutch resistance during World War II and eventually became a talented assassin and Nazi enemy.

Its next film, “Every Living Creature,” is an animated tale of three daredevils who risked their lives to rescue animals left on the Caribbean island of Montserrat after a devastating volcanic eruption in 1997.

The company also shared investment and staffing news. Huffington Post co-founder Kenneth Lerer comes aboard as a partner and lead investor while former Warner Bros. production executive Lorenzo di Bonaventura serves as an advisor. Among the investors are LionTree CEO Aryeh Bourkoff, iHeart Media CEO Robert Pittman, and Tad Haley of Rafiki Ventures.

“The lineup includes an untitled procedural series from showrunner Gabe Rotter; and a series adapted from Mark Svartz’ graphic novel, ‘I Hate You Kelly Donahue,’” Deadline says, adding that “on the gaming side, Staircase is partnering with AI gaming tech company Mother Games.”

Variety explains that “development of Staircase Studios’ proprietary AI workflow, dubbed ForwardMotion, was led by head of AI filmmaking Brett Stuart, with an aim of producing what the company describes as “near-major studio quality releases.”