Luma, an artificial intelligence video startup, has launched a new AI-powered production studio in partnership with faith-focused streaming platform Wonder Project, marking one of the clearest moves yet by an AI tools company into full-scale film and television production. The new venture, called Innovative Dreams, will debut with a Prime Video special centered on the Biblical figure Moses and is being pitched as a test case for what its creators call “real-time hybrid filmmaking.”
Luma and Wonder Project join forces
Innovative Dreams is structured as a production services company jointly built by Luma and Wonder Project, which produces and curates premium content for a global “faith and values” audience through its subscription channel on Prime Video. Luma specializes in AI-driven video generation, while Wonder Project focuses on religious films and series, making the tie-up a blend of cutting-edge technology and explicitly faith-centered storytelling.
In a social media announcement, Luma described Innovative Dreams as “a production services company where seasoned filmmakers from director Jon Erwin’s team and Luma’s creative technologists work with great studios and filmmakers to help them realize ambitious ideas.” The company added that the mission is to build a new production process for this era “that brings Humans and AI together to enable great storytelling.”
Wonder Project was launched in 2023 by director Jon Erwin and former Netflix executive Kelly Hoogstraten with the explicit goal of serving a global faith and values audience. Its first flagship series, the Biblical drama “House of David,” chronicling the life of King David, debuted on Amazon Prime in 2025 and laid the groundwork for a slate of high-end faith-based productions.
First project: Moses on Prime Video
The inaugural production under the Innovative Dreams banner is “The Old Stories: Moses,” a Prime Video special that extends the world established in Wonder Project’s “House of David.” The project, also described as a three-part companion special, stars Academy Award-winner Ben Kingsley in the role of Moses, with Emmy-nominated actor O‑T Fagbenle also attached.
According to an announcement from Luma, the Moses project has been “shot entirely on a virtual stage” using the Innovative Dreams workflow, reflecting the studio’s ambition to move final-pixel work into a real-time, production-ready pipeline. The special is slated to premiere this spring on Prime Video via Wonder Project’s subscription channel, with a broader release expected thereafter.
Industry observers see the choice of a high-profile Biblical story and a veteran actor like Kingsley as a deliberate signal that AI-enhanced production is moving into mainstream, premium content rather than experimental side projects. For Wonder Project, the collaboration offers a way to scale its slate of scripture-inspired programming while trying to maintain the production values associated with Hollywood-level storytelling.
“Real-time hybrid filmmaking” explained
At the core of Innovative Dreams is a workflow its creators describe as “real-time hybrid filmmaking,” combining performance capture techniques associated with films like “Avatar” and virtual production methods popularized by series such as “The Mandalorian.” In promotional material for the collaboration, director Jon Erwin said the team was “attempting something to our knowledge that has not been attempted before in our industry,” calling it “what we consider the future of filmmaking.”
Erwin emphasized that the process allows actors, directors and artists to work together in real time, rather than waiting for visual effects and virtual environments to be finalized in post-production. “On ‘House of David’, we were the first show to integrate fully the [generative] tool set into a commercial production at scale,” he said, adding that with Luma’s tools “we are tethered to our imagination… it’s dreaming in real time.”
Luma’s own description of the workflow stresses its departure from traditional pipelines, in which performance capture, set extensions and visual effects only come together late in the schedule. “Hybrid Production enables actors, directors, and artists to work together in real time,” the company explained, noting that creative teams can collaborate live with Luma Agents to adjust sets, props, lighting and performance capture on the fly.
Luma Agents move from tools to studio
Innovative Dreams also serves as a proving ground for Luma Agents, the company’s suite of AI systems designed to handle end-to-end creative tasks across text, images, video and audio. Luma argues that integrating these agents directly into production, instead of treating them as separate post-production add-ons, can reshape both the craft and the economics of filmmaking.
In its announcement, Luma framed the shift bluntly: “This is a significant improvement over the current virtual production and performance capture processes where things come together only in post,” the company said. “This is the leverage of AI — not just faster or cheaper, but better than what came before.”
The studio has built its first Hybrid Filmmaking facility at Manhattan Beach Studios, the same complex that has hosted a range of large-scale film and television productions. Luma says Innovative Dreams is already “significantly oversubscribed with demand” and is actively hiring to expand its services to more studios and filmmakers, indicating that interest in the model extends beyond faith-based content.
Faith-focused, but how narrowly?
Wonder Project’s catalog and mission are unambiguously faith-oriented, with the company stating that it “produces and curates premium content for the faith and values audience” and positions its Prime Video channel as a home for high-quality religious storytelling. Its early slate, led by “House of David,” reflects a strategy of retelling Biblical narratives with cinematic production values and long-form, serialized structure.
That focus naturally raises questions about whether Innovative Dreams will restrict itself to religious and values-driven projects or eventually broaden into more general genres using the same hybrid production pipeline. For now, both companies have left that question open, with reports noting that it remains unclear if the new studio will expand beyond Wonder Project’s faith-centered remit.
What is clear is that Wonder Project views the partnership as a way to serve an underrepresented audience without compromising on scale. By tying its brand to a high-tech studio rather than a purely traditional production house, the platform is attempting to position faith-based content alongside the most visually sophisticated work on major streaming services.
Part of a wider AI content push
Luma’s move into production territory comes amid a broader trend of AI startups stepping beyond tools and APIs to develop original programming. Recent weeks have seen other AI firms unveil their own projects, including an original 10‑minute science fiction episode from Higgsfield and a documentary collaboration involving London-based Wonder Studios and Campfire Studios.
Industry analysts note that these initiatives are unfolding as studios, unions and regulators are still negotiating the boundaries of AI in entertainment, especially around labor protections, intellectual property and creative control. A report on the Innovative Dreams launch highlighted that the venture aims to “broaden access to high-end tools while confronting industry concerns around labor, IP and creative control as studios and unions negotiate AI safeguards.”
Luma itself has been scaling quickly, after securing a substantial funding round in late 2025 and outlining plans for a “supercluster” data center to support its AI workloads. With Innovative Dreams, the company is effectively testing whether those investments can translate into a repeatable production model that other studios can plug into for future series and specials.
Filmmakers “built by filmmakers for filmmakers”
Both partners stress that the new studio is intended to complement, rather than replace, human talent working on set and in post. Luma describes Innovative Dreams as “built by filmmakers for filmmakers,” and positions Hybrid Production as a “liberating force” that gives directors and artists more flexibility to iterate visually in the moment instead of waiting weeks or months for effects shots to come back.
In one behind-the-scenes video, Erwin framed the approach as non-linear filmmaking that collapses traditional production stages into a single, continuous process. Using Luma’s agents and visual interface tools, he said, “we can be performing, generating and then editing all at the same time,” adding that the workflow allows an editor on set to “raise their hand and ask for a shot” that can then be created and integrated in real time.
For now, all eyes will be on how “The Old Stories: Moses” is received by both faith-based audiences and the wider industry when it arrives on Prime Video later this spring. If Innovative Dreams delivers on its promise of faster, cheaper and “better” AI-augmented production, it could become an important template for how Hollywood integrates generative tools into big-budget storytelling in the years ahead.
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