Chris M. Williams built pocket.watch on one thesis, and he laid it out at AI Creator Day. “If it works on YouTube, it will work everywhere,” the founder and CEO told TheWrap founder and CEO Sharon Waxman. Breaking through among 6 billion videos, he argued, is proof of real appeal.
Pocket.watch now turns creators’ libraries into premium shows across more than 40 platforms. Williams said legacy players aren’t set up to build that growth themselves. “Most people’s job at companies like Disney is to protect the enterprise value that already exists,” he said.
Colin Petrie-Norris, founder and CEO of Fairground Entertainment, distributes work from more than 4,000 AI filmmakers to television, including new 24-hour streaming channels. He described the appetite plainly. “We’ll do a deal with a large streamer, and they’ll go, we would like 180 hours of animated content just to get us going,” he said.
Actor, producer and director David Bianchi, who has more than 140 film and TV credits, pushed back on the idea that any of this is easy. His AI music video for DJ Don Diablo took 1,200 renders and 200 hours. “I also want to like dispel the notion that producing AI cinema is easy. It’s effing hard,” he said. “You have the tools, but you can’t make taste. You can’t replace taste.”
TheWrap and What’s Trending presented AI Creator Day 2026 at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on Sept. 29, the day before TheGrill. Sponsors included Artlist, Cantina, CapCut, Fairground Entertainment, Native Foreign, pocket.watch, Rebel Audio, UTA and Wispr Flow, the official voice partner, whose Notetaker captured the quotes in this story.
