Amazon made a significant move into the future of entertainment by investing in Fable Studio, a Bay Area-based company known for developing Showrunner — an AI-powered platform that lets users create television episodes through simple text prompts. The announcement coincided with the platform’s public launch, following a period of limited early access. Fable’s proprietary model, SHOW-2, is the engine behind Showrunner and Amazon’s undisclosed stake signals its growing interest in reshaping how TV content is produced and consumed.
Fable CEO Edward Saatchi envisions Showrunner as a new kind of streaming service — one not just watched, but interacted with. He likens it to the “Netflix of AI,” but one where viewers can become creators. Saatchi believes the next major innovation in entertainment won’t be cheaper effects, but a shift toward interactivity, more akin to video games than traditional television. He also revealed that Fable is currently in discussions with major studios, including Disney, about licensing intellectual property for the platform.
Showrunner already gained notoriety in 2022 for generating AI versions of “South Park” episodes — created without involvement from Paramount or the show’s original creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The episodes were never used commercially but drew massive attention, amassing over 80 million views. This early success offered proof of concept for Fable’s approach, blending narrative flexibility with user-generated input.
The platform's official launch includes two original interactive series. One, "Exit Valley," is a satirical comedy in the vein of “Family Guy,” set in the fictional “Sim Francisco” and poking fun at tech leaders like Elon Musk and Sam Altman. The other, "Everything Is Fine," starts as a mundane trip to Ikea and spirals into a surreal, emotional journey between a separated couple. In both series, users can influence plot developments or insert themselves into the stories — a feature that Saatchi said emerged organically during testing and proved unexpectedly popular.
Saatchi sees the rise of AI-driven entertainment as an opportunity to redefine the viewer’s role. Instead of being passive consumers, audiences might evolve into co-creators. He noted that while there is excitement about this model, he’s also aware of the uncertainty that comes with such innovation, acknowledging that it’s still unclear whether people truly want to create their own episodes or simply enjoy curated content.
This isn’t Saatchi’s first foray into emerging storytelling mediums. He co-founded Oculus Story Studio in 2014, which produced acclaimed virtual reality titles like the Emmy-winning “Henry” before being shut down in 2017 due to limited VR adoption. Learning from that experience, he launched Fable Studio in 2019 with a pivot toward AI-driven stories rather than VR, focusing on narrative interactivity as the core innovation.