“The future of children’s entertainment is here, and we’re thrilled to be at the forefront of this revolution,” says Kartoon Studios chief executive Andy Heyward in a statement. President Todd Steinman stresses that AI provides “significant cost efficiencies and speed to market,” allowing the company to “expand our content initiatives and fuel our programming pipeline in a way that couldn’t have been possible before.”

The shows have failed to take off. Since last year, roughly 20 episodes have been released. They collectively have less than 40,000 views on YouTube and are among the least watched content on the company’s accounts.

In one, Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionaires Club — intended to teach kids financial literacy — a 3D animated Buffett is featured as a talking head speaking to the significance of mentors. Cartoon renderings of a piggy bank and a multigenerational family flash in the background, along with streaking brushes of color.

“So remember, the trick to life is knowing who to be the bat boy for,” the famed investor says as a stock image of a baseball player shoots across the screen. “This is important to understand if you want to be a home run hitter!”

Originally, we wanted to shoot all the movie on film, but then we decided that we didn’t want to really focus on all those technical aspects during the shoot. We really wanted to work with the actors and focus more on the narrative side of filmmaking. But we did want to separate the 1970s [sections of the movie] from the 1990s. So, I decided to shoot 35mm for everything in the 1970s and go with a 4:3 aspect ratio, then we did 2.39 and shot on digital with the Alexa Mini LF for the 1990s.

…our film package was an homage to Harris Savides, who’s one of my favorite DPs—Oz [Perkins]’s too. We used Cooke S4s with an Arri 35mm camera for the flashbacks. Our main package for the 1990s was a Mini LF with Arri Signature Primes.

Arochi: I always wanted to leave blank space in the frame because, for me, fear lives behind your back. It’s not in front of you. If you’re working on your computer at 1 a.m. and you feel something, it’s always behind you. So, it was this idea of always having space for fear to live.

Filmmaker: The approach that many horror movies take is to shoot tight and then the scare comes from something invading that space. To me, that’s not really scary. That’s just surprise. There’s a shot in Longlegs where Maika is working at her remote cabin home—as you said, with her back to the room—and there’s this incredibly wide field of view. It’s wider than what the peripheral vision of a human eye would see. There are all these dark corners in that room, and you just feel a presence there, even though nothing ever leaps out at us. That feeling of unease or dread is what I like in a horror movie more so than just the shock of a jump scare.

Arochi: That’s exactly it and that cabin was where I found that idea during the first week of shooting. That’s where we realized that she’s so exposed.