No, machines aren’t writing usable scripts. (Yet.) But we all know about projects that seemed terrific on paper but turned out to be disastrous bombs — and about sleeper hits that seemed very niche but caught on. Now companies like Cinelytic and ScriptBook say that their AI software can analyze the qualities of a script and cast, compare them with large quantities of data on what films have and haven’t attracted a sizable audience, and predict how well a given project will do. And these companies claim far higher accuracy rates than those of human studio execs. Journalist Steve Rise investigates. – The Guardian