GoGreenlight
Revolutionizing film casting with intelligent shortlisting
Published online: 24.10.2025
GoGreenlight
Revolutionizing film casting with intelligent shortlisting
Published online: 24.10.2025
By Trine Reinholt Andersen, AAU Technology Transfer Office
In film production, the casting shortlisting process remains stubbornly stuck in the analog age, dominated by fragmented spreadsheets and disconnected communications across external databases. This makes managing hundreds of talent profiles, reels, and auditions an inefficient, error-prone, and time-consuming task—often resulting in misalignment among directors, casting agents, and producers. One of the biggest bottlenecks in this workflow is “green-lighting” — the process of approving key elements in pre-production, such as actors or locations — which is notoriously slow and complex across the film and TV industry. This step determines when a production can move forward to the next phase, making it central to scheduling and cost control.
The impact is far from trivial: industry estimates suggest that traditional casting methods alone in a typical Danish DKK 50 mio cinema film can consume up to $500,000 per production in time and resources, while location scouting can account for up to 15% of a large-scale budget, often in the million-dollar range. Add to that the risk of budget overruns of up to 20% due to inefficient production planning, and the cost of sticking to outdated methods becomes clear. On top of it all, ensuring GDPR compliance and industry confidentiality when handling private talent data adds yet another layer of complication.
AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO FILM CASTING
Greenlight is a dynamic and scalable SaaS platform purpose-built to streamline and revolutionize TV and film casting. Born from the research-based Scenario Maker tool, Greenlight features a visual selector with an AI CoPilot - a first-in-industry approach that combines intuitive talent visualization with intelligent automation. It eliminates the chaos of multiple tools and formats via its user-friendly interface that organizes talent data intuitively and aligns all stakeholders around clearer and faster decision-making.
The Greenlight platform
What sets Greenlight apart from existing tools is its exclusive focus on optimizing the shortlisting stage - an often overlooked yet pivotal part of the casting workflow. By introducing a single visual source of truth, Greenlight enhances transparency, reduces pre-production delays, and brings costs down by an average of 11%, based on early project data. Its AI CoPilot analyzes the manuscript and automatically generates the list of characters to cast, cutting time spent on manual listing by up to 50%, as indicated in prototype trials, while its end-to-end approach ensures smoother collaboration across the entire production pipeline.
With Greenlight’s ability to reduce costs by an average of 11%, Greenlight could, based on average production budgets, potentially save approximately:
- $11 million on a typical Hollywood blockbuster ($100M budget)
- Between $55,000–$550,000 for indie productions ($0.5–5M budgets)
- Around $6 million per production on the U.S. average budget ($54M)
Unlike existing talent databases or contract-management tools, Greenlight is fully GDPR compliant with encrypted storage and role-based access, safeguarding private talent data at every step. Its SaaS model scales flexibly based on production size and the volume of shortlisted talent, ensuring it remains cost-effective and flexible for both small commercials to large-scale feature films.
A PLATFORM APPLICABLE BEYOND CASTING
Powered by the interactive audiovisual content management features of Scenario Maker, Greenlight is designed for every user regardless of their technical background. It helps casting teams visually manage reels, audition snippets, and talent profiles in a unified platform, minimizing communication errors and accelerating pre-production timelines. This makes it an ideal tool for casting agents, producers, and commercial clients seeking efficiency without sacrificing clarity or compliance.
Beyond casting, Greenlight's architecture and interface can provide value for broader application across creative industries. It could easily evolve to support roles like location scouting, production planning, talent scouting, post-production review, or even other arts sectors from agency selection to volunteer coordination. In short, anywhere shortlisting from a large pool of candidates is involved.
VALIDATED BY RESEARCH, DESIGNED FOR INDUSTRY SAVINGS
Greenlight is developed through extensive research by Associate Professor Peter Vistisen (developer of the Scenario Maker tool) and Associate Professor Claus Rosenstand, along with Post.doc. Rameshnath Krishnasamy from the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University.
In 2024, Rameshnath received a junior researcher grant from the Spin-outs Denmark programme to strengthen his entrepreneurial competences and support Greenlight’s journey towards market.
Since then, the spinout company “GoGeenlight” has officially been established and already secured its first customer — a promising milestone that underscores the market relevance of its solution and how applied research can translate digital facilitation methods into tangible industry innovation.
The GoGreenlight team
The team has also expanded significantly, now including experienced professionals: René McCain (Platform Architect and serial entrepreneur of tech startups), Martin Miehe-Renard (Director and writer of movies, TV, and games), Ben Horowitz (Assistant Director on international creative production), and Carsten B. Larsen (CTO). Together, the team brings both industry strategic insight and technical depth to GoGreenlight’s continued growth.
During the entire process, the AAU Technology Transfer Office has supported the team in preparing two successful applications for the Spin-outs Denmark program and the AAU Pilot Grant. Secondly, the team has received support in the development of the overall business plan to strengthen the research team towards the establishment of the company Greenlight in 2025.
Learn more about Greenlight’s applied research and commercial implementation in AI-driven film production management.