Publicis rings in centenary with AI-powered ‘A Lion Never Gives Up’ New Year film

New Delhi: Publicis Groupe is closing out its first century and stepping into the next with a New Year film that looks back at 100 years of upheaval and reinvention through the lens of artificial intelligence.

Titled “A Lion Never Gives Up”, the new edition of the Groupe’s traditional New Year “Wishes” blends live-action footage with AI-generated imagery to retell key moments from Publicis’ history, from its origins as a small creative shop in Montmartre in 1926 to its current status as one of the world’s largest communications holding companies.

The film has been conceived and crafted by Publicis Conseil, the Paris agency founded by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, using the Groupe’s proprietary AI platforms and tools.

The annual “Wishes” have long been a ritual at Publicis, but this year’s project is designed to mark a double milestone: the end of the Groupe’s first 100 years in 2026 and the start of a second century that will be heavily shaped by AI.

Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, commented, "2026 will be a very special year for us, as we end our first century. A century where we have turned a small hot shop from Montmartre into the industry’s largest holding company over the last two years. A century that has seen the Groupe rise from the ashes - sometimes literally - three times and reinvented itself many more. It is this spirit of resilience that has defined us for 100 years and that is captured in our Wishes: a lion never gives up.”

He added, “2026 will also be the year when we enter our second century, the beginning of which will undoubtedly be defined by the rise of AI. This film is a human, historical and technological odyssey that blends our best creative minds with our unmatched capabilities in AI production to embody our belief that the future of AI is our people."

The narrative revisits how Publicis has navigated war, fire, economic downturns, technological revolutions and a global pandemic, and argues that the same pioneering mindset will be needed to lead and reinvent the industry in the years ahead.

“A Lion Never Gives Up” is positioned as a hybrid production experiment, combining Live action with real actors and GenAI 2D and 3D imaging to reconstruct scenes from the past using archival material. Roughly a quarter of the film is live-action, while the remaining sequences are AI-generated from photos, films and documents drawn from Publicis’ own archives.

To support this, AI prompt artists and AI archivists worked together to source, catalogue and manage more than 4,500 visual assets for around 150 individual shots, a volume that would be difficult to handle in a traditional production pipeline.

The team said one of the major innovations lies in the editing process. In conventional production, once a film reaches the edit stage, most elements are locked. Here, every shot could be regenerated from scratch if needed, with AI allowing creative teams to iterate on scenes much later in the process than usual. 

Publicis positioned this as an example of how AI can both reduce the cost of complex reconstructions and open up new creative possibilities.

Alongside the New Year Wishes film, Publicis has also produced an exclusive documentary on its centenary journey, titled “L’avenir est l’affaire de Publicis” (“The future is Publicis’ business”).

Directed by Stanislas Valroff and produced by Eddy Story, the documentary was shot at Studio XR Prodigious and features key voices from the Groupe’s history and present leadership, including Elizabeth Badinter, Maurice Lévy and Arthur Sadoun.

The documentary traces major chapters in the company’s evolution, from its early creative roots to its global expansion and its shift into data, technology and platforms, while exploring how the organisation has responded to recurring disruption over the decades.

By choosing to tell its own story through a film built partially by AI, Publicis is using its centenary to make a broader statement about where it sees the industry heading.

The Groupe argues that AI is not just another tool, but a technology that will define the early years of its second century, provided it is anchored in human creativity, historical perspective and strong talent.

Sadoun described the project as one that “blends our best creative minds with our unmatched capabilities in AI production”, underscoring the company’s view that people remain at the centre of how AI will be applied across communication, media, data and technology.

The film’s central metaphor, the lion that never gives up, is used to link the resilience Publicis needed to survive the shocks of its first hundred years with the adaptability it believes will be required as AI reshapes everything from production to personalisation at scale.