Google and The Dalí Museum partnered with Goodby Silverstein & Partners in 2025 to reimagine Salvador Dalí's unrealized 1937 screenplay using DeepMind's Veo 2
How Google and The Dalí Museum Brought a 1937 Surrealist Screenplay to Life
Google, The Dalí Museum, and Goodby Silverstein & Partners announced in April 2025 a generative AI project to reimagine Salvador Dalí's unrealized 1937 surrealist screenplay, Giraffes on Horseback Salad, using Google DeepMind's Veo 2 video model and Imagen 3 image-generation technology, producing a trailer unveiled at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas on April 9, 2025.
The campaign represents one of the most culturally ambitious applications of generative AI technology in the United States media and entertainment landscape to date. Giraffes on Horseback Salad began as a film treatment that Dalí developed with the Marx Brothers in 1937, a project so visually radical that Hollywood of that era could not — or would not — produce it. The screenplay survived in Dalí's notebooks and sketches, as reported by DesignTAXI, remaining unrealized for nearly nine decades until this collaboration brought it into motion. The project is described by The Dalí Museum not as a literal reconstruction but as a "reawakening" of Dalí's original creative intent, a distinction that shapes the entire strategic and creative frame of the campaign.
In the United States, the announcement arrived at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, positioning the work simultaneously as a technology demonstration and a cultural event. The partnership brings together Google Cloud, Google DeepMind, The Dalí Museum based in St. Petersburg, Florida, and San Francisco-based agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners — a collaboration that crosses the boundaries of technology, art preservation, and entertainment marketing. As reported by Artnet on April 16, 2025, the material released at the event constitutes a trailer rather than a completed feature film, with the project still described as in development as of The Dalí Museum's July 1, 2025 documentation. The Clapboard Score for this campaign stands at 78 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and cultural resonance alongside the open question of full delivery.
Google DeepMind's Veo 2 enters the generative video market at a moment of genuine commercial consequence. The global entertainment and media market reached approximately three trillion dollars in 2024 and is forecast to reach approximately three and a half trillion dollars by 2029, growing at a rate of roughly three point seven percent annually, according to PwC. In the United States, that market represents one of the largest single-country concentrations of media investment and consumption in the world, making it the natural arena for a campaign that fuses technology leadership with cultural storytelling.
The strategic logic of choosing The Dalí Museum as a partner is precise rather than ornamental. Museums and cultural institutions occupy a category that is itself expanding: the global museums, historical sites, zoos, and parks market was valued at more than one hundred billion dollars in 2025 and is growing at a compound annual rate of more than five percent through 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence. The Dalí Museum brings intellectual property with global name recognition and institutional credibility, while Google brings the computational infrastructure needed to actualize work that existed only as intention. Together, they reframe generative AI not as a threat to artistic legacy but as the mechanism through which that legacy can finally be expressed.
Competitors in the generative video space — most notably OpenAI's Sora and Runway's Gen-3 — have demonstrated AI video generation as a technical capability. What Google and Goodby Silverstein & Partners have done differently is anchor that capability to a specific, verifiable, and emotionally resonant cultural object: a screenplay with an eighty-eight-year provenance. This is not a generic technology showcase. It is a proof of concept rooted in the Media and Entertainment category, designed to demonstrate that Veo 2 can serve creative industries at the level of serious artistic production. The campaign also extends a prior relationship between Goodby Silverstein & Partners and The Dalí Museum, which previously collaborated on the AI-powered interactive experience known as Ask Dalí, as documented by The Dalí Museum, giving the agency an established interpretive framework for working with Dalí's identity and aesthetic.
Jeff Goodby directed creative on the Giraffes on Horseback Salad campaign. Goodby, Co-Chairman of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, is quoted by the agency and reported by Smithsonian Magazine as framing the project in terms that honor Dalí's original ambition: Dalí imagined a film so surreal, so untethered from convention, that it could not exist in his lifetime. That orientation — treating the screenplay as a creative brief from 1937 rather than an artifact to be digitized — defines the entire approach to production.
The technical execution relies on two distinct Google DeepMind systems working in concert. Veo 2 handles generative video, producing moving imagery that interprets Dalí's described scenes and visual logic. Imagen 3 handles still image generation, providing a visual development layer that informs the motion sequences. As reported by Smithsonian Magazine and Cloud Google, the two models together allow the production team to develop a visual language consistent with Dalí's documented surrealist aesthetic — his elongated forms, spatial impossibilities, and dreamlike juxtapositions — without simply imitating existing Dalí paintings. The goal, per The Dalí Museum's own framing, is interpretation rather than imitation.
In the United States context, the trailer premiered at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas on April 9, 2025, a venue that placed the creative work inside a technology conference rather than a film festival or museum opening. That choice is itself a statement of intent: the campaign addresses technologists and creative industries simultaneously, arguing that generative AI and serious artistic production are compatible pursuits. The VFX and generative production pipeline developed for this project represents a working model for how cultural institutions might approach unrealized archival material in the future, a structural argument made through the work itself rather than through press releases. The single media asset released publicly — the trailer — functions as both a proof of capability and an invitation to follow the project as it continues in development, per The Dalí Museum's documentation through mid-2025.
The campaign generated immediate press coverage across major cultural and technology outlets in the United States. Smithsonian Magazine, Artnet, DesignTAXI, and AD Magazine each reported on the announcement, providing earned media reach across audiences that span art, technology, and general culture. That breadth of coverage reflects the campaign's structural design: by combining a culturally significant IP with a technology demonstration, it created a story legible to multiple editorial beats simultaneously.
Artnet reported on April 16, 2025 that the released material constitutes a trailer rather than a finished film, a distinction that shapes how the project's impact should be assessed. The campaign has generated cultural conversation and demonstrated Veo 2's creative capabilities in a high-visibility context, but the full measure of its effectiveness as an entertainment production will depend on outputs that remain in development as of The Dalí Museum's July 2025 documentation. No verified box office, viewership, or streaming performance data for the trailer is publicly available, given that the project has not yet been released as a completed feature.
What the campaign does establish verifiably is a new benchmark for how technology companies can engage with cultural heritage in the United States media and entertainment space. The Google Cloud Next platform gave the trailer an audience of enterprise technology decision-makers, while the Dalí Museum's institutional endorsement extended credibility into the arts community. Goodby Silverstein & Partners receives attribution across all major coverage, reinforcing the agency's position in the intersection of technology and cultural marketing. The Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100 reflects this structural strength — a campaign that operates effectively across multiple audience contexts — while acknowledging that the ultimate creative deliverable remains unfinished.
Giraffes on Horseback Salad is an unrealized 1937 surrealist screenplay Dalí developed with the Marx Brothers. Google, The Dalí Museum, and Goodby Silverstein & Partners used Google DeepMind's Veo 2 and Imagen 3 to reimagine it, releasing a trailer at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas on April 9, 2025.
Google DeepMind's Veo 2 and Imagen 3 powered the production. Veo 2 handled generative video sequences while Imagen 3 provided still image generation, as reported by Smithsonian Magazine and cloud.google.com. The two models worked together to interpret Dalí's original screenplay and visual aesthetic without simply reproducing existing Dalí artworks.
Jeff Goodby, Co-Chairman of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, directed creative on the campaign. Goodby framed the project as realizing a vision so surreal it could not exist in Dalí's lifetime, per reporting by Smithsonian Magazine. The agency previously collaborated with The Dalí Museum on the AI-powered Ask Dalí interactive experience.
No completed feature film exists as of mid-2025. Artnet reported on April 16, 2025 that the released material is a trailer. The Dalí Museum's documentation through July 1, 2025 describes the project as still in development, meaning audiences have seen a preview of a work that remains unfinished.
The trailer premiered at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas on April 9, 2025. Choosing a major technology conference rather than a film festival positioned the work as both a creative achievement and an enterprise technology demonstration, simultaneously addressing arts communities and technology decision-makers across the United States.
The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative ambition, cross-sector cultural relevance, and effective multi-audience reach in the United States media and entertainment market, balanced against the fact that the project remains in development rather than fully delivered as a completed film.
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