Google & Dalí Museum Bring Salvador Dalí’s ‘Unproducible’ Film To Life Using AI

Image courtesy of Goodby Silverstein & Partners

One of Salvador Dalí’s most surreal cinematic ideas, Giraffes on Horseback Salad, long considered too bizarre to make, has finally found its moment. After languishing in notebooks and sketches since 1937, the film has now been brought to life with the help of Google’s AI-powered video model, Veo 2, in a collaboration between Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Florida’s Dalí Museum.

Originally dreamed up by Dalí as a surrealist spectacle too wild for Hollywood at the time, the concept centers on a man who falls in love with a woman from a dreamlike world. As their realities meet, fantasy and destruction begin to blur, mirroring the artistic chaos and boundless beauty that define Dalí’s work.

The original project never made it past the drawing board, shelved for being too “unproducible” by 1930s studio standards. What remained were scraps of a script, rough illustrations, and a tantalizing idea… until now.

Using Veo 2, Google’s newest generative video platform, the team translated Dalí’s original fragments into cinematic motion. With tools capable of interpreting dream logic into dynamic sequences, Giraffes on Horseback Salad is no longer just a  relic of the imagination, but an animated story rendered in Dalí’s famously surreal visual language. Instead of being a one-to-one reproduction of his vision, though, but rather a modern painting—a faithful homage shaped by current tools and artistic sensibilities.

“Dalí imagined a film so surreal, so untethered from convention, that it wasn’t realized in his lifetime,” shares Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby Silverstein & Partners. “Now, thanks to the astonishing capabilities of Veo 2 and Imagen 3, we’ve been able to help bring that vision to life—not as a replica, but as a reawakening.” Goodby calls this “one of the most creatively thrilling things we’ve ever done.”

The film’s premiere was conceptually introduced at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas on April 9. It’s the latest in a growing partnership between The Dalí Museum and Goodby Silverstein & Partners, whose past collaborations have included AI-driven projects like Ask Dalí and The Dream Tapestry. Each initiative explores new ways to experience and interact with Dalí’s work, furthering his legacy of bending reality and technology in the name of art.

By breathing life into an idea long considered impossible, the team has done more than resurrect a forgotten film. It has opened up a new avenue for unfinished visions from history to find their footing in the present. It’s less about reviving the past and more about allowing Dalí’s language and imagination to finally be seen and heard—on his terms, in his tone, and with today’s tools.

“Salvador Dalí said that he would be remembered for the words he wrote even more than for his paintings. This technology, in the respectful hands of artists, allows Dalí’s imagined world, locked in language, to erupt into visibility,” expresses Dr Hank Hine, director of The Dalí Museum in Florida.

[via Goodby Silverstein & Partners, image courtesy and featured with permission]