Sunny Hostin has spent six years trying to get her bestselling novels turned into films or series. On Monday’s episode of The View, she announced a new strategy: partnering with an AI film company she says can bypass the industry gatekeeping she blames for the holdup — a plan that drew skeptical pushback from her own co-hosts, including Joy Behar.
According to an account published by The Gateway Pundit, which republished a piece by C. Douglas Golden of The Western Journal, Hostin told the panel she had “partnered with a company called Fountain Zero who had an AI movie released at the Tribeca Film Festival,” describing it as the first time such a thing had been done.
Hostin framed the decision around frustration with Hollywood’s treatment of diverse material. “For six years, I’ve tried to get my films or my stories made into series and films,” she said. “And the gatekeeping in Hollywood around black and brown creative content is insane. I cannot get New York Times best-selling books onto the screen to tell diverse stories to diverse communities.”
The exchange that followed
Behar’s response was blunt: “So what does that have to do with AI?”
Hostin argued that AI removes the bottleneck. “With AI that cuts out the gatekeeping. You get to make your film. You get to have a director,” she said.
Alyssa Farah Griffin then asked whether the films would have actors. Hostin confirmed she has licensed her own image and may appear in the projects, describing the output as a way to approach streamers with a finished product: “Here’s the product. Will you license it? Will you show it? It’s a way, I think, to get black and brown stories told. There are a lot of hidden figures out there. And those stories are not being told.”
Behar pressed the contradiction. “But if those people are, in fact, robots, how does that help the real black community?” she asked. “The real people are not working!”
Hostin pushed back: “Because the stories are not being told, Joy! Because the real people are not getting jobs in Hollywood. Black and brown actors are not getting the jobs.”
Behar’s rejoinder: “Well, this makes sure they never will.”
Farah Griffin, according to the account, made the same point — that leaning on AI would close, rather than open, doors for the performers Hostin says she wants to help. A clip of the exchange circulated on social media.
Background on Hostin’s publishing career
Hostin is a former federal prosecutor who has written a trilogy of novels. She has described them in interviews as “beach reads” rooted in her own experience. “I love beach reads, but I never see beach reads with people of color. I really wanted to write about characters that have similar lived experiences to my own,” she told People magazine in 2021, recalling trips where she would scan airport bookstores for covers featuring characters of color.
The conservative writer Golden is sharply critical of the novels and of Hostin’s broader argument. He argues that her books have already received substantial industry promotion — including New York Times bestseller placement — and notes that Fox green-lit development in 2020 on a drama series based on her legal career, a project that stalled. He also points to other adaptations of celebrated novels, including Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, that have likewise never gotten a major Hollywood production, as evidence that studios make idiosyncratic decisions for reasons beyond race.
The throughline of Golden’s critique, echoed in the studio by Behar, is that a project built on synthetic performers cannot deliver the on-screen representation Hostin says is her goal — and that the technology she’s embracing may ultimately work against the actors she says are being shut out.
Representatives for Hostin, The View, and Fountain Zero did not provide comment for the original report.
Source: www.thegatewaypundit.com — https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/watch-sunny-hostin-delivers-worst-racial-gripe-history/