Setting aside the countless concerns you could raise over AI-generated movies, are they actually good enough to draw a crowd at the box office?
The performance of China’s first fully AI-generated theatrical film suggests not.
The film, “Sanxingdui: Future Past,” is getting slaughtered at the domestic box office, raking in just $181,00 after being released on October 23, according to Cartoon Brew. Adding salt to the wound was that this was treated as a proper wide release, with over 10,000 screens scheduled to show it on opening day.
With a return of less than $20 per screen so far, it’s extremely unlikely that the film’s production company, Bona Film Group, will make back its reported budget of $1.5 million. Nearly 100 people worked on the movie for over two years, the company claims, though the “actors” — their voices as well as visuals — are AI-generated.
