China's First Fully AI Made Film Flops at the Box Office
China's first feature film made entirely with artificial intelligence has taken about 1.8 million yuan, roughly 270,000 US dollars, in three weeks in cinemas, against a reported budget in the tens of millions of yuan.
Sanxingdui, Future Past runs 100 minutes and has no human actors and no camera crew. It is set decades ahead, where rogue algorithms push humanity toward catastrophe and a warning hidden in ancient bronze artefacts from the Shu kingdom has to be decoded.
And the audience was not persuaded. Viewers complained on social media about stiff facial expressions, scenes that did not match each other, a plot that did not hold together, and a result that looked, in their words, so obviously generated.
Michael Berry, a professor of Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the South China Morning Post that familiarity with AI content may be exactly what hurt the film, since audiences already associate it with the cheap vertical clips they watch on their phones while queuing or riding in a taxi.
That appetite is real and vast. Official figures show 430,000 microdramas were released in the first eight months of the year, and more than 90 per cent of them used AI.
But the cinema ticket asks for something else, and the comparison the Post draws is telling. Niu Lai, a low budget animated film made by a mother and son over five years, with amateur visuals and flat delivery, took more than 51 million yuan in its first three weeks after going viral.
The reception drew a commentary from People's Daily, which said the film's performance reflected not just the quality of one release but the wider problems of AI driven creative work, and argued that the limit of the form lies in scripts, acting, emotion and judgment.
The wider market is not helping either. National box office receipts reached 31.6 billion yuan in the first ten months of the year, down nearly 30 per cent on the same period a year earlier, according to the tracker Beacon Pro.
So the first full test of AI as a cinema product has produced a film that cost tens of millions and returned a fraction of it, and the argument has moved on to craft, which the software did not supply.
The film took about 1.8 million yuan, or 270,000 US dollars, in three weeks
It had no actors and no crew and cost tens of millions of yuan
Viewers criticised stiff faces, inconsistent scenes and a disjointed plot
A hand made animated film took 51 million yuan in the same period
Box office takings overall are down nearly 30 per cent this year
Source: South China Morning Post
