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AI Filmmakers Are Making Movies Hollywood Never Would

People around the world have discovered they can make actual movies with minimal budgets and scant help.

Neal Pollack

My head kept nodding down to my chest during the Austin AI Film Festival this month. It wasn't the fault of the festival, which was well-run, well-organized, and in a lovely local theater venue, or even the films, which contained some astonishing images, especially considering how people created them.

But one of the three choices in the "feature" section, an endless drone about unidentified anomalous phenomena, starred a man, a woman, and a child who discover a mysterious ball in the woods of Finland or Russia or wherever. Then the ball haunts them. There's something about alien abductions. I couldn't keep track because I kept falling asleep.

As one attendee said to me as we were walking to lunch, "I'd like to see something with characters talking to each other. Give me something I can care about."

This stood in direct contrast to what I'm seeing with artificial intelligence film online. There, AI filmmaking is a manic, wildly imaginative gold rush, a phantasmagorical fever dream of large-breasted barbarian chicks, rampaging goblin hordes, soaring spaceships, rapping rubber-faced fish aliens and pigs, Hank Hill clones singing Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing," fake sitcom scenes, and insane cyberpunk music videos.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, possibly thousands of people around the world have discovered they can make actual movies with minimal budgets and scant help. Some are putting together full features by themselves. Prometheus has stolen fire, or maybe Mongo discovered fire. We're trying to harness lightning, and by "we," I mean I'm trying to do it too. Because once you see the potential of AI creativity, you can't unsee it.

The festival contained glimmers of this barely contained madness. The first session was a presentation by a filmmaker named PJ Accetturo, or "PJ Ace," as he calls himself on X. Frustrated by the slow pace of Hollywood, he turned to AI filmmaking tools partly out of curiosity and partly out of desperation.

He's working on a series of shorts — that may become a massive world-consuming intellectual property — called "Nexus," which he described as a combination of "Star Wars," "Game of Thrones," and Pokémon. The TikTok-connected filmmaking app Dreamina is backing the project, which he's making with a double-digit team.

He predicted the next "Star Wars" would come from a kid with a laptop. "That kid could be me, or it could be you." But it requires a hook, something other than "here are some cool images." People have to respond to the material, he said. "You can't just walk into Amazon and say, hey, AI's here, give me a million dollars."

PJ Ace's material has mainstream potential, but AI filmmaking has a decidedly indie-revolution feel to it.

Roger Avary, who won an Oscar for co-writing "Pulp Fiction," told me that after the pandemic he couldn't even get meetings in Hollywood. Jail time had already interrupted his career following a 2009 conviction for a drunken-driving crash that killed a passenger.

A French graphic designer friend pointed him toward Runway, which gave him free access to its tools and wanted his advice. From his Paris headquarters, Avary is now making films with AI himself, including work with French filmmaker Paul Mignot on "Cortés," a hybrid production using AI alongside actors and a conventional crew.

"Let's go man," he said. "Let's go with the technology. Let's see where this takes us."

One filmmaker Avary has been championing is Jenny Krakovsky, a U.K.-based director who has made commercials for Prada and Nike but had struggled to get her first feature made. She had a script for "Boss," a crime caper about women becoming gangsters in 1960s Liverpool. A period piece was a tough sell.

In May, she announced online that she would make it with AI in 30 days. Tech companies offered free access and credits. It took her 50 days. She recorded every character's dialogue herself in a Liverpool accent, then used software to change the voices. She made the whole film in her bedroom.

"I have a sh*tty little laptop, it's not very good," she said.

At 16, she'd made what she called a "ripoff" of Avary's "The Rules of Attraction" in her living room. After taking a look at "Boss," Avary praised her as a vanguard of indie film.

"I was running around the house screaming to my wife," she said. "I called my mum."

Josh Daws, a former Disney software engineer now a vice president at Blaze Media, had put filmmaking aside as his family grew. AI let him start again after the kids were in bed. His animated "Mary Sue" series follows an overconfident heroine who has to learn to be teachable.

"For those of us on the right who have for so long felt shut out of the Hollywood system, we can make our own entertainment," he said. He wants to compete with "people who make good movies but with rotten messages."

He also thinks conservatives are equipped to withstand the backlash against AI filmmaking. "When you're on the right, you're used to being hated for your beliefs. We have a thick skin."

For Daws, the immediate result is enthusiasm bordering on insomnia.

"I regularly wake up at 3 a.m. just excited about the day."

One of the people taking the AI filmmaking bus to the end of the line is Paul Sprangers, who makes films as Dr. Dreams and hosts a YouTube talk show where he exchanges war stories and ideas about AI filmmaking. His main contribution to the genre is an absurdly entertaining sci-fi fantasy series called "Bambi the Destroyer." He talks about the possibilities in terms of Heavy Metal magazine: fantastical worlds that would never get a conventional movie budget.

He says he can now make a short film or two every week. One episode of "Bambi," which he published on X, he said he made while "eating snacks."

"People are scrolling while they're driving so you have to make it entertaining and make it move fast," he says.

Then there's Bone, a Central Florida entrepreneur who vibe-built something called Slop Cannon to make creating AI music videos easier, though he has ambitions to make it a platform for generating advertising, sitcoms, and other genres. He has particular tastes.

"I make AI music videos about rapping pigs," he told me. Of the Cannon, he says, "It's kind of a bit that got out of control and became real by repetition. Now it's real and it's making money."

And this is where my own AI filmmaking experience started. I found the Slop Cannon on X, liked the vibe, and started making music videos based on characters from an AI-generated comic book I've worked on for a few months. The videos range in length from 30 seconds to four and a half minutes and in quality from terrible to amazing.

None took me longer than a couple of hours to create, using a combination of my imagination, ChatGPT, Suno, and the Cannon itself. Bone has started something called "Slop TV," and I have my own channel, with 20 videos, all of which I created in the last month. None is quite a coherent narrative, but it's a start. Any barriers that Hollywood might have thrown in my way, or anyone's way, have fallen.

And it's happening everywhere. Minh Do, co-founder of the global AI creative network Machine Cinema, described communities he's found in Paris, Warsaw, and Nigeria with people who love movies but who don't exist in the Hollywood ecosystem. The French and Polish governments in particular, he said, have been bullish about backing AI filmmakers.

"Who else is going to stick around and play with Midjourney for 12 hours straight?" Do says. 

Speaking at the Austin festival, Jason Fisher of StageRunner, a soundstage marketplace that's pivoting into AI production, said Hollywood is exploring AI but wary of angering actors, writers, and directors. He expects the breakthrough to come from outside the system and to be a group effort.

"It's not going to be someone in their basement," he told the audience. "It's going to be a group of people in their collective basement."

Take, for instance, Zack London's Gossip Goblin, which is turning out serialized fantasy and science fiction with a small team and AI. The studio says it has released more than 600 episodes in two years and attracted more than 3 million followers. Its filmmakers describe "Gods Don't Give Gifts" as the first AI feature to receive a Motion Picture Association rating — an R. The breakthrough is coming. It's only a matter of who and when.

Krakovsky put it this way: "I'd rather make fake films for real people than real films for fake people."

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Neal Pollack, "the greatest living American writer," is the author of 12 semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction and is a three-time "Jeopardy!" champion.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire's new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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