Chinese audiences got the chance to answer that question in October, and most of them passed. Sanxingdui: Future Past, a sci-fi thriller from Bona Film Group billed as China’s first fully AI-generated feature film, opened on October 23 with more than 10,000 screenings scheduled for its first day. Fortune reported that it grossed an estimated $180,000 through the following Monday, citing the ticketing platform Maoyan. That’s about 12% of its reported $1.5 million production budget. By its 11th day in cinemas, Cartoon Brew put the total at roughly $253,000, according to FourWeekMBA, still well short of the cost.
The film tells the story of an archaeologist who has to save a future world enslaved by AI. Its characters, their voices, and its backgrounds were generated with AI, while people handled the editing. Jiang Defu, Bona’s chief operating officer and the film’s producer, acknowledged the lukewarm reception but told the Chinese film outlet Yuli that it was an achievement in itself to be the first to make such a film, secure a theatrical permit for it and show it to a paying audience.
What viewers said after watching
Lilian Gong, 35, watched one of the first screenings in central Beijing. She told AFP she went because she was curious to see how AI generation would work on the big screen. Afterward, she said AI could only play a supporting role in filmmaking for now, because the quality still fell short of human production. Iris Yang, who saw a free preview for industry workers and acquaintances of the production team, said she wouldn’t have paid for a ticket given the film’s quality. She added that she would pay if AI could match the theatrical experience of Avatar.
Curiosity gets someone into a seat once. A film stays in cinemas when those first viewers send other people, and attendance here fell quickly: China’s National Business Daily reported that screenings on October 24 and 25 averaged about two viewers each, according to Dexerto.
What usually gets us to buy a ticket
We started thinking about how we choose what to watch. Sometimes a friend recommends a film, or we stumble across a trailer that makes us want to see what happens next. A director whose work we’ve enjoyed can get us interested, too. But the cast is often what makes us decide. We’ve picked movies we knew almost nothing about because we wanted to see what a particular actor would do with the role.
A fully AI-generated film can still have a trailer, and it can earn recommendations if it’s good. It can’t yet offer a performer with a track record, which is what we rely on most. When we choose a film for its lead actor, we’re drawing on every earlier performance we’ve seen from that person. An AI-generated character arrives with no history, so the audience has nothing to base that trust on.
Some companies are trying to build that history. AFP noted that the virtual actor Tilly Norwood is set to star in an upcoming film called Misaligned. Whether audiences will follow a synthetic performer from one project to the next the way they follow an actor is untested. Maybe more convincing visuals and performances will make fully AI-generated films easier to get immersed in.
Short videos and feature films are different purchases
Chinese viewers already watch AI-generated video in large numbers, as long as it’s short. Fortune, citing Caixin, reported that more than 95% of the over 120,000 Chinese microdramas released in the first quarter of 2026 were AI-generated, compared with nearly none a year earlier, and that production costs have fallen to as little as $3,000. AFP reported that AI-generated short dramas drew more than 200 billion views on Douyin in September alone.
A microdrama costs little or nothing and runs a few minutes on a phone; if it’s bad, you swipe away. A cinema ticket costs money and an evening, and Sanxingdui runs about 100 minutes on a screen large enough to expose every inconsistency. Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California professor who studies Chinese film, told Fortune that the public is highly skeptical of AI in major feature films even though it broadly accepts short-form AI content. He doubts audiences will go to cinemas for an AI-generated film unless it reaches the quality of Avatar or Nezha 2, and suggested such films may find a better fit on streaming platforms.
Where AI is already on screen
For now, we’re more interested in how filmmakers can use AI to create or enhance visual effects, which some productions already do. In July 2025, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told analysts that the Argentine series El Eternauta used generative AI for a sequence showing a building collapsing in Buenos Aires. He said the sequence was finished 10 times faster than it could have been with traditional VFX tools, and that the conventional version wouldn’t have been affordable on the show’s budget. The AI-generated footage amounts to two brief shots in episode 6.
Ben Affleck has said he used AI for many things in Animals, the crime thriller Netflix released on October 9, 2026. He told a Bloomberg event he was reluctant to say which parts, because films are meant to sustain the illusion of reality.
In both productions, AI generated some of the shots, and the result was still sold on its director and cast, the same things that usually get me to buy a ticket. Viewers didn’t need to know which shots were generated. This use has its own conflicts: protections against AI were among the demands in the 2023 strikes by U.S. screenwriters and actors, and faster, cheaper effects shots raise questions about work for the people who used to make them.
Over to you
Ben Affleck won’t say which parts of Animals were made with AI, and Netflix disclosed the generated shots in El Eternauta only after the series had been released. If you learned that a film you loved used AI in scenes you never noticed, would that change how you feel about it? And should audiences be told before they buy a ticket?
Tell us in the comments or share your own take in the original FITT discussion!
If it's a good movie, why not? I'd want to be told how it was made before I buy the ticket, not after, but the story still has to earn it.