China's first AI-generated feature film faces box office struggle

The film ‘Tam Tinh Doi: Vi lai vang su’, recognized as China’s first long-form AI-generated feature film, has struggled at the box office. Despite a production period of two years and significant investment, the film earned approximately 1.2 million NDT (over 4 billion VND) within its first four days of release, reflecting low audience turnout.

Production details reveal that the film was not a simple “one-click” creation. A crew of nearly 100 people was involved in the production process, generating over 1.2 million background images and undergoing more than 100 revisions. Producers noted that as large AI models are constantly updated, the team had to perform multiple major and minor edits to prevent the visual quality from becoming obsolete.

Bona Film Group, the production entity, emphasized that the project followed traditional cinematic workflows, with humans controlling the creation of individual frames to ensure consistency in characters and settings—a major technical challenge for AI-driven media.