A 150 Minute Movie Made Entirely With AI Has Just Been Released
A 150-minute AI-generated movie made largely by one filmmaker has been released, using Kling AI and the licensed likenesses of 13 real people.
A new feature film made entirely with AI-generated visuals has been released, and at two and a half hours long, this is a long way from the short experimental clips that have dominated AI filmmaking so far.
Odysseus: The Fall was released on 16 September by AI movie studio Fountain 0. Written and directed by British-Iranian artist Ash Koosha, the film is a new interpretation of Homer’s The Odyssey, following Odysseus on his journey home after the Trojan War.
Every scene and image in the film was generated using artificial intelligence, although the story and creative development were handled by Koosha rather than generated by AI. Fountain 0’s own filmmaking software was used alongside Kling AI, which generated the underlying video.
Perhaps the most remarkable part is the size of the production team. Koosha says he created the film largely by himself, working part-time over around four months. In an interview ahead of release, he explained that AI effectively removed the need to physically shoot the enormous environments required for the story.
Real people have not disappeared from the film completely.
The likenesses of 13 people were licensed for characters, including Koosha himself as Odysseus, his brother and Fountain 0 co-founder Pooya Koosha as Eurylochus, and executive chairman Tom Rogers as Mentor. Fountain 0 says it now wants to make similar likeness licensing agreements with personalities and influencers for future productions.
The cost difference is equally striking. Koosha told Fox Business this week that the production cost around $25,000, although that figure comes from the filmmaker himself. By comparison, large-scale fantasy and historical Hollywood productions can cost hundreds of millions.
The timing is deliberate too. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrived in cinemas this summer, and Fountain 0 openly sees its film as an opportunity for audiences to compare a huge traditional Hollywood production with what a tiny team can now attempt using generative AI. The two films are otherwise separate productions.
Odysseus: The Fall is available to rent directly from Fountain 0, including for viewers in the UK, for $9.99, with its soundtrack also released on Spotify. A new trailer arrived alongside the film on 16 September.
Whatever audiences ultimately make of the finished movie, its release provides a much more useful test of AI filmmaking than another impressive 30-second demonstration.
Viewers can now sit through a complete 150-minute AI-generated feature and decide whether the technology is actually capable of holding their attention for the length of a Hollywood epic.
