Hollywood’s AI experiment is going global: Critterz, an animated feature built with OpenAI tools, is racing to finish in just nine months and land a Cannes 2026 premiere.
Blending human sketches with machine-driven animation, the project is testing whether AI can speed up — and shake up — the film industry’s playbook.
A different kind of production timeline
The idea began with Chad Nelson, a creative specialist at OpenAI, who first used the then-new DALL-E tool to sketch out the characters. What started as an experiment turned into a short film in 2023, funded by OpenAI. Now Nelson has teamed up with London’s Vertigo Films and L.A.’s Native Foreign to turn Critterz into a full-length feature.
The movie’s production window is a mere nine months. For comparison, most animated films take about three years. James Richardson, co-founder of Vertigo Films, told The Wall Street Journal that the effort is “a very ambitious massive experiment.”
The budget is under $30 million, which is much less than the $100 million to $200 million many animated features cost. To get there, the team is blending AI and human work: artists provide sketches fed into OpenAI’s tools (including GPT-5), while actors will voice the characters.
“OpenAI can say what its tools do all day long, but it’s much more impactful if someone does it,” Nelson said. “That’s a much better case study than me building a demo.”
Copyrights, lawsuits, and creative risks
Of course, Critterz isn’t just going to cruise into Cannes without raising a few eyebrows.
Hollywood is already on edge about AI’s role in content creation. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery have filed lawsuits against AI company Midjourney over alleged copyright infringement. Actors and writers’ guilds have also fought for protections against AI tools they say could threaten jobs.
Still, the Critterz team has taken steps to protect the project. Human-created voices and sketches make the film eligible for copyright, according to Native Foreign co-founder Nik Kleverov. About 30 contributors are working on the film and will share in any profits through a specialized compensation model.
What’s next for Critterz (and AI in Hollywood)
Production is already underway. The goal is to premiere at Cannes, then roll out broadly to theaters worldwide. An OpenAI spokesperson summed up the effort: the film “reflects the kind of creativity and exploration we love to encourage.”
Other studios are also testing AI in more focused ways. Netflix recently used AI tools to generate the collapse of a building in its Argentinian show The Eternaut. And James Cameron, never one to shy away from big swings, has said, per PCMAg, that AI could help double the “speed to completion on a given shot” and free filmmakers to spend more time on the creative flourishes.
Whether audiences will buy a ticket remains to be seen. But if Critterz pulls it off, it could be the most unlikely case study yet for AI’s place on the big screen.
Critterz isn’t the only signal of change. Last December, Peter Chernin and Andreessen Horowitz backed Promise Venture Studio, a new effort to weave AI into everything from scriptwriting to post-production. Another sign that Hollywood and AI are on a collision course.
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