China's first fully AI-generated feature film, Sanxingdui: Future Past, opened in cinemas on Friday, October 23, with more than 10,000 screenings scheduled according to ticketing platform Maoyan. The reception has been lukewarm. Presale revenue reached only 65,000 yuan, about $9,700, and total box-office takings are forecast below 100,000 yuan, a fraction of the production cost.
The 100-minute historical fantasy takes its inspiration from the Sanxingdui archaeological dig in Sichuan province, which began in 1986 and unearthed hundreds of artifacts more than 3,000 years old, including bronze masks and sculptures with distorted features, enormous ears and unusually shaped eyes. The story, however, moves the legend into the future: in a world dominated by algorithms and computers, future scientists travel through time and turn to the lost civilization. The film has no human actors and no characters modeled on real people; everything on screen was generated by computers.
Production reportedly lasted two years, with a team of about a hundred creators using ByteDance's Jimeng AI to produce more than 1.2 million images. The runtime, the 10 million yuan budget (about $1.5 million) and these production details come from a single source and should be attributed to it. Producer Qu Jixiaojiang said the team substantially reworked the entire movie at least five times as the technology advanced during production.
In April, the National Film Administration granted the film official censorship approval, the first time China's censors have authorized a completely AI-generated film, which required creating a new category in regulatory paperwork. The release has revived a familiar debate about whether such tools could flood theaters with lower-quality work or undercut conventional filmmaking. Bona Film Group CEO Jiang Defu rejects the idea that using AI means cutting corners: he says the project employed a team as large and structured as any traditional studio and that every frame was reviewed for visual consistency. He acknowledged the cool reception, calling the film "the first to try it" and "the first to be tested by the audience."
Early critiques are mixed. Some viewers cite stiffness and weaker visual quality than human-made cinema, while others question whether paying theater prices makes sense for content resembling free material on streaming platforms and short-video services such as Douyin.
Despite the quiet opening, the production team hopes for an international release, potentially reaching Western markets.
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