China’s First Fully AI Movie Failed to Attract Ticket Buyers

China’s first fully AI-generated feature film reached theaters Friday, but early ticket sales suggested moviegoers weren’t buying the promise that new technology alone makes a movie worth watching. More than 10,000 screenings of Sanxingdui: Future Past were scheduled for opening day, according to ticketing platform Maoyan. Yet advance sales stood at just 80,000 yuan ($11,980) on Friday morning. Maoyan says that its reported production cost of more than 10 million yuan, or about $1.5 million. The actual box office was around $150,000 (or less than 1,000,000 yuan). The release put China’s AI ambitions before an audience that got to vote with its wallet. Approval from government censors can get a film into theaters. It clearly can’t make customers buy tickets. 国际版预告亮相戛纳，超写实智能原生，《三星堆：未来往事》2026影院见！ Bona Film Group spent more than two years making the movie with a team of about 100 people. Its characters are digital creations rather than copies of living actors. The production used ByteDance’s Jimeng AI, generating more than 1.2 million preliminary images during development. China’s National Film Administration approved the release in April. With no separate category for an AI-generated ...