After text, after images, after video, OpenAI is now aiming for cinema. The company just unveiled Critterz, an animated feature film largely produced with AI tools, and set to premiere at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.
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The project traces back to 2021, when OpenAI creative Chad Nelson used DALL-E to sketch whimsical characters and surreal backdrops. That short experimental film caught enough internal buzz for the company to green-light a feature-length expansion.
The story? A magical forest where a community of creatures faces disruption when a mysterious stranger arrives. A playful fable that blends comedy, adventure, and dreamlike visuals.
Traditional animated films take three years or more. Critterz aims to be delivered in just nine months. How? By leaning on OpenAI’s ecosystem of generative tools, GPT-5, DALL-E, and Sora, to generate environments, assets, and even sequences directly from artists’ sketches.
The workflow is hybrid: illustrators still design the foundations, voice actors bring characters to life, and human writers shape the script. But AI accelerates the production pipeline, keeping the budget below $30M, a fraction of Pixar or DreamWorks costs.
Critterz is more than a film, it’s a strategic showcase. OpenAI wants to prove that generative AI isn’t just for technical demos or viral clips, but can scale to professional, commercially viable entertainment projects. That also means navigating legal and cultural sensitivities. To secure copyright protections, the production is careful to include human-created elements, original artwork, voice performances, and a screenplay penned by James Lamont and Jon Foster (Paddington in Peru).
The film is being directed by Chad Nelson in partnership with Vertigo Films (London), Native Foreign (Los Angeles), and Federation Studios (Paris).
The Cannes premiere will be more than just a red-carpet moment. It will be a test: can audiences and professionals embrace a film born from this unprecedented collaboration between human creativity and AI acceleration?
Whether hailed as groundbreaking or criticized as disruptive, Critterz will almost certainly spark a conversation that extends far beyond the Croisette, about ownership, artistry, and the future of cinema in an AI age.
