Sanxingdui, China's First AI-Generated Feature Film, Flops With 1.7M Yuan Gross

TL;DR

Sanxingdui: Future Past, a 100-minute sci-fi thriller from Bona Film Group, is China's first fully AI-generated feature film and, by The Hollywood Reporter's accounting, the first longform AI film to get a true wide release with reported box office numbers in a major territory. It opened October 23 on more than 10,000 screens and closed around 1.7 million yuan, £191,000 by the Guardian's conversion, against a reported budget of more than 10 million yuan. Over the same months, more than 95 percent of China's microdramas, the short vertical episodes made for phones, were generated by AI, per Caixin via Fortune. China is minting AI video money right now, on phones, in vertical episodes, and almost none of it passes a cinema ticket counter.

The first clean commercial test

Fully AI-generated features have reached cinemas before, in limited runs: India's 95-minute musical Love You in May 2025, then Malaysia's Pirate Queen: Zheng Yi Sao in January. None went wide, so none produced a real number. Sanxingdui did: 10,000-plus opening-day screenings scheduled through the ticketing platform Maoyan, a theatrical release permit, and one of China's biggest studios behind it, which makes it the first clean read on what a mass audience pays for a feature-length AI film.

The read was brutal. Presales at opening on the Friday morning stood at 80,000 yuan, about $12,000, and Maoyan's own forecast put the total run below 150,000 yuan. AFP and Fortune tracked estimates of $180,000 to $198,000 through the first week, and the Guardian's November 3 tally put the final figure near 1.7 million yuan. Bona executive Jiang Defu had conceded the reception before opening weekend: "We are the first to try it, the first to get a theatrical release permit and the first to be tested by the audience. I think that is not easy at all."

The budget numbers conflict. Bona told AFP the film cost more than 10 million yuan, about $1.5 million, and Fortune and THR repeated that figure; the Guardian has the producer claiming "tens of millions." Under either version the gross recovers a fraction of the cost, and gross is the wrong line to read anyway: it is the register total before cinemas and distributors take their share. The box office is the restaurant's till, not the kitchen's paycheck.

100 people, two years, one AI pipeline

Nearly 100 people spent more than two years making it, Bona said. All the actors, their voices and the backdrops are AI-generated, per AFP, and the Guardian adds that every visual and some sound effects came out of models, with humans doing the final edit. Even the script ran through Bona's in-house AI writing tool, Bowen, which is audible in lines like "That is the superbrain superintelligence that costs $10m dollars a month to subscribe to."

The Guardian's reviewer watched it in a nearly empty Beijing cinema and rated it no worse than plenty of "human-centred mindless action flicks," then reconsidered: "OK, well maybe a bit worse." Characters run often and run badly, with the smooth treadmill gait of video-game extras, and the astronaut Wu Xingyan looks creepily like Tilly Norwood, the virtual actor already attached to a Hollywood feature. An AI film casting a render of an actor who is herself a render is the most honest credit line in the project.

Four people in the seats

AFP's reporter counted four audience members at a Beijing screening in week one. A viewer at a free preview said she would not have paid. A paying customer, Lilian Gong, allowed that AI "still falls short" of human production. Independent AI director Zhang Jun said it directly: "the audience won't automatically pay for the tickets just because it's an AI-generated film." On Weibo, one user wrote: "If it's free to watch on streaming platforms, it could become legendary. But paying to watch? People are not going to accept it at this stage."

Tickets ran 20 to 90 yuan across screenings, and the Guardian cites 50 yuan, £5.60, as the price moviegoers were being asked to beat free vertical video with. The microdrama sitting on the same audience's phone costs nothing and requires no trip across town.

The AI video money is vertical

While Sanxingdui emptied cinemas, the short end of the market compounded. Per Caixin via Fortune, over 95 percent of the more than 120,000 Chinese microdramas released in the first quarter of 2026 were AI-generated, up from nearly zero a year earlier, with production costs down to as little as $3,000 a title. AFP counted more than 200 billion views for AI short dramas on Douyin in September alone. The Guardian estimates the microdrama industry at $3 billion, and USC professor Stanley Rosen reads the split exactly that way: the public accepts AI in short-form and is "highly skeptical" of it in features.

The flop, then, is not a verdict on generative video. It is a verdict on charging cinema prices for this generation of it. A Beijing screenplay developer told the Guardian that most projects crossing her desk in recent months are AI films, because "Chinese investors believe this is the future," and because the pitch writes itself: "What used to take 100 people to do, now can be done by five people, and the rest won't have any jobs." State media called the film "riddled with flaws and imperfections" and floated that it may yet go down in cinematic history as the starting point of what came next.

Why a builder should care

Sanxingdui cleared every upstream gate a film has: production, permit, marketing, 10,000 screens. It still could not sell a £5.60 ticket against free content on the same audience's phones. Generation is cheap now, and exhibition, the part where a human shows up somewhere and pays, did not get cheaper. If you build in AI video, the channels that pay today are platform feeds, where a $3,000 microdrama can find 200 billion monthly views, not per-seat venues.

Conventional film, meanwhile, keeps absorbing AI. Ben Affleck told a Bloomberg event he used AI "for lots of things" in Netflix's Animals, released October 9. Hybrid use spreads, fully-generated features stall, and the pure-play test comes again December 4, when Gods Don't Give Gifts, an R-rated four-story sci-fi anthology by YouTuber Gossip Goblin distributed by Fable, opens in limited US release. Limited, again. Nobody outside China has dared the wide experiment yet.

Caveats

• The budget figures conflict: Bona told AFP more than 10 million yuan; the Guardian reports the producer claiming "tens of millions." The 1.7 million yuan gross loses to either.
• Gross is not recoupment. Cinemas and distributors are paid out of it before Bona sees a yuan.
• One film, one studio, first attempt at a first-generation pipeline. It measures theatrical appetite now, not the technology's ceiling.
• The $3 billion microdrama valuation is a Guardian estimate; the 95 percent AI share is Caixin data on Q1 2026 vertical dramas, not film or television.
• Box office figures are Maoyan tallies as reported by AFP, Fortune, THR and the Guardian, and can shift slightly as the run formally closes.

Key Takeaways

• Sanxingdui: Future Past, Bona Film Group's 100-minute AI-generated sci-fi thriller, is the first fully AI feature to get a wide release; it opened October 23 on 10,000-plus screens and closed near 1.7 million yuan (£191,000).
• Bona told AFP the budget was more than 10 million yuan; the Guardian reports the producer claiming "tens of millions." Opening-morning presales were 80,000 yuan and Maoyan forecast a sub-150,000-yuan run.
• Nearly 100 people worked more than two years on it. Actors, voices, backdrops and all visuals are AI-generated, the script ran through Bona's Bowen tool, humans did the edit.
• The audience verdict was blunt: four viewers at an AFP-attended screening, and a Weibo consensus that free streaming is fine but a paid ticket is not.
• China's AI microdramas show where AI video earns: over 95 percent of 120,000-plus Q1 2026 titles were AI-generated, costs fell to about $3,000 a title, and AI short dramas passed 200 billion Douyin views in September.
• Investors are undeterred: Beijing developers report AI films dominate incoming projects, and the next test, Gods Don't Give Gifts, opens in limited US release December 4.

Sources: AFP report and on-the-ground coverage, The Guardian analysis and review, The Hollywood Reporter box office report, Fortune, with Caixin microdrama data, Sanxingdui: Future Past trailer