OpenAI is hoping an animated short film called “Critterz” that it got off the ground will have its feature-length debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2026. OpenAI is providing the AI technology to produce the film, which is being funded at $30 million by Paris-based Federation Studios, whose UK subsidiary Vertigo Films will produce in conjunction with Culver City’s Native Foreign, a firm known for blending AI with conventional techniques. OpenAI is providing use of its generative models, including the Sora video generator and DALL-E imager, to create what it hopes will be a test case. The idea is to complete in nine months what would normally take years at a fraction of the cost.

TechRadar compares the “Critterz” budget to that of Pixar’s latest theatrical project, “Elio,” which reportedly cost $200 million, concluding “it’s barely a scratch.”

“The film won’t be fully AI-generated, however,” TechRadar says, noting “’Critterz’ will have human voice actors, original artwork from artists that will then be fed into GPT-5 and other AI image generation tools, and an original script.”

“OpenAI can say what its tools do all day long, but it’s much more impactful if someone does it,” said OpenAI creative specialist Chad Nelson in The Wall Street Journal. Nelson began laying the groundwork for “Critterz” three years ago as a short film produced with Native Foreign co-founder Nik Kleverov.

“OpenAI is betting that if ‘Critterz’ is successful, it will show that AI can deliver content strong enough for the big screen and accelerate Hollywood’s adoption of the technology,” WSJ writes, adding that AI may ultimately “lower the cost of entry, allowing more people to make creative content.”

The companies involved in producing this inaugural project “are developing a compensation model to allow the roughly 30 people working on ‘Critterz’ to share in any profits,” according to WSJ.

Entertainment companies including Netflix and Disney have been experimenting with generative AI tools for various production uses ranging from visual effects to dubbing and marketing.

While several other films generated by AI have made it to movie screens, “Critterz” will be the first coming from formidable players with a significant budget.

Although films generated by AI are not eligible for copyright registration, “the film’s use of humans to voice the characters and create the art that will be fed into AI tools will likely make it eligible copyright protection,” WSJ says.