As technology continues to evolve within an industry that’s consistently pushing for innovation, Hell Grind, a first-of-its-kind film project produced entirely with Higgsfield AI, debuted its trailer at a private event at the Cannes Film Festival, where it’s screening to the market on May 21.
Hell Grind, the action-fantasy was directed by Aitore Zholdaskali and co-written with Adilkhan Yerzhanov, a two-time Cannes Official Programme filmmaker whose credits include The Gentle Indifference of the World (Un Certain Regard, 2018). The filmmakers created Hell Grind from end to end on Higgsfield – a first in feature film history.
What is Hell Grind about?
Hell Grind follows four inseparable street thieves – Roco, Lulu, Jax, and Rein – whose heist goes catastrophically wrong when Roco accidentally activates an ancient artifact that sends Lulu through a portal to the underworld. What follows is a globe-spanning race through a Tibetan temple and feudal Japan to recover what was lost, with Roco growing increasingly unrecognizable. The film pitches itself as genre filmmaking with genuine emotional stakes: “Fantasy as tragedy. Action as grief.”
How was Hell Grind created?
As you’ve likely seen online, AI video tools today generate 15-30-second clips, with most output optimized for short-form social and commercial content. However, Hell Grind, at 80+ minutes, demonstrates that AI can now sustain character consistency, world coherence, and narrative arc across a complete feature.
Want to know more? Hell Grind was made by a team of 15 professional directors, DPs, and editors with backgrounds across traditional film and Higgsfield’s original productions, Arena Zero and Zephyr. The first 25-minute episode required 16,181 video generations to produce 253 final shots, a 64:1 curation ratio that reflects the precision and labor behind every finished minute. Total production cost for the 80-minute feature is under $500K, including $400K in compute costs and a 14-day generation window.
Mashrabov on cutting the cost of traditional production
“Hell Grind is a signal to the entire industry, and a showcase of what the technology is capable of at scale,” said Alex Mashrabov, CEO and Founder of Higgsfield. “Traditional production for a comparable film would cost about $50 million. Hell Grind cost us less than $500 thousand. By presenting this film, we are showing studios and creators that the infrastructure now exists to execute their most complex visions to life at a fraction the cost of traditional production.”
The new Hell Grind trailer presents a fascinating look at the fast-moving world of effects, world-building, and story-driven epics made entirely by AI. A project of this scale and magnitude has loomed over Hollywood for years, and with Hell Grind, what was once a far-flung fiction is now a reality.
What do you think about the new trailer for Hell Grind? Let us know in the comments!
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