Are we entering a new era of “mockbuster” entertainment? I ask because it’s challenging to take AI-generated features seriously, especially in the face of today’s teaser trailer for Fountain O’s Odysseus: The Fall, a feature looking to capitalize on the hype for Christopher Nolan’s rapidly approaching epic, The Odyssey.
If you’re unfamiliar with Fountain O, allow me to elaborate. It’s a new artificial intelligence-driven company designed to produce full-length AI-generated films and TV series. The studio’s latest project, Odysseus: The Fall, finds Ash Koosha, the creator of Dreams of Violets, an AI-generated feature about the Iranian resistance, returning for Odysseus, which reportedly cost a “mid-five figures” to make. Koosha unveiled the film’s teaser today, while cinephiles are champing at the bit to experience Nolan’s Odyssey this weekend. While Fountain O’s Odysseus supposedly cost tens of thousands, Nolan’s latest star-studded opus cost around $250 million to produce.
“We very much hope that Christopher Nolan’s film, The Odyssey, is a raging success at the box office, and in some way that our version of the journey of Odysseus might further that success by bringing to theaters those who might not otherwise come out to see the film, simply because they are curious to see the ultimate in human creation and compare it to one man’s collaboration with AI,” Koosha commented about releasing alonside Nolan’s film.
Fountain O’s Odysseus: The Fall clocks in at 135 minutes and presents an alternate take on the fabled hero’s journey. When audiences take their seats for Odysseus, they’ll witness “the fractured memory of a drowning man in his final minutes — a voyage that is really a trial, where every monster wears his own handwriting. Stripped of the word ‘clever,’ what remains is a man reckoning with what he actually did to get home. It ends where the songs never go: not with a hero’s welcome, but with forgiveness offered by the one person who knows exactly what he is.”
In case you’re wondering, yes, the actors, sets, and cameras in Odysseus: The Fall were entirely replaced with AI models. However, the script, images, and character voices were all provided by Koosha. Does this element of the film make you feel any better about watching it? According to Koosha, AI is not a threat to filmmakers but a tool for telling stories people will enjoy. “A tool has never made a film worth watching. A person with something urgent to say has made every one of them, and that won’t change, whatever they’re holding when they say it,” Koosha says in defense of using AI to create a film from the ground up.
While Dreams of Violets and Odysseus: The Fall have yet to strike a deal for streaming or theatrical distribution, both films are available to rent on the Fountain O website for $9.99.
Are audiences ready to embrace AI-generated films? Does it matter if flesh-and-blood humans create the movies you watch? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.