AI Film Debuts at Cannes: "Hell Grind" Cost $500k

The world's first AI feature film, "Hell Grind," just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. This 95-minute movie was created in two weeks with a budget of $500,000. Most of that, $400,000, went to compute costs. In contrast, a new Star Wars film reportedly cost $166.5 million to produce. "Hell Grind" is a violent action-fantasy film described as a combination of "Mortal Kombat," "Resident Evil," and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was made by a San Francisco startup called Higgsfield AI. The creators couldn't just use simple prompts; they had to input detailed style specifications, averaging 3,000 words for every 15 seconds of footage. The founder of Higgsfield stated that this film shows AI can maintain character consistency, world coherence, and a narrative arc across a complete feature. This debut at Cannes highlights the company's technology and could signal a shift in how movies are made in the future.