An animated feature film created using OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tools is set to premiere this year, once again fuelling the debate in Hollywood about the impact of AI on filmmaking.

Critterz is based on the 2023 AI-animated short film of the same name and tells the story of forest creatures who embark on an adventure after their village is disrupted by a stranger — a fairly generic setup for a Pixar-esque tale of talking wildlife.

To be made “largely” with AI, this  USD 30 million project combines human artistry and AI, and will showcase faster, cost-effective filmmaking while maintaining creative quality and copyright eligibility, potentially transforming Hollywood animation workflows.

Critterz creator Chad Nelson has teamed up with OpenAI, alongside London and Los Angeles-based production companies, to fully animate it. The entire process is expected to be completed in nine months, instead of the typical three years or so it takes to develop, animate, and release a traditional animated film. 

This nine-month schedule aligns with the next Cannes Film Festival, scheduled to take place in May 2026. 

According to one of the London-based partners, Vertigo Films, the Critterz production team plans to use sketches created by human artists and then feed those into OpenAI’s tools, such as GPT-5 and image generation, to create the film. The company also notes that Critterz will feature human voice actors, with generative AI  as a  tool to quickly realize the team’s vision as opposed to being a completely AI-generated production. 

The mix of human actors, writers, and artists makes Critterz eligible for copyright protection.

OpenAI is betting that if Critterz is successful, it will prove AI’s ability to produce big-screen-quality content, accelerating Hollywood’s adoption of this transformative technology.

What’s your take on AI in filmmaking?