China's first AI theatrical film "Sanxingdui: Future Past" flops at the box office: only 1.26 million yuan in 5 days

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Zhou Chunmei

Recently, China's first AI (artificial intelligence) feature-length theatrical film to obtain a public screening license, "Sanxingdui: Future Past," officially landed on cinema screens. However, compared with the high expectations of the market in the early stage, the box office report card the film has delivered so far has poured a bucket of cold reality on things: five days after release, cumulative box office was only about 1.26 million yuan, with an attendance rate of less than 1%, and some platforms predict its total box office may be only two to three million yuan.

Beneath the halo of being the "first AI theatrical film," "Sanxingdui: Future Past" had built up plenty of hype before its release. After news of its release date came out at the end of September, the producer's stock price hit the daily limit up three times within six trading days. But the share price then quickly fell significantly. Compared with the "heat" of the capital market, the audience side has appeared calm and restrained, unwilling to blindly pay for an AI film. According to the film's producer, the production cost of "Sanxingdui: Future Past" is in the range of ten million yuan. This means that if there is no "plot twist" later, the film will be unable to recoup its costs.

The reasons behind a film's box office failure are often multifaceted. But judging from audience feedback, the core reason is that the film itself failed to move viewers. In Douban short reviews, many viewers gave the film three stars or below, with high-frequency terms concentrated on "chaotic narrative," "too many logical holes," and "strong AI feel." AI did demonstrate capability in grand scenes and artistic texture, and the visual presentation of the bronze sacred tree and ancient Shu sacrifices had some stunning moments, but whenever it came to passages requiring delicate emotion and coherent storytelling, its shortcomings were fully exposed. Technological breakthroughs cannot make up for debts in storytelling, and the audience's disappointment arises from this.

Behind the fate of "Sanxingdui: Future Past" is a common sense repeatedly obscured by waves of technological enthusiasm: in the cultural and creative field, content is king, and technology has always been only a means, not an end. Looking back at film history, cases of failure caused by stunning special effects and empty content are not rare. As early as 2001, "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" shocked the industry with full CG (computer graphics) production, with images so detailed that individual hairs could be counted, yet it flopped at the box office because of a dull script and characters lacking appeal. A similar case is "Masters of the Universe: He-Man Rises," released in June this year; this special-effects blockbuster cost more than $170 million and piled up visual spectacle to the extreme, but fell into a box office "Waterloo." These cases repeatedly show that audiences may enter the cinema once out of curiosity about new technology, but technology cannot sustain long-term word of mouth. Whether the audience buys it depends crucially on whether the story is told well.

Of course, a cold box office does not mean AI has no way forward, still less should it lead to pessimism about the technology's prospects. In fact, AI's empowerment of the content industry is obvious to all. Take "Sanxingdui: Future Past" as an example: at a cost in the range of ten million yuan, it completed science-fiction scenes that the traditional live-action system often needs hundreds of millions of yuan to present, and the production cycle was greatly compressed. For the film and television industry, long troubled by high investment, high risk, and long cycles, AI has made subjects that were previously "unimaginable" possible to realize, and has given small teams the courage to tackle "big scenes." Heavy special-effects subjects that in the past only top companies could afford to bet on are now something small and medium-sized teams are also qualified to enter. This is real inclusiveness.

However, cost reduction does not equal value addition. Pressing production costs from hundreds of millions down to tens of millions is a victory for efficiency. When technology is no longer the bottleneck, creators' aesthetic judgment, storytelling skill, and understanding of people become the more critical moat. AI can generate images, but it cannot generate emotional resonance rooted in real life experience; it can compress costs, but it cannot compress out a good script. Audiences go to the cinema never to look at the tool itself, but to be moved by a story. The structure of the script, the growth of the characters, and the rhythm of emotion, these links that determine the quality of a work, remain firmly in the hands of creators.

Technology will iterate, and images will improve, but what audiences expect while sitting in a dark auditorium has never changed: to be gripped by a story, to feel anxious for some characters, and to take something away when the screening ends. This rule was true in the age of film, true in the digital age, and in the AI age it is equally true. The exploratory value of "Sanxingdui: Future Past" should not be wholly negated because of its box office. It has run through the compliance closed loop of AI full-process production, verified the feasibility of the tool chain, and left a reference sample for those who come later. But its cold reception on the market also reminds the industry: audiences pay for stories, not for tools. The means are always being updated, but the ability to move people's hearts remains the scarcest and also the hardest-core competitiveness of this industry.

This column article represents only the author's personal views

(Source: Securities Times) Middle of the main text Embedded advertisement