China's first AI hyper-realistic theatrical film "Sanxingdui: Future Past" premiered, with a first-day box office of 301,500 yuan

Homepage! China's first domestic AI hyper-realistic film hits theaters. Smart Things download the app for exclusive early access. October 24, 2026, 08:25:05, from Beijing

Smart Things reported on October 24 that yesterday, China's first domestic AI hyper-realistic film, "Sanxingdui: Future Past," officially landed in theaters. According to data from the Maoyan Professional Edition app, on its opening day, the film's first-day box office was 301,500 yuan, with a cumulative total box office of 401,000 yuan. According to data from the Lighthouse Professional Edition app, its predicted total box office is 2.078 million yuan.

By comparison, the purely hand-crafted dark-horse animated film "Niu Lai," released on August 5, 2026, had a first-day box office of 34.2 million yuan and a final cumulative total box office of 64.265 million yuan, a rather stark difference in market performance. However, the two films were released in different environments; "Niu Lai" was released during the summer season, when the overall market base was stronger.

"Sanxingdui: Future Past" is China's first AI hyper-realistic theatrical film to obtain a public screening permit from the China Film Administration. The entire film runs 100 minutes, and all characters are original digital figures, with no digital replicas of real actors.

The film has Shengshu Technology's Vidu providing chief technical support, while creative judgments were completed by the AIGMS team of Bona Film Group in accordance with film industry processes.

The film's story is set around the carved symbols on Sanxingdui bronze artifacts: a super AI sweeps across the world, triggering a global catastrophe. An archaeologist discovers that the patterns on the Sanxingdui bronzes are actually a binary code, and this is precisely the "key" to solving the future crisis.

In fact, "Sanxingdui: Future Past" is not the first AI film to reach theaters. The AIGC animated film "Reunion Order" was released on February 28, 2026. The film stars the giant pandas "Tuan Tuan" and "Yuan Yuan," gifted to Taiwan, and tells a story of family reunion spanning the Taiwan Strait. According to data from the Maoyan Professional Edition app, the film ultimately closed with a first-day box office of 62,000 yuan and a cumulative box office of 15.006 million yuan.

1. Visual details are clear, but character dialogue still feels stiffly read

Due to copyright issues with the film, no original clips from the movie have surfaced online yet. From the two trailers previously released, we can also get a sense of the film's production quality.

Visually, the film achieves a high degree of restoration of Sanxingdui's iconic artifacts, such as the bronze sacred tree, the bronze standing figure, and the bronze mask with protruding eyes. At the same time, relying on archaeological research materials, it restores the original metallic color of the bronze artifacts.

In the handling of details in large scenes, the armies, camels, and flagpoles in the backgrounds of ancient scenes are distinct and do not blur into a single mass; modern scenes use blue as the main color tone, conveying a cyberpunk sense of technology, and the covered bridges, screens, and figures in the background are clear in detail.

The character designs in the film remain consistent throughout, and the voices and movements are relatively natural. However, the characters still have a somewhat stiff, read-aloud feel when delivering lines, and the emotion is not quite full.

On the Maoyan app, viewers who have already seen the film have basically left positive reviews. Overall, audiences feel the film exceeded expectations, with strong image quality, narrative logic, and a strong sense of realism, as if it were shot with real actors, though the dubbing still has an AI feel.

2. Over 1.2 million base images produced in two years, costs cut by 90%

According to Shengshu Technology, the film was produced through collaboration between Bona AIGMS's self-developed Boka Film Cloud Studio and the Vidu video model, integrating the entire process from storyboard design and image rendering to video generation, and establishing the underlying architecture for industrialized AI film production.

This industrialized achievement was not accomplished overnight. The team went through two years of technological exploration, cumulatively producing more than 1.2 million base images and completing hundreds of version iterations for the entire film.

Producer Qu Ji Xiaojiang said in an interview with Tianjin Daily that because the model was still being upgraded after the film's production was completed, the team had to repeatedly redo some content to avoid the visuals appearing "outdated," and even after obtaining the dragon label, they used newer models to further improve image quality.

Unlike the public's stereotype of AI creation as a "small workshop" operation, according to a Global Times report, the film's team modeled itself on traditional live-action crews and set up 17 professional roles, including screenwriter, director, art, cinematography, sound effects, and editing, continuously reviewing, selecting, and polishing footage in a virtual production environment.

The project's core team numbers nearly 100 people, with a wide range of backgrounds. Members come from gaming, television stations, engineering technology, and other industries, and many had no film production experience and needed training to adapt to film industry standards.

By comparison, a traditional live-action science fiction film of the same scale usually costs at least 100 million yuan, meaning this film's production cost was reduced by nearly 90%.

On August 31, 2026, China's first domestic AI long-form drama to air on satellite TV, "Later Journey to the West," launched on Mango TV and aired in Hunan TV's evening prime time slot. In less than an hour after launch, its view count on Mango TV surged to 2.064 million. (Just now, China's first domestic AI long-form drama to air on satellite TV debuted! "Monkey Comes" ignites AI short drama concept stocks)

At its 2026 autumn enjoyment event, iQIYI announced an "All in AI" strategy to empower feature-length film and television production, launching the "Prairie Fire Plan," with plans to release more than 40 AIGC films throughout 2026, and AIGC films will account for 50% of projects subsequently greenlit for production.

Looking overseas, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos revealed at an investor communication meeting in July this year that nearly 300 works on its platform have already integrated generative AI into the entire production chain, from creative planning to post-production.

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