Now AI 'cuts' it

Director, actor, editor, effects — with AI films, there's just one boss

- SUGANDHA MUKHERJEE

THE FIRST PUBLIC projection of moving pictures to a paying audience was by the Lumière brothers in 1895. The movies were in black and white, with no sound and just a minute long. By the 1920s, the US was producing an average of 800 feature films annually. Fast-forward to a century later, the largest film industries by number of feature films produced were those of India, the US, China, Nigeria, and Japan. Throughout this period, film production has relied on a familiar mix of actors, directors, cameras and crews. But a new wave of artificial intelligence tools is beginning to rewrite the grammar of cinema.

India, one of the world's most prolific film markets, has become an early adopter of AI-driven storytelling. Several creative management and entertainment companies have been developing AI-generated 'microdramas' based on mythology, such as the Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita. The vision: multi-hundred-episode formats produced at scale, designed for mobile viewing. StudioBlo, an independent outfit, has experimented with mythological adaptations, including a retelling of the story of Narasimha, the half-man, half-lion deity.