/AI8h ago

Higgsfield's AI-generated feature film Hell Grind cost $500,000 to produce, using $400,000 in compute over 14 days

A 15-person team generated the film using Seedance 2.0

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#323Robert Scoble
Deedy
Original post
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer#323inAI

Went to a new kind of movie today. One that cost $400,000 in AI compute to make. It was the San Francisco premiere.

If you hadn’t told me it was largely done with AI I wouldn’t have known.

The takeaway after listening to @higgsfield_ai’s CTO introduce it is that a competent movie can now be made for half a million dollars. Where they used to cost $100 million or more.

Here is the first few minutes of “Hell Grind” and that intro from @codentropy.

We are far from seeing the ultimate use of AI in movies.

As a touch point of where AI for creative people is this seems like an important time marker and one I will look back on frequently for years.

6:50 PM · Jun 7, 2026 · 23.9K Views
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Some users praised the AI film Hell Grind for its innovative workflows and potential to empower new directors like early YouTube, while many others criticized its generic Marvel-style visuals and weak storytelling as cheapening the medium.

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VIEWS11.1KBOOKMARKS45LIKES61RETWEETS9REPLIES11
Deedy@deedydas

This is the best scene in Hell Grind, an entirely AI-made movie, the flashback.

Watch it and read this analysis on where we are with AI movies today: time, cost, quality.

Overall: Phenomenal technical demo by Higgsfield. Mediocre movie. Good graphics, hints of emotion, but superhero movie level quality in certain scenes at best. Too many cuts. That said, 660x fewer man hours, 50x faster and 36x cheaper than the median US film.

Time: The 95 min film took 15 people 14 days. The median US theatrical production takes ~200 people ~2yrs. That’s a 660x improvement in man-hours and 50x in calendar time.

Economics: It took $500k, 80% of which was compute. The final footage was cut from ~100hrs of footage generated from text to video / image to video models like Bytedance’s Seedance: a 64:1 “curation” ratio. The median US movie takes ~$18M, with even indie films costing $1-5M. Thats 36x cheaper than median.

Quality: Average watch *at best*. Way too many cuts between shots, several characters change accents and have “AI” synthetic voices and characters feel like it’s AI too. Movement, editing and blocking feel artificial too. On the plus side, we’ve more or less solved character consistency, camera angles and realism. The reason the movie wasn’t amazing was more about poor directorial choices than innately unusable video models. Hard to put a number on it but maybe we’re at ~90% on quality that is technically achievable. If Scorsese made an AI movie, I reckon it would be quite good.

I know the visceral reaction to anything AI is real and well-studied. But I think it’s folly to fight the inevitability of AI film. It’s too cheap and quick to ignore and almost there on quality. Creators with distribution *will* make AI films and shows and just put them on YouTube. This is the worst quality, slowest and most expensive it will ever be. In the end, good content beats “real” content.

4hViews 11.1KLikes 61Bookmarks 45
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

Deedy’s opinion is worth considering:

Deedy@deedydas

This is the best scene in Hell Grind, an entirely AI-made movie, the flashback.

Watch it and read this analysis on where we are with AI movies today: time, cost, quality.

Overall: Phenomenal technical demo by Higgsfield. Mediocre movie. Good graphics, hints of emotion, but superhero movie level quality in certain scenes at best. Too many cuts. That said, 660x fewer man hours, 50x faster and 36x cheaper than the median US film.

Time: The 95 min film took 15 people 14 days. The median US theatrical production takes ~200 people ~2yrs. That’s a 660x improvement in man-hours and 50x in calendar time.

Economics: It took $500k, 80% of which was compute. The final footage was cut from ~100hrs of footage generated from text to video / image to video models like Bytedance’s Seedance: a 64:1 “curation” ratio. The median US movie takes ~$18M, with even indie films costing $1-5M. Thats 36x cheaper than median.

Quality: Average watch *at best*. Way too many cuts between shots, several characters change accents and have “AI” synthetic voices and characters feel like it’s AI too. Movement, editing and blocking feel artificial too. On the plus side, we’ve more or less solved character consistency, camera angles and realism. The reason the movie wasn’t amazing was more about poor directorial choices than innately unusable video models. Hard to put a number on it but maybe we’re at ~90% on quality that is technically achievable. If Scorsese made an AI movie, I reckon it would be quite good.

I know the visceral reaction to anything AI is real and well-studied. But I think it’s folly to fight the inevitability of AI film. It’s too cheap and quick to ignore and almost there on quality. Creators with distribution *will* make AI films and shows and just put them on YouTube. This is the worst quality, slowest and most expensive it will ever be. In the end, good content beats “real” content.

4hViews 3.6KLikes 8Bookmarks 3
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

Here's more details on the film.

7hViews 5KLikes 7Bookmarks 2
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@deedydas Were you there too? Damn. I have the first few minutes here:

Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

Went to a new kind of movie today. One that cost $400,000 in AI compute to make. It was the San Francisco premiere.

If you hadn’t told me it was largely done with AI I wouldn’t have known.

The takeaway after listening to @higgsfield_ai’s CTO introduce it is that a competent movie can now be made for half a million dollars. Where they used to cost $100 million or more.

Here is the first few minutes of “Hell Grind” and that intro from @codentropy.

We are far from seeing the ultimate use of AI in movies.

As a touch point of where AI for creative people is this seems like an important time marker and one I will look back on frequently for years.

4hViews 882Likes 4Bookmarks 1
Jeremy Stewart@artstewy

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai Was there tonight too. I couldn’t stop thinking about the production workflows they’ve figured out. Creating and curating so many clips in such a short time. Pretty pivotal moment for film. It only gets better from here.

5hViews 52Likes 4
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@ajboyer @higgsfield_ai I was at a conference with a lot of Hollywood types last week, and a lot of them said Higgsfield is their favorite tool. While they have paid for a lot of influencers to talk about them, they actually have the tool to back it up.

5hViews 110Likes 2
Michael R Dawley Jr@mrdj1968

@Scobleizer @CraigSwann @higgsfield_ai And this too ... https://variety.com/2026/film/news/martin-scorsese-supports-ai-company-storyboard-movies-1236765037/

7hViews 9Bookmarks 1
Sam Wasserman🦞@SamJWasserman

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai how was it? super interested to follow this since this is convergence of both my worlds on both the AI and Filmmaking front. How'd the audience react?

7hViews 117Likes 1
Sean Ward@seanward

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai I was into it when I saw it at AI on the Lot!! I was so mad at the non-ending.

6hViews 98Likes 1
Riza Ingalls@the_rza_

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai So was this a premiere of various short scenes rather than a feature length film?

4hViews 119
Adam J. Boyer@ajboyer

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai I hear mixed things about Higgsfield, aren't they kind of scammy?

5hViews 116
Craig Swann@CraigSwann

interesting language on "competent" being $100 million in light of what we have seen with releases this last month. The rhetoric comparing blockbuster marvel movies and AI films, IMHO, is apples and oranges. We are dealing with an entirely new medium that we still haven't scratched the surface of in terms of the possibilities. Wherever it ends up excited to be on the journey though!

7hViews 27Likes 1
Deke Savage@big_simp

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai Distribution still an issue

5hViews 26Likes 1
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@seanward @higgsfield_ai Yeah. Sets up a sequel. :-)

6hViews 82
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@big_simp @higgsfield_ai Yes and that will be bigger and bigger of an issue

5hViews 18Likes 1
blob@blob1972453

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai why does everything look like marvel slop? this is soooooooooooooooo generic

5hViews 17Likes 1
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

Totally. This will let a lot of new directors and visionaries build stories that they've always wanted to build, but couldn't get the funding for or get through the studio system.

So this will, I think, bring a lot more creativity to cinema and maybe rejuvenate it. We'll see. I'm interested in seeing more.

7hViews 11Likes 1
Darren Dawson@Darren_Dawson

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai How was the audio?

The best use I’ve seen was the pale lodge infomercials.

4hViews 19
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

@blob1972453 @higgsfield_ai A Marvel movie costs $200 million to make.

This cost $500k

Do you expect a Prius to look like a Ferrari?

5hViews 17
Jay Katana@Jay_Katana

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai Saw this in LA.

Another key inflection point (at least, for me) was that the end credits only had about 50 people in them.

Versus the HUNDREDS that usually work in a traditional film shoot.

Important time marker indeed.

7hViews 72Likes 2
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