/AI8h ago

AI-generated feature film Hell Grind cost $500,000 to produce, including $400,000 in compute

A 15-person team completed the film in 14 days.

632863118248.9K
#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 · 27.6K Views
Sentiment

Positive users praise the AI film Hell Grind for its quality jumps, lower costs, and potential to empower new creators like early Pixar or YouTube, while negative users dismiss it as generic marvel slop or fanboyish.

Pos
87.5%
Neg
12.5%
24 comments with sentiment.
Cluster Engagement
Posts from X
Most Activity
Most Activity
VIEWS12.4KBOOKMARKS47LIKES66RETWEETS11REPLIES13
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.

5hViews 12.4KLikes 66Bookmarks 47
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.

5hViews 4KLikes 8Bookmarks 5
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

Here's more details on the film.

8hViews 5.2KLikes 8Bookmarks 3
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.

5hViews 949Likes 4Bookmarks 2
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.

6hViews 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/

8hViews 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?

8hViews 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.

7hViews 98Likes 1
Riza Ingalls@the_rza_

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

5hViews 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!

8hViews 27Likes 1
Deke Savage@big_simp

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai Distribution still an issue

6hViews 26Likes 1
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

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

7hViews 82
Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

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

6hViews 18Likes 1
blob@blob1972453

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

6hViews 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.

8hViews 11Likes 1
Darren Dawson@Darren_Dawson

@Scobleizer @higgsfield_ai How was the audio?

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

5hViews 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?

6hViews 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.

8hViews 72Likes 2
Load more posts