This Cannes Film Cost $500,000 to Make. $400,000 Was AI Compute Costs.
‘Hell Grind,’ a 95-minute fully AI-generated film, premieres this week at Cannes, where questions around the technology’s encroachment remain center-stage
- Higgsfield AI is debuting “Hell Grind,” a 95-minute, fully AI-generated movie, at the Cannes Film Festival to showcase its technology.
- The startup made the film in two weeks for $500,000, with 80% of the cost attributed to compute expenses.
- The film’s debut reflects a shift at Cannes from fear to cautious acceptance of AI, despite the need for human filmmaking skills.
Four street thieves are on the road to hell, literally, in an action-adventure movie debuting at the Cannes Film Festival Thursday. But what’s compelling about “Hell Grind” isn’t the campy plot: It’s that every character, setting and prop in the 95-minute movie was generated by AI.
Startup Higgsfield AI took just two weeks to make the film, and spent $500,000—80% of which went to compute costs.
For the three-year-old San Francisco-based startup, the finished film is essentially a showcase, designed to sell Hollywood studios on the quality of its AI products.
And it debuts as the debate around AI and filmmaking is changing—at least at Cannes.
For years now, AI has dominated the conversation at cinema’s yearly conclave on the French Riviera, with industry players and technologists questioning how much of the moviemaking process—from writing to acting, directing, editing and visual effects—can or should be outsourced to the tech and what it means for jobs and human creativity.
But overall, attendees say the vibe is shifting this year from one of existential fear to cautious acceptance.
During a press conference at the festival last week, actress Demi Moore said actors should find ways to work with the technology. “AI is here. And so to fight it is to fight something that is a battle that we will lose,” she said.
For many in the industry, the question comes down to how it’s used.
“The main aim as a filmmaker is I just wanted to tell stories. This is the case where AI can give you the tool to show the world your story,” said Adilet Abish, an in-house director and creative producer at Higgsfield, who worked on “Hell Grind.”
What might surprise viewers is how much technical film know-how was needed to create the movie, said Adil Alimzhanov, a content lead at Higgsfield who also worked on it.
“You have to understand camera composition, which shots are changed. Like you can’t have two close-ups back to back, you have to start with an establishing shot,” he said. “You still need those filmmaking skills.”
Higgsfield, which was valued at $1.3 billion in its latest funding round earlier this year, crossed $400 million in annual revenue run rate in May. It doesn’t make the actual video-generation models, relying instead on existing tools like Google’s Veo 3. But it does provide the tooling on top to make sure that the visuals are consistent across all the incoming generations.
Lights! … Camera! … Prompt!