AI Film is Pulled From Theaters Following Backlash
After winning the inaugural Frame Forward AI Animated Film Festival, Igor Alferov expected his short, Thanksgiving Day, to be the first AI-generated film to run nationwide as part of his prize — but that’s now how it turned out.
After it was leaked online that the AI flick was going to screen before feature presentations, people directed their anger toward AMC Theatres.
The Hollywood Reporter (THR) contacted AMC, which protested that it had not programmed the AI film and a third-party company called Screenvision Media, which organizes the ad-driven pre-show, had arranged it.
“This content is an initiative from Screenvision Media, which manages pre-show advertising for several movie theatre chains in the United States and runs in fewer than 30 percent of AMC’s U.S. locations,” AMC tells THR in a statement. “AMC was not involved in the creation of the content or the initiative and has informed Screenvision that AMC locations will not participate.”
It means AMC Theatres customers will not get to see Thanksgiving Day by Kazakhstani filmmaker Alferov, who used AI Google’s Gemini 3.1 and Nano Banana Pro to make the prize-winning film.
The short “follows a bear and his platypus assistant traveling through the galaxy in a spacecraft that looks like a dumpster. They have to deal with corrupt space-cops, hygiene officials, and a very unusual type of food delivery service as the story unfolds.”
Unavoidable AI
But while theater-goers will no longer see Thanksgiving Day, could they be unwittingly watching AI during the main presentation? Janice Min, a Hollywood insider, believes so.
“The thing with AI right now in Hollywood: Everyone’s lying just a little bit,” Min, CEO of Hollywood media group Ankler Media, tells Business Insider. “Studios are lying about how much they’re using it.”
Min, a former editor of THR, says that companies are hiding how much AI they’re using while also characterizing Tinseltown as a bit of a grim place right now.
“I guarantee that every single studio, every single streamer, they are all completely doing this [using AI],” says Min. “During last year’s Oscar race, there was a controversy about The Brutalist, and how Adrian Brody’s voice was made more Hungarian-accented through technology. This year, it is crickets.”
But Min says that silence is to do with Hollywood not having a great deal of confidence right now as work dries up — even comparing it to Detroit.
“You look at L.A. and you think it’s sunny and amazing and people are happy. People are having a hard time here. The unemployment rate of Los Angeles is much higher than the national average,” Min tells Business Insider.
“You’re seeing a city that is so big and sprawling, with a kind of rudderless feeling: Who’s going to stop this? There is definitely a Detroit vibe underway if things don’t course correct.”
“I have a friend who’s been sending me LinkedIn posts that are showing up in his feed, and it is so grim,” she continues. “It’s people largely who have worked in VFX, and they are posting this full-on bleed out, like ‘I will be homeless by next Thursday if I don’t have work.’ It doesn’t appear they’re being hyperbolic.”
Image credits: Frame Forward Film Festival
