In 2025 OpenAI took a provocative step from building language and image models to backing a full-length animated movie: Critterz, a feature-length animated film created largely with generative AI tools in partnership with established production houses. The announcement — and the way the project is being organized — is both an experiment in what modern generative models can do and a deliberate provocation to an industry still grappling with how to integrate AI into creative workflows.
Project overview and partners
The film Critterz is being developed with the explicit backing and technical support of OpenAI and in collaboration with production partners in London and Los Angeles, notably Vertigo Films and Native Foreign. The project is reportedly led inside OpenAI by creative specialist Chad Nelson, who previously produced short-form AI-driven work and now acts as a bridge between OpenAI’s engineers and the film’s production teams.
OpenAI’s stated aim is to show that generative AI can dramatically reduce time and cost for large-scale animation while still producing theatrically viable work — an attempt to demonstrate new economics for animation production. Reports place the budget under $30 million and the production timeline at roughly nine months, far leaner than the typical multi-year schedules and much larger budgets of traditional studio animation.
How the production blends AI and human craft
According to reporting, the production blends OpenAI’s generative tools (image and video models and large multimodal models) with human direction and traditional creative roles. OpenAI is supplying tools and computing resources — reportedly drawing on models in its ecosystem to generate concept art, character studies, storyboarding, background layouts, and even early animation passes — while experienced writers, directors, voice actors and a compact human crew provide final scripts, performances, direction, and hands-on finishing work. This hybrid model treats AI as a force-multiplier: automating many grunt or iterative tasks while reserving higher-order creative decisions for human collaborators.
Technical & production workflow (high level)
A plausible workflow described around the project shows several key stages where AI plays a primary role:
- Ideation & concept art: Large image models produce fast variations of character and environment designs from prompts, giving directors dozens or hundreds of visual directions to choose from.
- Storyboarding & animatics: AI can accelerate rough animatics by generating sequences of frames and suggested camera moves that human editors then refine.
- Animation & rendering passes: Generative video tools are being used to create detailed motion passes and background movement that would normally require large teams of animators. Human artists then polish these passes, correct errors, and apply artistic style choices.
- Voice & performance integration: Humans supply voice acting and performance direction; AI helps match lip-sync, create background voices, and speed up iterations on timing.
This modular workflow reduces the headcount for many repetitive stages: reporting notes a core production team of a few dozen people rather than the hundreds that often staff a major animated feature.
Legal, ethical and creative concerns
While the project is ambitious, it also foregrounds pressing concerns that have dogged generative models for years:
Training data and copyright. OpenAI’s video-generation tools (and other companies’ equivalents) have faced scrutiny about what data they were trained on and whether copyrighted films, TV shows, or artworks were used without explicit licenses. Independent reporting has raised questions about how well companies can document and justify the provenance of large-scale training corpora — a live legal and ethical issue for AI-driven creative works. That scrutiny has intensified as models demonstrate the ability to reproduce stylized logos, distinct characters, and audiovisual signatures.
Labor and displacement. Producing a feature with far fewer human artisans raises uncomfortable questions about the long-term impact on animators, character designers, storyboard artists, VFX staff, and other creative professionals. Even with human oversight, the risk that studios seeking cost savings will replace staff or casualize labor is a major point of contention in the industry. Critics argue that AI should be augmentative, not purely substitutive, and that contracts, guild protections, and compensation models must adapt.
Artistic authenticity and aesthetic judgment. Skeptics ask whether AI-driven imagery can carry the same depth of artistic intention as human-crafted animation. Proponents counter that AI is a tool like the multiplane camera or CGI: its value depends on how it’s used. Critterz will be watched closely as a proof point — whether it appears genuinely cinematic and emotionally resonant or feels like an accelerated, hollowed-out simulacrum will affect the broader conversation.
Economic and industry implications
If Critterz meets audience expectations and arrives on schedule, it could reshape certain animation economics: faster turnarounds, lower budgets, and smaller core teams could democratize the ability to make feature-level animation outside the large studio system. That could be liberating for indie producers but disruptive for labor markets and for studios that rely on long production pipelines and large payrolls. On the other hand, the novelty and PR value of an AI-first feature may not easily translate into sustained industry transformation unless business models (distribution, box office, streaming revenue shares, and residuals) are rethought to account for AI’s role.
Festival strategy, publicity and critical reception
Reports indicate the producers aim to premiere the film on the festival circuit — with Cannes frequently mentioned as a target for an early debut — before a wider theatrical release. Positioning the film as both a technical experiment and a cinematic work is a deliberate strategy to shape critical conversation: festival acclaim could legitimize the approach, while festival controversy could spark regulatory and guild responses.
Conclusion: an experiment that will reverberate
OpenAI’s involvement in producing Critterz is less a single gamble than a public thesis: that modern generative AI can materially change how cinema is made — faster, cheaper, and with different human-machine divisions of labor. Whether the result will be a new, more accessible creative paradigm or a cautionary tale about automation’s impact on culture and labor depends on three things: the final film’s artistic success, how transparently the production handles data provenance and rights, and how the industry (studios, unions, policymakers) responds to the economic pressures the project illustrates. Either way, Critterz is likely to be a landmark case study in AI + creativity: one the film world will watch closely.