Director Blows $1.5 Million Generating Horrendous AI Slop Movie, Says AI Actually Saved Him Tens of Millions

The holiday season saw the unexpected arrival of an AI-generated Christmas movie titled "Merry the Christmas Witch." Based on a children's book, the film features eerie and uncanny AI imagery that promises to awe young viewers (footage can be viewed [here]). The film, currently without a distributor, cost $1.5 million to produce.

However, its director, Tom Walsh, claims that using AI helped him save tens of millions of dollars. In an interview with Variety, Walsh explained that the original idea for the film would have required an $80 million budget, making it difficult for studios to take a chance on an "unknown property" like this one. This led him to explore the potential of AI in filmmaking.

Despite this, Walsh emphasized that the quality of an AI production relies heavily on the expertise of the human staff involved. "Merry the Christmas Witch" underwent a "hybrid AI production" process, with 50 people working on it over a span of 10 months. Walsh hired human actors to record the script and guide the movements and sounds of the characters.

However, he opted to replace their performances with AI-generated voices using ElevenLab's AI voice synthesizer, along with video generators like Seedance and Nanobanana for the visuals. While the director insists that human input was crucial, the film ultimately resulted in a mediocre production, as the $1.5 million invested was primarily used to create what could be considered "horrendous AI slop."