Bona Film Group has announced that Sanxingdui: Tales of the Future, a 100-minute feature fully generated by artificial intelligence with no live actors on screen, will open nationwide on 23 October, becoming the first AI-made feature to receive a public-release licence from China’s film regulator.
Bona quietly stood up a new unit, the AIGMS or AI-Generated Movie Studio, and listed AI film and television as one of its four core business pillars. Its rule is human-led, AI-executed: every frame is generated by AI, but the creative brief, narrative rhythm, historical accuracy and human judgement sit with the AIGMS team, and one-click generation is explicitly rejected.
The production cost was about RMB 20 million, against RMB 300 million and up for a comparable traditional sci-fi film. CICC estimates production accounts for 70 to 80 per cent of a film’s total cost, precisely the slice AI compresses. The film was filed as animation and cleared the national animation review standard, receiving its dragon label, the release licence, on 28 April 2026.
Policy is accelerating. At a 15th Five-Year Plan press conference on 17 September, a vice minister of the National Radio and Television Administration said AI is already used across planning, production, review and broadcast of television, micro-dramas and animation. Hunan TV’s AIGC long drama Later Journey to the West piloted a make-review-release-as-you-go model.
Capital moved first. On 28 September, the day after the release date was set, Bona shares hit the limit-up at RMB 6.36, a market value of RMB 8.74 billion. But the first-half results show the old business bleeding: revenue fell 31.9 per cent to RMB 458 million and net loss was RMB 169 million, while AI film revenue was just 0.42 per cent of the total.
The cultural resonance is self-reflexive. The film is about an AI crisis, made by AI, so the same intelligence plays the hazard on screen and the production tool off it. Bona says AI is both the making instrument and the story’s subject, a tension science fiction alone used to manage.
The market test lands on 23 October. AI short-drama users passed 600 million in the first half with a market above RMB 22 billion and AI share over 70 per cent, but most projects lose money. The licence is real, the workflow is real, and the audience verdict is the only number left.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Sohu report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://it.sohu.com/a/1084292140_351788.