OpenAI backs AI-assisted Critterz feature on nine-month timeline

OpenAI is backing the production of an AI-assisted animated feature called Critterz, a project set to be completed on an unusually fast schedule and aiming to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2026. Production companies in London and Los Angeles have expanded the project from an originally planned short into a full-length film about forest creatures whose lives are upended by a mysterious stranger, and say the film will be made in roughly nine months on a budget under $30 million.

OpenAI is providing tools and computing resources to help generate imagery and sequences, according to people involved in the project. The team plans to feed hand-drawn sketches created by artists into generative models and to use those outputs as the basis for scenes. The film will use human voice actors and writers from recent family-oriented productions wrote the screenplay, the producers said. Chad Nelson, an OpenAI creative specialist who created an earlier short version of Critterz using image-generation tools, said the film is intended as a practical demonstration of how AI can speed up and lower the cost of animation without supplanting human creative direction. "OpenAI can say what...