News
China's First All-AI Feature Opens to Weak Ticket Sales: What the Reported Numbers Say About Paying Audiences
· RenderBob team
Sanxingdui: Future Past, from Bona Film Group, opened in Chinese cinemas on 23 October. Wire reports describe presales of 80,000 yuan and a forecast box office below 150,000 yuan.
Sanxingdui: Future Past, from Bona Film Group, opened in Chinese cinemas on 23 October. Wire reports describe presales of 80,000 yuan and a forecast box office below 150,000 yuan, against a reported production cost above 10 million yuan.
What opened
According to reports published on 23 and 24 October, the film is a sci-fi thriller that the wire reports call China's first fully AI-generated feature. It is a Bona Film Group production with a theatrical release permit. All actors, their voices and the backdrops are AI-generated, and the story concerns humanity in a future shaped by AI. TechNode's earlier report from 28 September, based on Bona's announcement, calls it a 100-minute film and says its characters are original digital creations, with no digital replicas of real actors. The wire report's photo caption gives the English title as Sanxingdui: Future Memories, so the title should be checked against Bona's own materials.
The reported numbers
- Screenings. More than 10,000 were scheduled on opening day, according to the ticketing platform Maoyan.
- Presales. Revenue as of Friday morning was 80,000 yuan, about US$12,000.
- Forecast. Maoyan forecast a total box office below 150,000 yuan. Tickets cost 20 to 90 yuan, and the report implies sales of a few thousand at most.
- Cost. Bona reported production cost of more than 10 million yuan, with nearly 100 people working for more than two years. TechNode's September piece said more than 100 people, and gave no budget.
Presales and a forecast are not final takings, and box office is not the whole revenue picture. We do not have streaming, licensing or festival income. Still, on these figures the forecast is roughly 1.5 percent of the reported cost at most.
What people said
Bona's chief executive, Jiang Defu, said the film was the first to try it, the first to get a theatrical release permit and the first to be tested by the audience, and that this was "not easy at all". A viewer at a free Thursday preview, which was held for people connected to the production and industry workers, said she would not have paid for a ticket given the quality, though she would pay if AI film matched the theatrical experience of Avatar. Independent AI director Zhang Jun said audiences will not pay for a film just because it is AI-generated. A Weibo user said free streaming might win it an audience but that people will not accept paying for it yet.
Context the reports add
The same wire story says AI-generated short dramas on Douyin drew more than 200 billion views in September alone, which fits the volume-first pattern in our 13 October microdrama piece. It also notes that the AI-made feature Gods Don't Give Gifts is due for US release on 4 December. Short, free, vertical episodes and a ticketed 100-minute feature are different products, and the first set of numbers should not be read as support for the second.
What it does and does not show
It shows that a permit, a finished feature and a theatrical slot do not by themselves bring audiences in. It does not show why: the reports give no platform ratings or critic scores, and the reception is described as lukewarm, not measured. We cannot separate the effect of the film's quality, its price, its marketing and the AI label.
What to take from it
- Price the format honestly. Audiences are paying for a cinema experience, and a gap against Avatar is the comparison one viewer made.
- Do not read short-form views as feature demand.
- State the budget claim with its source. A producer-reported cost is not an audited one.
- Plan the release route. Free streaming, festivals and cinemas test different things.
What to watch
Final box-office figures, platform ratings, whether Bona releases the film online, and how Gods Don't Give Gifts performs on 4 December.
RenderBob 3 and this story
RenderBob 3 cannot decide whether audiences pay, but it keeps cost visible: the model is a per-clip choice, local or cloud, so a team can spend heavy generation on the shots that carry the story, keep drafts local, and see generated clips on their own lane.
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