Everybody in the media industry is talking about OpenAI’s announcement that it will fund a feature-length animated movie called #Critterz, set to debut at Cannes (!) in May 2026.

OpenAI says the film will be completed in nine months and that human voice actors, writers, and artists (drawing sketches to send to AI) will contribute, so not all the money will go to machines. Rather than being purely AI-generated, it sounds more like the hybrid workflow our localization industry is familiar with.

I’m curious to see how it will turn out and whether audiences will like it more than the short it’s based on (only 26 reviews, but still).