There was a time when major blockbusters faced direct-to-DVD "competition" from knock-off movies with similar premises and titles. However, Hollywood's newfound interest in AI has opened the door to something else entirely.
With some corners of the internet coming for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey due to controversial casting decisions and perceived historical inaccuracies, could Odysseus: The Fall be a compelling alternative this summer? Well, that may depend on how you feel about AI, as this full-length AI-generated feature will also set out to tell Odysseus' story.
As we first reported on SFFGazette.com, it has a budget in the "mid-five figures," costing a fraction of Nolan's $250 million fantasy epic. AI company Fountain O has developed the movie.
"Creator" Ash Koosha said, "We very much hope that Christopher Nolan’s film, The Odyssey, is a raging success at the box office, and in some way that our version of the journey of Odysseus might further that success by bringing to theaters those who might not otherwise come out to see the film, simply because they are curious to see the ultimate in human creation and compare it to one man’s collaboration with AI."
Odysseus: The Fall clocks in at a whopping 135 minutes and follows Odysseus' journey home and "the fractured memory of a drowning man in his final minutes — a voyage that is really a trial, where every monster wears his own handwriting."
"Stripped of the word 'clever,' what remains is a man reckoning with what he actually did to get home," the synopsis adds. "It ends where the songs never go: not with a hero's welcome, but with forgiveness offered by the one person who knows exactly what he is."
The trailer, already dismissed as "AI slop" by many film fans on social media, makes for, let's say, interesting viewing and supposedly has some human elements. While the actors, sets, and cameras are all AI models, the script and voice cast supposedly incorporated "human creativity."
No streamer or theatrical distributor has picked up Koosha's last feature, Dreams of Violets, for a commercial release, but both it and Odysseus: The Fall will be available on the Fountain O for a $9.99 rental price later this summer.
While Nolan has said AI could result in some useful "imaging tools," he made it clear that "the idea that it replaces human beings wholesale and human creativity, to me, it’s nonsense."
You can watch the trailer for Odysseus: The Fall below. As for The Odyssey, it arrives in theaters worldwide on July 17.