{"id":803398,"date":"2026-07-15T11:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T11:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/803398\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T11:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T11:47:10","slug":"a-tale-of-two-odysseys-nolans-blockbuster-gets-ai-generated-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/803398\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of two Odysseys: Nolan’s blockbuster gets AI-generated competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It turns out Matt Damon is not the only Odysseus appearing on screen this summer.<\/p>\n

The makers of the controversial fully AI-generated film that debuted at Tribeca Festival<\/a> last month are back \u2014 this time with an artificial-intelligence reimagining of Homer\u2019s epic poem The Odyssey.<\/p>\n

Ash Koosha, founder of AI movie studio Fountain 0, has cast his own likeness as Odysseus \u2014 \u00a0saying he fits the look of a Bronze Age Greek \u2014 in Odysseus: The Fall, set to release in late summer.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not long after Damon\u2019s turn as the cunning king of Ithaca in the widely-anticipated Christopher Nolan blockbuster, The Odyssey, which hits theatres July 17.<\/p>\n

\"AnA scene from Odysseus: The Fall, Fountain 0’s second AI film following Dreams of Violets, which screened at Tribeca last month. (Fountain 0)<\/p>\n

Both films are adaptations of the poem, which tells the story of the king as he returns home from the Trojan War. But where Nolan\u2019s film has a budget of $250 million US, Koosha\u2019s was made on “mid-five figures” (he wouldn\u2019t tell CBC News exactly how much he spent).\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I would never be able to get a budget to display a monster in the sea and a cyclops in a cave,” he said, noting he made the film part-time over three months and spent the budget mostly on cloud token credits, a virtual currency to pay for software.<\/p>\n

“That becomes such a far-fetched dream if not for these tools and technologies, that I think it\u2019s important to at least experiment and prove that there\u2019s a level of vision-to-screen possibility here with AI.”<\/p>\n

What do people think of AI-generated movies? <\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees. When the film’s teaser hit YouTube<\/a> on Tuesday, it drew some scathing comments. “I f–cking weep for humanity. This is absolutely ghastly,” wrote one person. “If it doesn’t have real actors then it’s not a real movie,” wrote another.<\/p>\n

“I like how in the very first few seconds you can see the bubbles coming out THROUGH the top lip, not from the mouth,” wrote another commenter. “Amazing way to show how great AI is.”<\/p>\n

Though Nolan\u2019s rendition is not without its own controversies<\/a>, the AI film\u2019s executive producer, Tom Rogers, acknowledged in a news release<\/a> that people are likely to find Nolan\u2019s “superior.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said the hope is to “stimulate a broad conversation on not only the great artistry that [Koosha] has brought to this film, but the many implications it has for the future of film-making.”<\/p>\n

ACTRA urges governments to take action<\/p>\n

The release of the teaser for Odysseus: The Fall coupled with the news last week that AI “actor” Tilly Norwood will be starring in an upcoming comedy-drama<\/a> should serve as “loud alarm bells for anyone who believes in human storytelling \u2014 this includes the Canadian government,” said Marie Kelly, national executive director of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA).<\/p>\n

Amid a rise of synthetic competition, performers “are concerned about their craft, their place in the world of entertainment and their livelihoods,” Kelly told CBC News in an emailed statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There is no place in our industry, and no use in the humanity of art, for replacing performers with synthetics. ACTRA rejects any attempt to do so.”<\/p>\n

WATCH | See the trailer now:<\/p>\n

Kelly said the government needs to pass laws to regulate AI, and that its effect on performers might be a “canary in the coal mine.”<\/p>\n

“If strong laws around AI \u2014 especially moral rights \u2014 are not passed now, it may soon be too late to act for all [of] society.”<\/p>\n

While Rogers acknowledged the “real issue” of AI displacing jobs, he said he thinks detractors will come around.<\/p>\n

“I think consumers will begin to see that there\u2019s huge value in the quality of what they\u2019re getting in this art form, as opposed to the impressions today that are based on seeing a lot of AI slop in the form of short-form video,” he said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Who decides if a film is AI slop? <\/p>\n

Brenda Austin-Smith, a professor in the department of English, theatre, film and media at the University of Manitoba, was unimpressed with the film\u2019s teaser.<\/p>\n

“If what I saw in that trailer is the best that can be done, no one should fear [AI].”<\/p>\n

\"AnAsh Koosha’s likeness as as AI Odysseus. (Fountain 0)<\/p>\n

Still, Austin-Smith told CBC that AI in filmmaking is a legitimate tool \u2014 and she would consider showing an AI film to her students.<\/p>\n

“[If] somebody with a creative vision and insight and skill and imagination used some of these tools to tell a good story that was really gripping, in a really satisfying way, then sure, it could make its way into a classroom,” she said.<\/p>\n

“But if people think \u2014 or somebody who wants to be a filmmaker thinks \u2014 that all I have to do is plug in some prompts and AI will make the film for me, it\u2019s going to be crap.”<\/p>\n

Koosha is undeterred by criticism, saying critiques are “absolutely valid.”<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s an education for us to know what people are hating the most and the least, and what we should do next,” he said.<\/p>\n

Odysseus: The Fall will be available for streaming late summer at Fountain0.com<\/a>. It has a run time of 135 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 5 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-803398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}