{"id":444722,"date":"2026-05-25T18:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T18:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/444722\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T18:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T18:22:15","slug":"bytedance-ai-films-shake-up-cannes-as-tiktok-owner-challenges-hollywood-norms-budgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/444722\/","title":{"rendered":"ByteDance AI films shake up Cannes as TikTok owner challenges Hollywood norms, budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Films generated by ByteDance\u2019s AI technology made headlines at this year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival, as the TikTok owner accelerates efforts to commercialise its flagship Seedance 2.0 model.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Two short films, The Golden Tomb Seeker and Series Tower, created by Chinese platform Chushou AI using Seedance 2.0, were among 21 works selected from more than 1,000 submissions spanning 120 countries at March\u00e9 du Film, the business hub of the festival.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">But what drew most industry attention was Hell Grind, a 95-minute action-fantasy film made by Seedance 2.0. Billed as the world\u2019s first feature-length film fully generated by artificial intelligence, the movie \u2013 though not an official selection \u2013 premiered at an AI film summit last week in Cannes city on the sidelines of the main festival.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The project was produced by US-based AI video platform Higgsfield AI using Seedance 2.0 and was completed by a 15-person team in two weeks.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Total production costs for Hell Grind were less than US$500,000, including roughly US$400,000 in compute costs, according to figures disclosed by Higgsfield during the summit \u2013 far below the multimillion-dollar budgets typically associated with feature-length productions.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A screenshot from Hell Grind. Image: handout\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/b0c93e82-2fc2-4745-9f0a-27854d78b146_431c3d79.jpg\" title=\"A screenshot from Hell Grind. Image: handout\"\/>A screenshot from Hell Grind. Image: handout<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Alex Mashrabov, co-founder and CEO of Higgsfield, was quoted as saying that a comparable traditionally produced film would typically cost about US$50 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Films generated by ByteDance\u2019s AI technology made headlines at this year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival, as the TikTok owner&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,226976,363,364,610,35493,14400,607,4444,94864,226975,139186,179659,201190,111,139,69,157502,158549,145,613],"class_list":["post-444722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alex-mashrabov","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-bytedance","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-douyin","tag-hell-grind","tag-higgsfield-ai","tag-jia-zhangke","tag-marche-du-film","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-seedance","tag-seedance-2-0","tag-technology","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}