Critterz bet on the first mainstream AI-made feature; Sora's shutdown cost it Cannes

An animated feature film project produced by AGC International, London-based Vertigo Films and AI studio Native Foreign, adapted from a 2023 OpenAI-made short.

A sub-$30M film made in nine months on OpenAI's generative stack could ship like a real animation and sell as the first mainstream AI-made feature.

Stated budget under $30 million

OpenAI's Chad Nelson made the original short in 2023 using DALL-E and early Sora; the feature adaptation was set up with Vertigo's Allan Niblo and James Richardson producing and Native Foreign's Nik Kleverov directing, on a brief of 'human-led but AI-assisted', with a script by Lamont, Foster and Butterworth.

The film was built across OpenAI's full creative stack, with Sora generating sequences. OpenAI shut Sora down in March 2026 - the consumer app had peaked at roughly a million users, collapsed below half that, and burned about $1M a day in compute; web and app went dark on April 26, with the API set to follow on September 24. Critterz lost a meaningful part of its production pipeline mid-flight, and producers have not disclosed what replaced Sora, though Native Foreign works across multiple generative platforms. OpenAI has migrated its video research toward world-simulation work for robotics, a pivot Bloomberg reported and the company has not formally announced.

Generative video promised feature-scale animation at a fraction of traditional cost and time, and OpenAI's stack was the most credible source.

The nine-month delivery target was the sales pitch itself: buyers were being sold proof that a generative pipeline could ship a real movie.

Sora's own economics never worked - roughly $1M a day of compute against a user base that halved - so its shutdown was only a matter of time.

Neither the producers nor OpenAI publicly committed to a replacement tool, leaving the film's technical identity uncertain.

The pitch only works if the premiere window holds, and the dependence on a single supplier's roadmap made the window fragile.

Building your product on one supplier's experimental stack is a bet on that supplier's economics - when the model dies, your roadmap dies with it, however good the demo was.

As of May 22, 2026, Critterz had missed its targeted in-festival Cannes premiere but made it to the market, where AGC walked the first-look footage around international buyers. Cannes 2027 is the most obvious next window, though the market already holds roughly half a dozen contenders for the 'first AI feature' title. OpenAI reportedly informed Disney - which had committed $1 billion to a partnership - less than an hour before announcing the Sora shutdown, and has moved video research toward world-simulation work for robotics, a pivot Bloomberg reported and OpenAI has not formally announced.