AI Films Could Cost More Than 35mm, Korean Studio Founder Warns
AI could end up costing feature film makers more than shooting on 35mm film did, Kim Kwang-jib told Variety at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest in Taipei. Kim is founder and chief executive of the AI content studio Studio Meta-K.
His main worry is the token bill. Tokens are the small units of data that AI tools charge for each time they generate or process content. With the most expensive commercial AI tools, Kim said, the token bill alone for a 100-minute film can top KRW500 million ($366,000).
If those costs rise roughly tenfold, the figure would reach KRW5 billion ($3.66 million). That is more than Korean, Taiwanese and other Asian features typically spend on live action and visual effects, which Kim put at KRW3 billion to KRW5 billion ($2.2 million to $3.66 million).
Revisions are the other pressure point. Kim gave an example. If a client sends 10 changes at once, Studio Meta-K can re-render a scene, meaning have the AI generate it again, one time and pay for one extra pass. If the same 10 changes arrive one per day over 10 days, the studio must re-render 10 times and pay 10 times over.
"Unless the preproduction stage is made solid, I think AI could end up spending even more money than in the 35mm film era," he said. Preproduction is the planning stage before any footage or images are generated, and Kim argued that careful planning is what keeps the costs in check.
He also said AI companies are all losing money and keeping prices low as a marketing play. That pricing, he suggested, may not last.
Advertising is where Kim sees the clearest savings. He cited a Pizza Hut TV spot that took about eight months and roughly KRW2 billion ($1.4 million) to produce. An in-house Studio Meta-K version took about two weeks and around KRW30 million ($22,000). He said AI can cut advertising production costs by more than 90%.
Film is a harder case, and the Korean broadcaster MBC has been testing it. Lee Sang-wook, head of the AI Content Lab at MBC C&I, a subsidiary of MBC, said his team made the 139-minute AI feature "Raphael" in around a year and four months. A single shot sometimes tied up around 10 artists for an entire day. "Raphael" opens in Korean cinemas on 25 November.
The lab started with generative AI shorts in 2024. It later packaged AI content as a genre strand called "The Prompt: Next Drama" on the Korean streamer Wavve.
Kim does not think audiences will yet pay to watch fully AI films or series. He prefers a hybrid model that combines AI production with star actors, a mix he expects to carry the next phase of the work.
