Sanxingdui AI film earns a reported 630,000 yuan in its first two days

Sanxingdui: Future Past has brought in a reported 630,000 yuan during its first two days in cinemas—a small opening against a production budget its producer puts above 10 million yuan. An October 26 article by Jin on Vocal reports 22,000 admissions, putting an early commercial result behind the film’s AI-production milestone.

The same article puts the producer’s share of ticket revenue at 220,000 yuan. That is the more relevant figure to place beside production spending: the reported gross and the amount reaching the producer are different sums. Producer Qu Jixiaojiang told the Global Times before release that the film cost over 10 million yuan, approximately $1.5 million.

Jin also cites a Beacon AI forecast of 2.07 million yuan in final box office, while saying Maoyan had not issued a forecast. That projection is an estimate, not an achieved result. The reported opening receipts describe only the first two days, not the film’s completed theatrical run.

The release follows what the Global Times described as China’s first theatrical permit for a fully AI-generated feature. Its October 21 report scheduled the Chinese opening for Friday, October 23, 2026. The approval moved the project beyond the online videos and short-form productions that the filmmakers contrasted with their feature-length effort.

Even as production methods change, audiences still expect a story worth watching.

Qu Jixiaojiang, producer, speaking to the Global Times

Two years of generation, selection and rework

The creators’ account makes clear that “fully AI-generated” did not mean a film produced automatically from one prompt. They told the Global Times that development took more than two years, involved more than 1.2 million preliminary images and required more than 100 full-film iterations before reaching the finished version.

Jiang Defu, a producer and Bona Film Group’s chief operating officer, described a virtual production organized around 17 professional functions. Those included screenwriting, directing, production, art design, cinematography, lighting, sound and editing. The division of work was intended to bring unpredictable generated images closer to what the creators actually wanted.

Jiang said images that appeared acceptable on a phone could fail under scrutiny on a cinema screen. Different review groups examined the film frame by frame, identifying problems for further work. Screening, revision and selection were therefore part of the production process, rather than a final check on a finished stream of generated footage.

Qu said the team substantially reworked the entire film at least five times. Early revisions focused on whether particular scenes were possible; as the technology improved, the challenge became making them convincing. The shifting creative goals meant production was not simply a matter of executing an unchanged plan more quickly.

Ancient symbols, digital characters and a ticket price

The story uses symbols on Sanxingdui bronzes to connect an ancient civilization with a future confronting superintelligent AI. Qu said the digital characters are original creations, not replicas of real actors. The team also consulted Sanxingdui experts to separate established archaeological evidence from unresolved scholarly questions and the filmmakers’ own fictional inventions.

Before release, some online responses to the trailer questioned why audiences should pay for images they believed could be generated cheaply. Qu acknowledged those reservations. She said the team would judge its work through the responses of people who watched the film, treating negative feedback as valuable alongside positive reactions.

The producers were also seeking audiences outside China. The film had been presented at Cannes, where an international trailer was released. Qu said a Malaysian release was planned for the same Friday, with distribution discussions underway in Russia and France. Those were distribution plans, not confirmed overseas box-office results.