Maybe you’ve heard of The Asylum. They’re a company known for making “mockbusters.” “What’s a mockbuster?” you ask? Well, that’s easy. It’s like a blockbuster film, but not. It has a similar name and a similar story, but with a much worse plot, budget, and actors. The Asylum has made a name for itself by pumping out these movies over the years. We’ve previously asked ourselves, “What could be worse than this?” How about The Odyssey but with AI generation?
Filmmakers With AI
Ash and Pooya Koosha are brothers who use AI to make feature-length films. They’ve already made one called Dreams of Violets about resistance movements in Iran. Now they’re using the technology to create a film called Odysseus: The Fall. Yes, this is a deliberate attempt to ride the success of the upcoming Christopher Nolan film. They’re extremely open about that. Ash has stated, “We very much hope that Christopher Nolan’s film, The Odyssey, is a raging success at the box office, and in some way that our version of the journey of Odysseus might further that success by bringing to theaters those who might not otherwise come out to see the film, simply because they are curious to see the ultimate in human creation and compare it to one man’s collaboration with AI.”
Bold statement to make. To be fair, it doesn’t appear that the Koosha brothers have the money to make an epic film. Nor does it appear that they are hiding anything about using AI for this creative endeavor. That kind of transparency is good. But will the product be of any decent quality? The company, Fountain O, will be producing the film. Their website describes the movie as “ODYSSEUS: The Fall – retells Homer’s epic as the fractured memory of a drowning man in his final minutes, a voyage that is really a trial, where every monster wears his own handwriting. That means… something? We suppose.
Humans vs. AI
Various bits of AI tech were used for the project, including Kling, Google Nanobanana, and Claude AI. As for what human input was had. Reportedly, the script, the images, and the voicing of characters were done with “human creativity.” We’ll have to see what exactly that means when the film is released later this summer. Odysseus: The Fall will be made available to rent on the official Fountain O website. Something tells us you’ll probably be better off with Nolan’s The Odyssey instead.
