Bollywood launches first film created by AI

Bollywood launches "Maharaja in Denims", a film made almost entirely with artificial intelligence: lower costs and no actors, while concerns grow about the future of cinema.

Indian cinema is taking a leap that could change the rules of the game forever. "Maharaja in Denims" is the first film to be made almost entirely with artificial intelligence, a project that eliminates what has for decades been the heart of production: actors, sets, costumes and technical crews. Behind the operation is the author of the original novel, Khushwant Singh, supported by Gurdeep Singh Pall and a skeleton crew.

The film is deliberately conceived from a minimal production structure, where human labor has been drastically reduced in favor of advanced software capable of generating images, environments and narrative sequences. Yet the film is not entirely "dehumanized": the script and part of the soundtrack remain the fruit of human labor. Among the musical contributions, Sukhwinder Singh, the well-known voice of Jai Ho, signs the film's main title.

The plot remains profoundly human. The story follows a teenager convinced that he is the reincarnation of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a historical figure of the Sikh Empire. The story unfolds between identity, memory and social tensions, including references to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. An obvious paradox: while the story is rooted in memory and identity, its visual representation is born of an entirely digital process, devoid of physical interpretation and real presence.

The choice of AI is not simply a matter of artistic curiosity. On the contrary, it follows a clear logic: to drive down costs and simplify production. Singh himself put it bluntly to AFP:

"There are no fees for actors, no problems if they arrive late or cause delays. There are no sets. It's pure creativity of mind and machine."

The statement highlights the real crux of the problem: the elimination of traditional professions, from technicians to artists, replaced by algorithms. A transformation that could redefine the entire production system, but also drastically reduce job opportunities in the sector.

For the moment, no release date has been set: there's talk of the summer of 2026 for Indian cinemas, but everything remains very uncertain; the project has already accumulated over a year's delay. The reason? Technology is evolving so fast that it requires constant updating of hardware, in an attempt to avoid an effect that is already "outdated" at the time of release. And yet, the first extracts still show obvious limitations: the characters appear artificial, with unnatural expressions and a visual rendering that struggles to compete with traditional cinema.

Unsurprisingly, the producers themselves acknowledge that genres such as fantasy, mythology and science fiction lend themselves better to this type of production, precisely because they are less constrained by realism. Despite this, the film is aiming high, with rumors pointing to a possible presence at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. The competition, however, is already shaping up to be fierce: other AI-based Indian projects, such as Chiranjeevi Hanuman: The Eternal or Love You, could hit the market sooner.

"Maharaja in Denims" is not just a film, but a turning point. The question is not whether AI will make a lasting impact on cinema, but how it will do so. On the one hand, it offers powerful tools for experimenting with new visual languages; on the other, it risks transforming the industry into an increasingly centralized and automated system, where human creativity is squeezed in the name of efficiency.

The greatest danger is not technological, but cultural: a cinema that loses its imperfections, its interpretations and its human presence could become technically impeccable, but emotionally distant. And it's perhaps precisely there, in the flaws of imperfection, that cinema has always found its truth.