The Wrap has exclusively revealed the project for the animated film The Furry Wild West, a parody of the spaghetti western genre featuring anthropomorphic animals, produced by Arcana Labs. It would be the announcement of one of the many cartoons in development at any moment around the world, were it not for a detail that will spark debate: although written and visually designed by humans, it will be entirely animated using AI-based tools, aiming at a budget savings that would make even Illumination’s cautious budgeting pale.
The Furry Wild West, an AI-driven animated film (but heavily guided by humans)
Following a test run of a roughly twenty-minute short titled Echo Hunter, characterized by a realistic and somber tone, Arcana Labs will radically shift genre while maintaining their firm belief in Generative Artificial Intelligence. The Furry Wild West is a humorous project featuring anthropomorphic animals, a feature-length film conceived by the author for children, directed and composed by Oren Lavie, who was also Grammy-nominated for the video “Her Morning Elegance”. It tells the story of a gunslinger lion and his canine sidekick.
“AI slop?“, a hastily cooked mess with AI? Absolutely not. The artificial intelligence will be used only for the final animation, because the script, production design, storyboard and character design will all be created strictly by humans, using AI therefore for the movement itself, based on the original creative material. It is estimated that the film in this way could cost 90% (!!!) less than a project animated by real people. We should not underestimate the sacrifice of such an important and “acting” phase as animation, yet Arcana Labs underline another aspect: “Oren has written a great film about showing you for who you truly are. For years, an original screenplay like this would have only seen the light if a big studio had said yes. Now these barriers are coming down.”
If indeed a $100 million production could be transformed into a $10 million one, as Arcana Labs claim, there’s no denying we would be facing a revolution. So far, American majors have managed to curb the costs of more intricate animation only by outsourcing, as Illumination does with the Minions and Super Mario, relying on the French animators from the former MacGuff studio… but they still spend around $85–100 million. Pixar budgets, by contrast, routinely hover around $150–250 million, prompting many industry observers to wonder how long they will resist AI support before seeking a safer margin of risk.
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