Human-first, fully AI-generated: Abundantia's studio wants both

Bollywood production house Abundantia Entertainment is turning its AI division, aiOn, into a standalone studio that will make fully AI-generated films, with the first releases planned for the first quarter of 2027.

The company says aiOn, which it launched about a year ago, will get its own identity and creative remit. Founder Vikram Malhotra says it will stay inside Abundantia for now ^[1][2]. He told Deadline it will develop stories, create content, produce fully AI-generated and hybrid work, and manage the production ecosystem around it ^[2]. Abundantia says it will use AI across the value chain, from research to screen, and not only for a single effect or a faster edit ^[1].

This is a developing story and the plan is still taking shape. The structure, the hiring, the pay and credit terms, the AI models and the budgets have not been announced. But the public record is enough for a view, and mine is this: Abundantia is not testing a tool. It is building a factory, and the rules about who works in it have not been written, or at least not shown.

A studio, not a tool

The distinction matters.

Film has absorbed new technology for as long as it has existed, and a director who uses AI to rough out a scene before the cameras roll is doing something familiar.

A studio set up to generate whole films is doing something else. It decides what the default is, and what the default needs from people.

Malhotra's own phrase for it is ambitious. aiOn, he said, "is being shaped as a fully-integrated, total capability movie studio" ^[1].

"Total capability" is a sentence that works as comfort and as threat depending on where you stand. For an investor it means one roof and no dependency. For a cinematographer, a costume designer or a production designer it raises an obvious question about which of the capabilities will still be done by them.

"It is being shaped as a fully-integrated, total capability movie studio."

• Vikram Malhotra, founder of Abundantia Entertainment

The slate shows this is past the pitch stage. Malhotra told Deadline that Chiranjeevi Hanuman was nearing readiness. A hybrid project, Jai Santoshi Mata: Sukh Sampatti Daata, was planned to go on the floors, which is film talk for the start of shooting, early next year. Two other films were under way with the AI video company invideo, and three more scripts were in development ^[2].

Money backs it. Abundantia and invideo announced a partnership for five AI-driven films over three years, with a reported commitment of ₹100 crore. Fortune India reported that the investment would support development and production under aiOn ^[3]. Split evenly, that is ₹20 crore a film, though the reporting does not say it will be divided that way or how much of it is production budget.

The sunny version, taken seriously

The case for aiOn deserves its best hearing. Malhotra calls the studio "human-first and AI-empowered" and says the person telling a story will still be human, though that person's background may differ from conventional filmmakers ^[2]. He says that over the previous six months he received, on average, three times as many story pitches as before from people who had never written, made films or belonged to the conventional filmmaking ecosystem ^[2].

That is a real signal. A cheaper way to put images on a screen could let people with ideas and no access get in. The industry has long been closed to such people, and anyone who has watched a good script die in a development queue should not sneer at the idea.

But look at what the promise leaves out. It is a promise about the origin of the story. It says nothing about the hundreds of other jobs that turn a story into a film. A human storyteller at the top of a pipeline that generates everything below is human-first in the way a head chef is when the kitchen has been replaced by a vending machine. I am not saying that is Abundantia's plan. The material does not establish any plan to replace its workforce, and its executives say human authorship matters. The point is that the slogan commits the studio to very little that a worker could hold it to.

Where the work goes

There is a way to see the stakes from the other end of the market. The Hollywood Reporter described an 80-minute AI feature, Mann Pisahach, made by Rahi Anil Barve for under ₹33,000. He filmed two actors on an iPhone and used AI to generate their costumes, production design and the world around them ^[4].

Put that beside the invideo commitment. The reported ₹100 crore is roughly 30,000 times the cost of that one film. The figures do not measure the same thing, since one is a finished feature and the other a pledge to support development and production for five.

But the gap is the argument. If a feature can be made for the price of a second-hand phone, a studio with ₹100 crore has to explain what the money is for, and the answer will be paid work done by someone.

That someone may well be a person. Malhotra's remark about outsiders suggests the studio expects a new kind of contributor. What the sources do not say is how aiOn will credit, hire or pay human contributors, which AI systems and training material it will use, or what consent and rights terms will apply. Those are the questions that decide whether this is an expansion of the craft or a quiet narrowing of it.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Indian filmmaking is already using AI at every stage, from writing and previsualisation to post-production and fully AI-generated features. It also notes the absence of empowered industry unions and of national legislation specifically addressing AI use and employment protection ^[4]. That is reported context about the industry, not evidence of aiOn's own practices. But it describes the ground on which aiOn is building. Where workers have no organised voice and the law is silent, the terms are whatever the producer writes.

Who owns the ending

India has already seen what that looks like. Eros International released a Tamil version of Raanjhanaa with an AI-altered ending over the objections of the film's director, Aanand L. Rai, and its actor Dhanush. Eros said it was the film's sole financier, producer and rights holder, and argued that it could alter the finished work ^[4].

Nobody in that dispute argued that the AI was the problem. The argument was about who gets to say what the film is.

The entertainment lawyer Priyanka Khimani told The Hollywood Reporter that work-for-hire arrangements and broad contracts can give studios ownership of material created by actors or directors. In practice that means the person who made something can sign away the right to object when it is changed. She said this leaves room for disputes over later AI modifications ^[4].

A studio that generates its films from the ground up holds every right a studio can hold. It will not need to argue with a director about an ending, because it will own the process that produced one. Whatever protections exist for the people who contribute, such as writers, performers and designers, will exist because aiOn chose to write them into its contracts, not because anyone made it.

The strongest objection

The best reply to all this is that I am borrowing trouble. Malhotra says the storyteller stays human. The pitch numbers suggest the studio is drawing in people the old system shut out.

A technology that lowers the cost of creative risk, which is how Malhotra frames it, could mean more films made and more voices heard, as the ₹33,000 feature at least hints.

That could be right, and it is a fair test of the plan. But it holds only if the benefits are written down. A promise of human authorship that is not defined cannot be verified, and the sources give no definition. Abundantia has not said what counts as human authorship in a film it also describes as fully AI-generated. Until it does, the phrase is a marketing line, and the Raanjhanaa dispute shows how little a marketing line is worth once the rights holder decides otherwise.

The same technology that lets one person make a feature for under ₹33,000 lets a studio ask what it needs crews for. That is my inference, not Malhotra's statement. It is the question that anyone who cares about films made by people should put to him.

What to watch

Three things will show what aiOn really is. The first is the contracts: how it credits, pays and gets consent from the people whose work, voices or likenesses go into its films. The second is the first releases, planned from early 2027, and how audiences respond to a Bollywood studio that has told them its films are generated. The third is whether anyone who makes films for a living speaks up, whether a union, a guild or a director with a name. Until one does, the only voice on the record is the studio's.