London AI studio drops cheap Homer film before Nolan epic
A London-backed AI studio has released a micro-budget adaptation of Homer's epic to piggyback on Christopher Nolan's $250 million blockbuster, testing whether audiences will pay for automated content that undercuts traditional film production costs.
Days before Christopher Nolan’s star-studded film "The Odyssey" arrives in theatres, an artificial intelligence startup has announced its own generated version of the ancient Greek poem. "Odysseus: The Fall" is a 135-minute video file created by Ash Koosha and backed by London-headquartered Fountain O, which calls itself the leading AI movie studio.
The release underscores a stark economic divide opening in the film industry. While Nolan’s production carries a reported $250 million budget, Koosha’s AI adaptation cost a mid-five-figure sum. Fountain O plans a paid release on its website this summer, testing whether consumers will open their wallets for AI-generated media that bypasses traditional production costs.
Homer’s epic, recounting Odysseus’ journey home after the Trojan War, is a cornerstone of Western literature rooted in Greek heritage. The AI rendition has drawn fierce criticism for stilted dialogue and uncanny visual errors, including bizarrely rendered horses and bleeding ships. Social media users have dismissed it as "rancid slop" and an "AI parasite."
This is not Koosha’s first controversial use of the technology. He previously generated "Dreams Of Violets," a 75-minute docudrama about Iranian civilians that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month. Tribeca cofounder Jane Rosenthal defended that inclusion, calling it "a powerful example of how emerging technologies like AI can be used not simply as tools of innovation, but as vehicles for deeply human storytelling."
Koosha framed the new project as "one man's collaboration with AI," arguing the technology threatens "nothing except distance, the distance between a person with a story and the means to tell it." He stated: "A tool has never made a film worth watching. A person with something urgent to say has made every one of them, and that won’t change, whatever they’re holding when they say it."
Nolan, whose film hits theatres on Friday 17 July, has publicly countered this narrative. He noted a "rapid wholesale dismissal" of AI among younger filmmakers, stating their "judgment of AI slop has been immediate and harsh." Nolan argued audiences are shifting toward "more tactile, more real forms of storytelling."
