The headline referred to Maharaja in Denims, a planned feature from Chandigarh-based Intelliflicks Studios. In 2025, the company announced an ambitious generative-AI production and targeted a release that year. That release was not independently confirmed. By April 2026, reports still described the film as awaiting release and targeting summer 2026.
So the accurate answer is conditional: Maharaja in Denims is a real, almost entirely AI-generated feature project, but “the first AI movie” is a marketing shorthand rather than an uncontested historical fact.
What is Maharaja in Denims?
Maharaja in Denims adapts Khushwant Singh’s 2014 novel of the same name. Intelliflicks Studios, headquartered in Chandigarh, developed the project with founders and creative leaders associated with the company, including author Khushwant Singh, former Microsoft executive Gurdeep Pall and creative director Revant Bogra. The story moves between the modern world and the 19th century, a scale the filmmakers say would be difficult and expensive to stage conventionally. Intelliflicks describes the project on its official site: intelliflicks.com.
It is often called a Bollywood film, although that label needs context. Bollywood generally means Mumbai’s Hindi-language film industry, while Intelliflicks is based in Chandigarh. In this coverage, “Bollywood” is being used for a Hindi-oriented Indian feature rather than as a precise statement about where it was produced.
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What happened to the 2025 release?
The 2025 date was a target, not a confirmed cinema opening.
- An early trailer and news coverage presented the project as aiming for a release around Baisakhi 2025.
- Later announcements described an intended feature-length release by the end of 2025.
- In May 2025, Intelliflicks and partners announced a generative-AI film slate at Cannes and said production had begun. The announcement is documented by PR Newswire.
- April 2026 reporting still described Maharaja in Denims as an unreleased project expected in summer 2026.
No precise theatrical date should be stated without an official distributor notice, cinema listing, festival record or certification announcement. The defensible retrospective wording is that Intelliflicks announced an AI-generated Bollywood feature in 2025 and its planned release remained delayed or unconfirmed in the available reporting.
How much of the film is actually made with AI?
“Almost entirely AI-generated” does not mean a prompt produced a finished movie without people. The reported workflow combines generative systems, conventional software and extensive human decisions:
- People develop the story, screenplay, visual direction and production plan.
- Image-generation systems create character designs, objects and environmental concepts.
- Those references are supplied to video-generation models to produce individual shots and scenes.
- Generative tools assist with audio, dialogue lip synchronization and image sharpening.
- Editors and technical artists select usable generations, repair defects, manage continuity and assemble the narrative.
- Conventional tools remain part of lighting, colour, editing, compositing, sound and other post-production work.
Intelliflicks has also described an internal software layer for managing the workflow and model fine-tuning using India-specific data. The public reporting does not establish one complete, fixed tool stack, so it would be misleading to say that a single consumer video app made the film.
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The Kathak example shows where human performance still matters
One reported challenge involves a woman performing Kathak, the classical dance form associated with northern India. The filmmakers said that collecting enough training material to generate the dance convincingly would be impractical. Their proposed solution was to record a real Kathak performance and use AI to replace the dancer’s face with that of an AI-generated character.
In that case, the movement comes from a human performer while AI changes the character’s identity or appearance. The example is important because it contradicts the idea that the project contains no human performance or source footage.
Why a feature film is harder than an impressive AI shot
Character and object continuity
Generative video can produce a different face, costume, body shape or age each time. The team has reportedly used reference mechanisms and digital tags to improve consistency, but those controls are not perfect.
Performance direction
A prompt can specify dialogue and broad emotion. It is much harder to control the exact timing of a pause, eye movement, restrained reaction, gesture or physical intention. Cornell computer scientist Abe Davis has noted that filmmakers often need control over many small choices that generative systems tend to take over.
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Long-form coherence
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Human quality control
People must reject malformed frames, choose among repeated generations, correct continuity errors, shape pacing, adjust dialogue, edit scenes and mix sound. Lower software costs do not eliminate that labour; they can move more of it into selection, repair and post-production.
What does “first AI movie” mean?
There is no single universally accepted category. A claim can refer to different milestones:
| Possible milestone | What must be established |
|---|---|
| First feature made primarily with generative AI | A feature-length work in which most of the image-making and production is generative, rather than merely AI-assisted. |
| First theatrically released AI feature | A public cinema release, not only a trailer, announcement or private screening. |
| First Hindi or Bollywood AI feature | A definition of language, industry and geography, especially when the studio is outside Mumbai. |
| First film with AI-generated actors | A separate claim from generating backgrounds, visual effects or selected shots. |
| First autonomous AI-directed film | A much stronger standard that would exclude human creative control, writing and editing. |
Intelliflicks’ description is closest to an early feature made primarily with generative AI and seeking a theatrical milestone. Neither “first” is settled without a verified release and agreed rules about live performance, human authorship and the proportion of AI-generated material.
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Other Indian projects make the race impossible to rank from slogans alone
Reports have also mentioned Naisha, Love You and Chiranjeevi Hanuman: The Eternal as competing Indian AI-film projects. Their existence makes release status, runtime, AI proportion and distribution decisive. A trailer or publicity claim cannot by itself establish which project was first.
Projects can also change position: a film may be announced first but released later, or a rival may reach a festival, streaming service or cinema before it. “First in the world” is therefore not supported as an uncontested fact here.
Why make a film this way?
Potential advantages
- Lower barriers for stories requiring large historical settings or elaborate environments.
- Rapid visual iteration and previsualisation for small studios and independent creators.
- More practical experimentation with culturally specific stories that might struggle to secure conventional financing.
- New options for combining generated characters, locations and effects without building every physical set.
Risks and trade-offs
- Continuity defects may become more obvious as the running time increases.
- Performers may be displaced or reduced to uncredited source material.
- Training data, likeness rights, copyright, consent and labour credit remain contested.
- Audiences may reject synthetic performances even when the images look polished.
- A lower production budget does not guarantee less work, because editing, repair, sound and supervision remain substantial.
The central production question is not whether AI can make an attractive image. It is whether a team can maintain characters, spaces, actions and emotional performances across an entire narrative.
Can viewers use the same tools to make a feature?
Runway is one AI-video platform cited in coverage of this production area; its official pricing page is runwayml.com/pricing. A platform of that kind can be useful for short shots, concept development, previs and visual experiments. A subscription alone does not reproduce a feature-film pipeline: creators also need writing, reference management, editing, compositing, sound, storage, upscaling, continuity control and human direction.
Intelliflicks appears to operate as a studio or service relationship rather than a conventional low-cost consumer subscription. Its official contact route is intelliflicks.com. The public evidence does not show that Maharaja in Denims was made with Runway alone or that buying a subscription would let someone reproduce it.
The verdict
Maharaja in Denims was a genuine and ambitious generative-AI feature project announced in 2025. The promised 2025 release was not confirmed, and April 2026 reports still positioned the film for a possible summer 2026 release. Its “first AI movie” status therefore remained conditional on an actual public release and on how much human writing, performance, editing and conventional production a definition permits.
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