Brad Pitt is right: AI can rescue mid-budget film production

Brad Pitt told Esquire last week that AI, used properly, could be exactly what gets mid-budget films – the $40m-90m range – made again, pointing to the technology as a cost lever on VFX-heavy productions that studios have largely stopped greenlighting. I think he’s right about the economics, I’ve watched it play out first-hand. 

This November we’re bringing AI Movie Awards to London for its second edition, built entirely around work that simply couldn’t have existed on its budget without AI doing some of the heavy lifting. That’s not a hypothetical, it’s the reality behind almost every finalist film we see. But the saving only holds up under one condition: the technology has to be directed by people who already know how to make a film. Used as a shortcut around that expertise, it doesn’t deliver the same film.

AI doesn’t make the traditionally expensive parts of filmmaking disappear, it shifts where the money goes. Large physical sets, location shoots, big crews, extensive VFX work, background extras, travel and equipment are all things AI can reduce significantly. The costs don’t vanish, they move, mainly into two places: human talent and AI generation itself.

We saw this directly on Freedom, a 20-minute experimental short combining real actors with AI-generated environments and VFX, which recently won three awards in Warsaw. We made it for around £30,000. Our estimate is that a comparable result through a fully traditional production and VFX pipeline could easily have cost £500,000 or more, a saving of roughly 94% in this case.

The interesting part isn’t that AI makes filmmaking cheaper, it’s that the same budget can put considerably more on screen. A £500,000 budget that once had to cover sets, locations, crews, equipment, travel and traditional VFX can instead go toward the things that matter creatively: better actors, directors, writers, cinematography and storytelling, while AI takes on parts of the production that used to require a much bigger budget.

That’s why actors still matter enormously to us on hybrid productions. We’re not looking at removing them or the filmmakers around them from the process. We’re looking at using AI to remove some of the financial barriers that have kept certain stories and certain productions out of reach.

The same approach runs through our other work. Between the Lines and Checkmate to Death were both built by a team of writers, editors, VFX artists and composers using AI alongside traditional production and post-production, not in place of it. This is the model Pitt is describing, even if he doesn’t put it in these terms.

Pitt is describing a shift in what’s possible on a mid-budget film, and it’s one we’re already seeing borne out in the productions coming through AIMA this year. The saving is real, but it isn’t automatic. It comes from giving experienced people better tools, not from removing the need for their judgement.

The AI Movie Awards will hold its second edition in London this November, in partnership with James Drake Media. The two-day event runs 7-8 November 2026, at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in Savoy Place, London.

Thomas Righini Carrington is director and co-founder of James Drake Media