AI “art” advocates often feel like a guy who’s trying to move into your apartment without actually telling you; with multi-billion-dollar support from on high, the techno-enthusiasts’ playbook focuses on a steady wave of boundary-pushing actions designed to wear down resistance, until one day you look around, see all their shit sitting in your living room, and resign yourself to thinking, “Well, I guess Dave lives here now.”
Dave does not, however, live at AMC Theaters, which issued a statement today rejecting a move from Screenvision Media—one of those companies whose whole thing is making the ad rolls that fill the 20 minutes before trailers run at the movie theater so people won’t be trapped with their own thoughts or conversations—to run an AI-generated short film in front of its audiences. Per THR, the theater chain issued a statement today declaring that the fraction of AMC Theaters that use Screenvision’s services will not be participating in a program that saw the company grant, as the prize for the winner of a contest for AI-made movies, access to the eyeballs of millions of its movie-goers.
The film in question, Igor Alferov’s “Thanksgiving Day,” recently won the top prize at the Frame Forward AI Animated Film Festival, which was organized by an AI movie company called Modern Uprising Studios (“We make experiences that live”), and, shock-of-shocks, Screenvision itself. The short was generated by Alferov using tools like Gemini 3.1 and Nano Banana Pro, and while we have not personally been able to view it, the screenshot made available by the festival—showing a couple of dead-eyed animal astronauts—did make the words “slop” float through our brains, unbidden.
AMC responded to the news that it would be playing host to the short—and the attendant anger on social media—with a pretty firm “Yeah, don’t drag us into this bullshit.” Or, per the official statement: “This content is an initiative from Screenvision Media, which manages pre-show advertising for several movie theatre chains in the United States and runs in fewer than 30 percent of AMC’s U.S. locations. AMC was not involved in the creation of the content or the initiative and has informed Screenvision that AMC locations will not participate.” Screenvision itself hasn’t responded to the story, but their buddies over at Modern Uprising have, stating that, while they recognize the importance of traditional movie theaters and acknowledge that they’re “duly cautious” about AI, MUS actually intends to open its own “immersive” theaters that it’s building right now, and which will air Alferov’s short. (No comment, meanwhile, on whether these new AI theaters will also sell popcorn that has been pre-chewed by machines and then extruded as a flavorless slurry that vaguely resembles popcorn, without containing any of its actual flavor or nutrients—although we live in hope.)
For the curious: Screenvision proudly trumpets that it runs its programming in “3 of the top 5, and 7 of the top 10 theater chains,” which is the kind of very specific statistic companies run when, say, they don’t have contracts with either the number 2 or 3 chains in the United States. (I.e., Cinemark and Regal, who between the two of them own more than half the theaters in the country, and who have no connection with Screenvision at all) Once you get past AMC, the company’s next biggest client is the Milwaukee-based Marcus Theaters, which owns 90 venues, mostly in the Midwest—where they’re apparently going to be eating this AI-generated space animal cartoon right up.
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