Inside 'Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi': Doug Liman's $70M Hybrid AI Feature

Doug Liman directed Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi, a $70 million feature film shot entirely on a custom gray-screen soundstage with AI-generated backgrounds and lighting, producer Acme AI & FX told TheWrap. Acme describes the picture as the first fully-generated, studio-quality AI feature film.

The cast includes Gal Gadot, Pete Davidson, Casey Affleck, and Isla Fisher. The picture is being shopped to buyers at Cannes in May. Acme estimates a traditional version would have cost $300 million.

The Gray Box

A single London soundstage replaced location scouts, practical sets, and the lighting department.

Acme built what it calls a "gray box" stage, using gray screens rather than the green or blue screens standard in traditional VFX work. Every environment and lighting pass was generated in post-production. We previously covered Liman's decision to skip location shooting for this all-AI approach.

The physical shoot wrapped in 20 days. Post-production then ran 30 weeks with 55 AI artists generating environments.

Humans in the Loop

The crew list reads like a conventional tentpole.

Henry Braham served as cinematographer, with Richard Sale on costumes and Oliver Scholl as production designer. The production employed 107 cast members, 100 on-set crew, and 54 non-shoot crew. Liman's own AI company, 30 Ninjas, also worked on the film. Actor performances were captured traditionally and were not altered by AI. Only the backgrounds and lighting were generated.

"The entire focus on the set was on our performances. It was much more like acting in a Broadway play than in the giant event film that Doug's final product will actually be."

— Casey Affleck

Producer Garrett Grant framed the workflow as augmentation rather than replacement: "AI doesn't replace the human component. The human component is desperately needed in the process."

The Acme Pipeline

The studio behind the film is building a production network specifically for generated features.

Acme AI & FX was founded by Ryan Kavanaugh, Matt Kavanaugh, Garrett Grant, and Lawrence Grey. The company runs facilities in Los Angeles and London, with additional studios planned for New York, Vancouver, and Spain. Ten projects sit in the company's production pipeline.

The approach treats generative AI as core production infrastructure rather than a post-production enhancement. Our ongoing Inside the AI Movie Studio series tracks other teams pursuing variations on this model.

Cannes Will Test the Economics

The sales market becomes the first real referendum on the cost structure.

Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi arrives at Cannes as a sales title, which means buyers will be evaluating both the film and the production model behind it. A $70 million budget delivering the scope of a $300 million feature is a clear pitch to distributors, but they will want audience data before underwriting the next ten titles in Acme's pipeline. The commercial performance of this first film will shape whether the gray-box model spreads beyond Acme or stays a single-studio experiment.