1/6 | CJ ENM premiered its AI hybrid film “The House” in Seoul on Thursday, presenting the low-budget occult thriller as a test case for the use of AI in South Korea’s struggling film industry. Photo provided by: CJ ENM
SEOUL, May 1 (UPI) — South Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM debuts AI hybrid feature film the house This week, we introduced a low-budget occult thriller as a test case for how artificial intelligence can revive the ailing film industry.
The 60-minute film, which opened Thursday at Seoul’s CGV Yongsan I’Park mall, follows a young woman who begins to see dead souls after moving into a dilapidated apartment. It is scheduled to be released on CJ ENM’s streaming platform TVING on Friday.
Considering its own merits, the house It’s far from innovative. Instead of a paper-thin story, it scans as a fairly haunting horror film that relies heavily on dark atmosphere, digital gore, and jump scares.
But behind the scenes, the film represents cutting-edge use of rapidly evolving technology that dramatically reduces both cost and production time.
According to CJ ENM, the actors’ performances were filmed entirely on an indoor green screen stage, and all backgrounds and visual effects were created with AI using Google tools such as Imagen, Nano Banana, and Veo.
“We expanded the production paradigm,” said Jeong Chang-ik, head of CJ ENM’s AI studio and lead producer. the househe said during a panel discussion after Thursday’s premiere.
The film cost about $337,000 to make, which was at least one-fifth cheaper than comparable traditional productions, Chung said.
He added that the efficiency gains could be especially noticeable in genre films, disaster movies and other effects-heavy productions.
“From our perspective, there’s not much of a difference in production costs between creating a scene where the main character drinks coffee in a cafe and creating a scene where the main character defeats a monster,” he said. “There’s a big difference in practice, but not so much when it comes to AI.”
Actor Kim Shin-young, who plays a security guard in the film, said the process is very different from traditional chromakey filming, where actors have to imagine the effects that will be added later.
“Being able to act and see the completed backgrounds in real time made it much more immersive,” Kim said, adding that the entire shoot took just four days.
The rapid adoption of AI is causing alarm across the global entertainment industry, contributing to a Hollywood strike in 2023 amid concerns about job losses and creative control. However, this technology is already widely integrated throughout the production pipeline.
team behind the house He said the goal is not to replace actors or creators, but to integrate AI into existing production workflows.
Ahn Sung-min, director of customer engineering at Google Cloud Korea, said AI is not used to “replace creativity” but to realize creators’ intentions in the filmmaking process.
CJ ENM executives also rejected the idea that AI could replace human performers.
“In fact, we believe that AI cannot replace the performance of an actor,” said Baek Hyun-jung, head of content innovation. “That’s why we designed this hybrid approach to preserve the actors’ unique expressiveness while using AI for backgrounds and effects.”
The experiment comes as South Korea’s film industry faces increasing pressure from rising production costs, declining investment and competition from streaming platforms.
According to data from the Korea Film Council, theater attendance in 2025 decreased by 13.8% from the previous year, and domestic film revenues decreased by 39.4%.
Despite the global popularity of Korean content, Choi Hwi-young, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said in September that the reality facing the country’s creative industries is one of “despair.”
He singled out the film sector as the most vulnerable sector, noting that the number of commercial productions in South Korea has declined from about 60 a year to about 20 by 2025.
“Investment has stopped, and funding for film production has dried up,” Choi said. “The film industry ecosystem is collapsing to the point where filmmakers can no longer make a living.”
Some top filmmakers have responded with dramatic means, such as “microbudget” productions. Train to Busan 2025 movie directed by Yeon Sang-ho ugly The film was made for about $150,000, had respectable performances, and drew more than 1 million theatrical viewers before landing on Netflix.
Against this backdrop, AI is increasingly attracting attention as a potential lifeline for the industry.
For CJ ENM, the house Built on a growing number of AI-driven projects, including animated series cat biggiereleased online last year.
The new film is more of a proof of concept than a finished template. That visual seam is still visible, and panelists acknowledged that AI tools still struggle with consistency, especially in longer narrative pieces.
Still, executives said AI is likely to become an integral part of mainstream filmmaking.
“I think AI will be the next generation of CGI,” Baek said. “The era will soon come when the boundaries between regular movies and AI movies will disappear.”
