"Kill Nakamoto" will be presented to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival to seek distribution.

Mars Finance News, April 16 — According to The Wrap, a $70 million movie about the mysterious creator of Bitcoin quietly completed principal photography last month in London in a location that looks like a warehouse facility, in a so-called “gray box.” On the surface, this appears to be a fairly standard commercial film—directed by Doug Liman, with a cast including Gal Gadot, Pete Davidson, Casey Affleck, and Isla Fisher—telling a globe-trotting thriller story centered on finding the identity of the decentralized cryptocurrency inventor. But it has one key difference: Bitcoin: Kill Satoshi is described as the first fully generated, studio-level AI feature film. Acme AI & FX produced this independent film.

According to the producers, the film was shot in a custom-built studio over 20 days, and was produced using AI technology, enabling a project that might traditionally cost up to $300 million to be completed under a more controllable budget. While the set design and lighting were generated by AI, the actors’ performances themselves would not be changed. They wore the costumes that will ultimately appear on screen, and Casey Affleck also underwent wig and makeup styling before filming. What audiences will see will be the raw footage of the actors’ genuine performances.

“Performance is performance itself,” said producer Ryan Kavanaugh. “We capture performances in a very unique way. This AI workflow takes the actors’ performances as the core when generating the images, and constructs everything within that performance framework.” Although the producer declined to disclose the specific program used by the AI, he said it is a “brand-new approach” for inserting and blending actors’ performances with all background elements.

To produce Bitcoin: Kill Satoshi—the film is scheduled to be pitched to buyers at the Cannes International Film Festival in May in order to secure distribution—the production employed a total of 107 actors, 100 filming crew members, and 54 non-filming personnel. This scale is relatively common in independent films, but large commercial films often require thousands of staff to complete production. Director Doug Liman is currently in a 30-week post-production phase, during which 55 AI artists will be involved. Producer Lawrence Grey explained, “AI will not replace human involvement,” adding that “human participation is absolutely indispensable throughout the entire process.”