Invideo Invites Top Indian Filmmakers and Producers to Discuss AI Film Costs
Invideo gathered leading Indian filmmakers and heads of production companies who decide whether projects get greenlit to discuss the real costs of AI film production and which aspects of filmmaking it can never change.
The event, titled The Next Frame: India Edition, has released a full dialogue. The host was Invideo's Chief Creative Technology Officer Nishant Tahilramani, and participants included director Rajkumar Hirani of 3 Idiots, director Shakun Batra of Kapoor & Sons, director Ram Madhvani of Neerja, Invideo's Global Creative Director Hridaye Nagpal, founder and CEO of Abundantia Entertainment Vikram Malhotra, and founder of Lionsgate Play Asia Rohit Jain.
Invideo previously partnered with Abundantia Entertainment to invest approximately $110 million to launch an AI film production studio, planning to produce five AI-driven films within three years. The company also collaborated with Google Cloud to integrate models like Veo into enterprise-level production processes.
Invideo's publicly available AI production data shows that the cost of completing a short film is about $315 to $750 per minute, with a 2-minute brand advertisement costing around $1,500, while traditional filming of equivalent content is estimated at $100,000 to $500,000, significantly reducing time and costs.
Mechanically, filmmakers and producers jointly assess the impact of AI tools on project initiation and production processes, with Invideo promoting its agency and multi-model platform through such dialogues. Producers using AI may lower production costs and accelerate iterations, putting pressure on traditional high-cost production models, benefiting tool providers and early adopters.
Additional information indicates that Invideo users span over 190 countries, having raised more than $50 million, and recently launched the MCP interface supporting integration of over 250 models and timeline editing.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
In February 2026, Invideo announced a strategic partnership with Abundantia Entertainment, investing 1 billion rupees (approximately $11 million) to build an AI film studio, utilizing its generative technology through the aiON division and integrating Vertex AI models with Google Cloud to create an end-to-end production pipeline. Previously, it collaborated with Whistling Woods International to establish an AI lab, incorporating tools into film education.
In terms of capital pathways, Invideo is aligning its product capabilities with mainstream Indian production companies, shifting resources from tool subscriptions and credit consumption to co-production and project decision-making influence, motivated by the need to validate AI cost structures and expand adoption in the Indian film industry, while collecting feedback from filmmakers on narrative and craft through public dialogues.
Similar cases include early digital effects companies collaborating with Hollywood studios and streaming platforms compressing independent production costs, currently in an expansion phase from tool trials to formal production process integration, with independent and mid-sized production companies beginning to assess AI's actual impact on budgets and timelines.
Essentially, this represents a restructuring of the industry chain, where the mechanism shifts production costs from being dominated by labor and locations to being driven by computing power and iteration, with project initiation standards moving from traditional budget feasibility to AI feasibility and narrative quality, leading to a shift in producers' power from controlling high-cost resources to selecting projects that can be accelerated by AI, resulting in the replacement or compression of certain links in the traditional production chain.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
When tools reduce costs, decision-making power remains in the hands of those choosing the story.
Technology changes the way of production but does not alter the standards of why audiences watch.
After cost compression, project initiation shifts from financial constraints to judgment constraints.