The Canadian data-analysis company Greenlight Essentials has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first feature film project, co-written by an artificial intelligence.

The company is seeking CA$30,000 (£17,300) on the world’s largest crowdfunding platform to produce the horror film “Impossible Things”.

The film project, five years in the making, produced a software which analyses success in the horror genre. It then utilise most successful plot points to create a script likely to appeal to the target audience.

Jack Zang, founder of Greenlight Essentials stated in a press release:

“A little over 85% of movies made today don’t make a profit [at the] box office, which is the result of a mismatch between the movies being produced and audiences’ tastes. […] We used [artificial intelligence] to generate the premise and the key plot points of the film. Before a single word was written, our AI told us that if we wanted to match audience taste, we needed to make a horror film that featured both ghost and family relationships, and that a piano scene and a bathtub scene would need to be used in the movie trailer to increase the likelihood that our target audience would like it.”

So far the project has already produced a finished script as well as a trailer making use of the software.

The script has been engineered to appeal to women under 25, a key customer segment for the horror film industry.

Its’ story line follows a couple with two children. The family decides to move to a secluded country house after the death of one of their twin-daughters. The mother, Madeline as well as her daughter begin to hear voices and experience violent visions which pit them against one another.

Film will be first of its’ kind, entering new depths of AI use in film making

Artificial intelligence has previously helped create the short film “Sunspring”, which received mixed reviews. “Impossible Things” will be the first feature length film partially written by a target engineered software.

Crowdfunding campaign raised close to 40% in first 1.5 weeks

So far the project’s Kickstarter Campaign has already raised CA$11,162 in the first one and a half weeks. Another 46 days remain to reach the target amount of CA$30,000.

Backers will be rewarded with a mention on the backer’s wall. Depending on contributed amount they will also receive extras such as a digital copy of the script and the film.

Katharina Fleiner 08/08/2016