Inside China's AI Filmmaking Revolution: How Hengdian Studios Is Transforming Production
Courtesy of studio.aifilms.ai. Virtual production facility at intelligent filming base | Photo by New Taipei City Government, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons
A post production technician in Dongyang, China faces a problem familiar to budget filmmakers: creating epic battle sequences with few actors and less time. Zhang Shiyu's solution arrives not from traditional VFX studios but from artificial intelligence systems that generate entire armies of digital performers in minutes.
"What used to take me long days to create, AI can deliver in mere minutes with even greater continuity and realism," said Zhang, who works for Dongyang Gewuzhizhi Culture Media at Hengdian World Studios. The leap in large language models through 2025 transformed his workflow from labor intensive frame manipulation to rapid AI assisted generation.
Zhang's experience reflects a broader industrial transformation centered in Hengdian, often called "China's Hollywood." By the end of October 2025, the studio complex hosted 3,095 vertical screen drama crews and productions. The annual total projects to triple 2024's numbers. China's short and micro drama market reached 50.44 billion yuan ($6.9 billion) in 2024, surpassing the traditional film market for the first time while creating 647,000 direct and indirect jobs.
