The Chinese streaming platform’s new supernatural feature uses AI across its production pipeline, offering an early test of how AIGC can move from short experiments into commercial filmmaking.
iQIYI has premiered “Mystic Tales: The Spider Lady’s Vendetta,” a feature-length production created using artificial intelligence tools throughout its filmmaking process. Running for more than 60 minutes, the supernatural film is described as China’s first AIGC internet feature released under an Internet Drama and Film Distribution License, making its arrival a useful marker of how quickly AI-generated content is moving toward conventional entertainment formats.
The film draws on classical Chinese mythology and opens a planned “Mystic Tales Trilogy.” Its story follows an amnesiac paper master who enters a hidden realm between the living and spirit worlds in search of three mystical objects, combining themes of obsession and redemption with an Eastern gothic visual style. That cultural framing is notable because the production is not simply an AI demonstration, but an attempt to use emerging tools in service of a sustained narrative and recognizable artistic direction.
A team of more than 20 people developed the project through a pipeline spanning creative development, prompt engineering, visual generation, AI-assisted redrawing, 4K output and post-production. More than 200 character and visual asset designs were created, while lead characters went through more than 10 rounds of exploration. The process also introduced specialized roles such as prompt engineers and AI asset effects artists alongside traditional directors and screenwriters.
The production suggests that AI may alter filmmaking labor without eliminating the need for human creative decisions. According to the filmmakers, rapid generation made it possible to test visual ideas repeatedly in compressed timeframes, but maintaining character consistency, staging scenes and shaping convincing performances remained significant challenges. The resulting workflow therefore points toward collaboration between specialized human teams and increasingly capable generative models rather than fully automated filmmaking.
For iQIYI, the release extends an AI content strategy that began with shorter-form experiments through its Peter Pau x iQIYI AI Theater in 2025. Moving to a licensed, hour-long commercial feature raises a different set of questions around consistency, storytelling quality and audience acceptance. “The Spider Lady’s Vendetta” will not answer those questions by itself, but it provides an early example of what long-form AIGC production looks like when it moves beyond demonstration projects and into mainstream distribution.
