Tomorrow Tuesday — August 2026 (Issue #6)
These past weeks we found out that to make a hit movie in China you don’t even need to know how to animate. It does help to have a mother who supports you for five years (more on that below). If instead you want to make movies that are a hit because of their quality, at SOUTS we’re on the hunt for projects.
Welcome to another issue of Tomorrow Tuesday, where we cover the revolution running through film, video games, music and the creative industries.
A newsletter by SOUTS, where we explore what happens when artificial intelligence stops being just a tool and starts changing the way we create and consume stories.
Ventana Sur is back in Montevideo
From November 30 to December 4, Ventana Sur returns to Montevideo. For those who don’t know it, Ventana Sur is the main audiovisual market in Latin America.
Beyond the traditional sections for fiction, documentary, animation, series and genre film, since last year there’s VS Tech, the section dedicated to the intersection between technology and the audiovisual industry.
Inside VS Tech, the second edition of Humans + AI: in action just opened, a call for audiovisual works made with artificial intelligence. It’s a great opportunity for anyone with projects they want to show.
Last year SOUTS presented TINK, a project I directed myself, originally for the Runway 48 Hours. This year we’re taking a different role, supporting the Humans + AI initiative (and putting up a prize that will be announced later 🤫).
So if you have interesting shorts, music videos or documentaries made with artificial intelligence, send in your project. If it gets selected we’ll see each other in Montevideo, where we’ll be organizing a few things around the event.
We’re also going to announce a little workshop, but all in good time.
China’s worst animated movie is killing it
The absurd/insane/inspiring animation story of the year is an emotional rollercoaster.
Niu Lai is a Chinese animated movie about a calf trying to stand up who ends up in a story of friendship, courage and survival.
Niu Lai originally opened in a handful of theaters in China. The distributor, a friend of creator Xin Yumeng, said he had been advised not to release the movie because it was really bad. He decided to go ahead anyway.
What’s the deal? The movie is a disaster. The animation looks like a first-year student’s, there are mistakes everywhere and scenes that make no sense. All bad.
In its first ten days it grosses around USD 1,000.
But if that were all, it wouldn’t be news…
Then images start going around on social media. People make fun of it and call it “the worst movie in history.” It’s so bad that everyone wants to go see it. Classic The Room case.
With all that hype we find out that the entire movie was made by Xin and his mother for 300 dollars. Between the two of them they split every task: script, voices, music, animation, editing, production. That’s when it became a sweet story.
The result: the movie has already passed USD 6.7 million, and it was one of the highest-grossing movies of the weekend. More importantly: it became a cultural event.
There were memes, toys, cosplays, and even several companies with the word “bull” in their name saw their stock go up.
Clearly, people are not going to see Niu Laibecause it’s a masterpiece. Part of the phenomenon is the classic “so bad it’s good.” But there’s something else too.
The movie turned into a kind of protest against tidy content, big budgets and polished images. Today anyone can generate a flawless image, but the fact that two people spent five years making something this rough became part of the whole thing.
Draw whatever conclusions you want.
Hollywood is writing the AI rules as it goes
Since November 2023, a group of filmmakers, studios, unions and tech companies has been meeting privately to talk about artificial intelligence.
Now the group made its first proposal public: a document called Human Generative Workflows.
The problem they’re trying to solve is that today we use the word “AI” to describe completely different things.
Under the ‘AI’ umbrella you get a tool that removes noise from a recording, automatic rotoscoping, generating a background with an artist-controlled model, creating synthetic performances, even 100% automated soap operas.
Beyond the obvious reasons to separate these terms, the people in these conversations are the same ones who later negotiate contracts, credits, copyright and working conditions.
The document proposes splitting AI use into three categories.
The first is Utility Techniques & Embedded AI. Tools like denoising, upscaling, audio separation, rotoscoping, markerless motion capture or wire removal. Features we all use without thinking much about whether they use artificial intelligence or not.
The second category is Human Generative Workflows. Pipelines where generative models are part of an artist-controlled process. There can be ComfyUI, LoRAs, Unreal, Blender, Seedance, but the decisions are still human: someone defines the inputs, controls the composition, evaluates each result, discards options and keeps iterating.
The third category is Machine Generative: content produced mainly from prompts, where the system ends up making a big part of the creative decisions.
Obviously this is going to lead to an oversimplification. Reality is much more complex and there are still huge discussions left out (training, licensing, consent). But it’s a good start.
At SOUTS we’ve been trying to explain to clients that the magic “make me a movie” button doesn’t exist. And if it does exist, we don’t think it’s ethical.
This was the first Tomorrow Tuesday to go out on a Wednesday. If you like it, subscribe!
At SOUTSwe try to always stay on top of what’s happening, and every time there’s something relevant we’ll bring it to you in this newsletter.
See you next Tomorrow Tuesday.
Yves
