Critterz was pitched to distributors as a film, not a demo

The shot

On 6 March 2025, Variety reported that Vertigo Films and the Los Angeles studio Native Foreign were developing 'Critterz,' a feature-length adaptation of a 2023 short that Variety describes as the first AI film to combine OpenAI's Dall-E visuals with traditional animation. Writers James Lamont and Jon Foster, credited on 'Paddington in Peru,' were attached to script the family feature, with OpenAI creative strategist Chad Nelson, who made the original short, staying on as a consulting producer. More than a year later, Vertigo's own site reposted trade coverage confirming the project had reached a Cannes market pre-sale handled by AGC Studios.

What the documents show

Variety's original report is the production company's own announced plan, made through the trade press rather than a formal press release, naming a production start intended for April 2025 and describing the project's ambition, in the producers' words, to 'set a new benchmark for generative storytelling pairing human-driven creativity and traditional animation techniques.' That is a stated intention, not a finished film. The later Vertigo repost names a different director, Nik Kleverov, and quotes AGC chairman Stuart Ford calling the project a demonstration of how AI can 'integrate into production without replacing artistry,' a claim made by the executive selling the film, a promotional framing even though the underlying production activity is independently confirmed by Cannes market pre-sales.

The workflow

A Forbes account reposted on Vertigo's own site describes the production system, called Woven, as a tool for 'versioning, scene work and human judgment' rather than a generation engine on its own; in it, Nelson states that 'our artists feed the AI their own sketches, their own imaginative characters,' with the model building on that material rather than substituting for it. The same account describes a concrete production event: after OpenAI wound down Sora, the model the project was originally built around, the team had to integrate other AI models into Woven, a disruption the director describes managing rather than one the production avoided.

What the tool does not change

The Forbes account states plainly that footage was judged by distributors on ordinary commercial grounds, down to a specific worry about a character pushing the film from a G to a PG rating, a studio-classification concern with no connection to how the visuals were produced. Vertigo producer James Richardson is quoted describing festival conversation shifting 'from argument to method,' a description of industry reception, not a claim that the finished film has been completed or released.

• Does an announcement describe a finished film, or a production plan with a stated future timeline?
• Who is quoted defending the project's AI use: an independent observer, or an executive with a financial stake in selling it?
• What disruption did the production have to work around, and does the account describe how, specifically?

Read across a year, these sources trace a producer's announced plan into a market test in front of paying distributors, without yet reaching the point of a reviewed, released feature this site could evaluate on its own terms.