Abundantia AiOn to become a standalone AI studio in 2027

India's Abundantia Entertainment plans to turn its AI production division, Abundantia AiOn, into a fully standalone native AI studio in 2027, founder and CEO Vikram Malhotra said in an exclusive interview with Deadline published on October 7, 2026.

Malhotra told Deadline that AiOn will develop its own stories, produce both fully generated and hybrid work, and manage its own creative and production ecosystem, the way Abundantia runs as a standalone studio. Fully standalone and native are the company's framing: AiOn will sit inside Abundantia for now, and Malhotra said he will keep leading it in the near term. The name stays AiOn, he added, and the company is not renaming it AiOn Studios.

Hybrid, in this plan, means live-action plus AI. That definition comes from Bollywood Hungama, which reported on October 12, 2026 that AiOn will produce and back both fully AI-generated and hybrid projects and that Malhotra described the unit as a fully-integrated, total capability movie studio. He called the shift "a confluence of technology and art."

He gave one figure as the trigger. Over the last six months, Malhotra said, he received on average three times as many story pitches from people who have never written, made films or worked in the conventional filmmaking ecosystem as before. He cited directors Curry Barker (Obsession) and Kane Parsons (Backrooms) as evidence of a democratization of ideas that AI studios would carry.

Abundantia is not an AI startup. Malhotra founded it in 2013 after serving as COO of Viacom18 Motion Pictures, and the studio marked 13 years on October 26, 2026. It launched Abundantia AiOn in October 2025. Its 2026 releases include the Netflix film Maa Behen, which Abundantia says trended at No. 1 on Netflix India and No. 2 among the platform's non-English films worldwide, and the Prime Video film Subedaar and the series Daldal.

The AI work already has a joint venture behind it. In February 2026, Abundantia and the AI video company InVideo announced a film studio with a commitment of 100 crore rupees, about $11 million, to develop five AI-driven films over three years, according to Variety and Fortune India. Malhotra told Deadline that the InVideo work is bearing fruit: two films are under way, including one about to go on the floors, and three more scripts, with defined filmmakers, timelines and budgets, are in development.

Two titles lead AiOn's slate. Chiranjeevi Hanuman – The Eternal, an AI-generated feature made with Collective Artists Network, was announced for a 2026 theatrical release, and Malhotra said it is completing readiness. Jai Santoshi Mata: Sukh Sampatti Daata is a hybrid project set to go on the floors early next year. Neither has been released.

For creators, the notable fact is who is building this. An established Indian studio with a 13-year track record and streaming hits is developing an AI-native arm with its own slate rather than a cost-cutting experiment, and it says it is sourcing ideas from outside the traditional industry. Whether that turns into released films, or commissions for first-time creators, depends on a slate that has not reached screens.

Abundantia says AiOn's first slate begins rolling out in the first quarter of 2027, the same year the studio is slated to launch.