Studio Meta-K warns AI token costs could top 35mm-era budgets

Kim Kwang-jib, founder and CEO of the Korean AI content studio Studio Meta-K, said at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest in Taipei that the token bill for a 100-minute AI film can already exceed KRW500 million ($366,000) using the most expensive commercial tools, and that a tenfold price increase would take it to KRW5 billion ($3.66 million).

That bill is far below what a Korean or Taiwanese feature costs, but the tenfold figure is not. Asian features usually spend KRW3 billion to KRW5 billion ($2.2 million to $3.66 million) on live action and visual effects, Kim said, while Hollywood, with KRW200 billion ($146.6 million) budgets, could absorb the increase and still make AI films cheaply. "If they raise token costs roughly tenfold, it could go above what the films we're shooting now cost," he said.

The mechanism, Kim argued, reverses the shift from celluloid to digital. Crews planned meticulously when every take burned film stock, and digital cameras made retakes nearly free. With AI, every re-render is billed again. Ten client changes delivered at once mean one paid re-render; the same ten arriving one a day mean ten. "Unless the preproduction stage is made solid, I think AI could end up spending even more money than in the 35mm film era," Kim said. AI vendors are all losing money and are keeping prices low as a marketing play, he added.

Lee Sang-wook, head of the AI Content Lab at MBC C&I, a subsidiary of the Korean broadcaster MBC, offered the working case. His lab's 139-minute AI feature "Raphael" took about a year and four months to make, and a single shot sometimes tied up around 10 artists for a full day. The project had backing from Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency, and opens in Korean cinemas on Nov. 25. Budgeting stays difficult, Lee said, because the tools keep moving. "If you apply technology from a year ago, the scenes look very old."

The market was hostile at first. "When we made AI short films in 2024, the market reaction was very cold, in Korea as well," Lee said. The lab began with AI shorts in 2024 and later packaged AI content as "The Prompt: Next Drama" on Korean streamer Wavve. Lee said MBC C&I avoids open-source models because it cannot verify the transparency of their training data, that no model yet meets European Union AI Act guidelines, and that the company has joined C2PA, a content-provenance standard.

Advertising is where AI already pays. A Pizza Hut TV spot that took about eight months and roughly KRW2 billion ($1.4 million) to produce took Studio Meta-K about two weeks and around KRW30 million ($22,000), or about 2% of the cost, Kim said. Drama is a harder sell. Kim does not think audiences will yet pay to watch fully AI films or series, so he favors a hybrid: generate a scene that needs 500-plus extras, and shoot the leads' close-ups live. Studio Meta-K is producing war scenes with AI for the KBS program "History Special."

On jobs, Kim said crews of hundreds on a single scene will grow rarer, and roles such as drone operators and set work could largely disappear. "I personally think workers who have learned AI will replace workers who haven't," he said. Lee compared the change to the arrival of sound in film and predicted new roles in previsualization and continuity.

Founded in 2022 with drama directors and writers, Studio Meta-K has completed more than 100 commercial projects. It was selected this year for two government research and development projects worth about KRW15 billion ($11 million) combined, raised around KRW3 billion ($2.2 million) in a Series A last year and around KRW10 billion ($7.3 million) this month, and is preparing an IPO next year. It is also converting Im Kwon-taek's 1993 classic "Seopyeonje" into an animated feature for a theatrical release next summer, with Busan's Dongseo University and the director's involvement.

The warning lands on a Korean market where AI features have yet to find an audience. Two fully AI features released in May, "I'm PoPo" and "Man in Hanbok," drew 781 and 640 admissions before leaving theaters, according to Korea JoongAng Daily, citing Korean Film Council data. The 90-minute "Steelay," released in October, was made for under about KRW1 billion ($750,000), the Korea Times reported. Domestic box office sales are 45% below pre-pandemic levels, and just 20 films were made last year with budgets over KRW3 billion ($2.15 million), down from 40 to 50 pre-pandemic, according to the Korean Film Council.

The dollar figures are the outlets' conversions; the numbers are conference remarks, not audited budgets.

"Raphael" opens in Korean cinemas on Nov. 25, and Studio Meta-K's AI-animated "Seopyeonje" is targeted for theaters next summer.