Terrarium's horror shoot swaps sets for 15 to 20 AI artists

Jason Zada's AI-hybrid horror film "Terrarium" is shooting its actors on a bare, well-lit soundstage while a team of 15 to 20 AI "artists" build every location and prop around them, according to a Variety set visit published September 30. Variety's Corbin Bolies toured Hollywood's BLT Studios during one of the film's final days of production and found no props and no Volume-style LED screens, just actors working against black tarps hiding the production's 26 crew members.

For creators watching Hollywood's AI fight play out, Terrarium puts a number on the labor question. Zada says the production runs inside what he calls "a fully DGA and SAG-AFTRA–compliant workflow," according to his own account on Secret Level's site, and it goes further than isolated effects shots: nearly the entire visual world around the actors is AI-generated.

Variety reported that the convenience store and underground tunnel the film's four teenage leads encounter are both AI-generated, and that even their blocking is assembled digitally: Zada shoots each actor alone against a separate camera and composites the performances into one scene. Terrarium was announced in May following the AI on the Lot event, a partnership between Zada's AI-native studio Secret Level and the AI platform Artlist, which Variety reported is financing the film and supplying its tools. Steven Schneider, whose credits include Paranormal Activity, Insidious and 2025's The Long Walk, executive produces, and the cast includes Jake Busey, known for Starship Troopers and Stranger Things, according to Variety.

Zada told Variety the film will look like it cost $40 million despite running on a microbudget he and the producers declined to disclose. His 2016 debut, "The Forest," grossed about $40 million on a reported $10 million budget, per the report. He dismissed AI critics' concerns, from environmental cost to data centers, as "hearsay," comparing resistance to AI to past resistance against CGI.

Terrarium is not the only production testing this model. The AI studio Promise generated an entire meadow around an actor for its horror film "Touch Grass," and estimates hybrid shoots can cost 20% to 50% less than conventional ones, eWeek reported in August. Imagine Entertainment's AI studio Obsidian claims similar savings of 30% to 40% on its animated film "The Code."

On the record, both Secret Level and Artlist frame the workflow as additive rather than a replacement. Artlist's own blog describes the production as built around "performer-consent protections and union oversight," and Zada wrote on Secret Level's site that "none of this is about replacing anyone." Variety reported that 17-year-old lead actor Kylee Levien spent much of her contract negotiation ensuring her performance stayed intact rather than becoming, in her words, "AI impersonating me."

Still, Terrarium has no distributor as of Variety's report, and neither the finished cost savings nor the finished film have been shown publicly. Zada told Variety he aims to wrap production within the week of the visit.

Terrarium remains without a distributor. Whether its claimed $40 million look on a microbudget holds up will only be testable once the film screens for buyers.