Higgsfield AI has premiered The Cully Hill Boys, a 110-minute feature generated entirely with AI and starring licensed digital likenesses of real celebrities.
The AI video industry just crossed another line.
Higgsfield AI has premiered The Cully Hill Boys, a 110-minute action-comedy that the company describes as the world’s first fully AI-generated feature film to use licensed likenesses of real celebrities.
The cast includes UFC champions Israel Adesanya and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, livestreamer N3on, and streetball athlete Matt Kiatipis. Their faces and voices were used under licensing agreements rather than being replicated without permission.
And the economics are perhaps even more interesting than the technology.
Higgsfield says the movie cost roughly $2 million to produce, with about $1 million spent on AI compute. A 28-person team created around 1,000 production-ready assets across more than 100 locations in just four weeks.
For comparison, Higgsfield says its previous AI feature, Hell Grind, took a similar approach but was 95 minutes long and cost about $500,000. The company argues that AI is allowing production scale to increase dramatically without the traditional Hollywood budget or timeline.
But this isn't simply a story about replacing actors or filmmakers with AI.
The more important development is the business model around digital likenesses.
Before production, the performers reportedly supplied high-resolution photographs and voice recordings. Their agreements covered compensation, how their likenesses could be used, and script approval. Higgsfield also says the original source assets were deleted within 30 days after production.
That distinction could become crucial as generative video gets more realistic.
For years, the biggest concern around AI-generated entertainment has been unauthorized deepfakes and digital replicas. Higgsfield is demonstrating the opposite model: what if an actor's face and voice become licensable assets that can be commercially deployed inside AI-generated stories?
That's a potentially enormous new market.
The production itself also wasn't fully automated. Nine directors worked simultaneously on different sequences, while editors, production designers, generative artists and other traditional film professionals helped maintain consistency and shape the final movie. Around 40% of the 28-person team reportedly came from traditional production backgrounds with no prior AI experience.
In other words, AI generated much of the raw material—but humans still controlled the filmmaking.
This could be an early blueprint for AI-native Hollywood.
Instead of spending tens of millions of dollars and months or years producing a film, smaller teams could potentially create ambitious projects for a fraction of the traditional cost.
More importantly, celebrities may eventually treat their digital identities like intellectual property.
An actor could license their likeness for a movie, game, advertisement or virtual experience without physically appearing in every production.
That creates a new revenue stream for talent—and a new production tool for studios.
AI filmmaking could dramatically lower the barrier to creating movies.
Independent filmmakers could attempt stories that were previously too expensive. Brands could produce cinematic campaigns without traditional production costs. And creators anywhere in the world could potentially build Hollywood-scale visual experiences with much smaller teams.
The technology could also give audiences more variety by making niche and experimental projects economically viable.
The technology still raises major questions.
Who controls an AI version of an actor? How much should performers be paid? What happens when a digital likeness appears in a controversial story? And where do we draw the line between creative freedom and exploitation?
Licensing solves some of those problems—but not all of them.
There's also the question of whether audiences will embrace AI-generated performances as readily as traditional acting.
The Cully Hill Boys isn't necessarily proof that AI is about to replace Hollywood.
It's evidence that the economics of filmmaking are changing.
The cost of generating images and video is falling rapidly, while human creativity, directing, editing, storytelling and performance are being reorganized around AI.
And perhaps the biggest shift is this:
Actors may no longer just sell performances. They may sell licenses to their digital identities.
That's a business model Hollywood—and the broader creator economy—will be watching very closely.