Elon Musk’s AI Odyssey has arrived as a seven-minute first episode, not the full-length film he promised. Grok Imagine, the video tool behind it, posted the episode on X on 23 October. Wonder Studios, a London-based startup, made it with the US director Dev Walker.
Watch Episode 1 of our Odyssey series made with Grok Imagine.
Let us know in the comments if you’d like a full breakdown of how it was done!
Creative collaboration with @WonderStudiosX and director Dev Walker @glumlot_ https://t.co/xpgpkqSCpq
— Grok Imagine (@imagine) October 23, 2026
Musk had criticised the casting in Christopher Nolan’s film of the same epic, including Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. In July, he said in an X post that Grok Imagine would make a “historically accurate” Odyssey before the end of the year. By Wednesday, the episode had more than 7.9m views on X. SpaceX, which runs Grok, launched a partner network for Grok last week.
What the studio says
Xavier Collins, Wonder’s co-founder, told Dan Milmo of the Guardian that a team of three, including Walker, made the episode. It took under two weeks. The Guardian reported that it cost tens of thousands of dollars. Nolan’s version cost $250m, was shot over 91 days and has made $1.8bn at the box office.
“We were not given any direction to make it [Musk’s version] anti-woke or anything like that. We were given the opportunity by one of the world’s best frontier labs to work on one of the best stories ever told,” Collins told the Guardian.
Collins said he was a “huge fan” of Nolan’s film. The next episode will address criticism of the historical accuracy of the boats and the fast pacing, he said.
“The goal is that the last episode we make is radically better than the first,” Collins said.
Collins and filmmaker Justin Hackney founded Wonder in 2025, Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez reported for Fortune. Its website says it has raised more than $15m. Musk this month also put about $1bn into David Ellison’s Skydance, the Hollywood studio.
The reviews
Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian’s film critic, gave the episode one star.
“Every single dramatic moment … is all as motiveless and meaningless as the movement of shapes on a laptop screensaver,” Bradshaw wrote.
Online, viewers mocked the jarring cuts, plastic-looking characters and modern English dialogue, Fortune reported. Others saw progress for AI video.
“There’s a lot of room for growth, but the good news is there will be growth,” one X user wrote.
A Prime series made with AI
A second AI production has also reached viewers. Castle Walls comes from the Turkish studio Ay Yapım and has premiered on Amazon’s Prime Video. The Guardian noted its billing as the first end-to-end AI-created series on a major streaming platform. Its two 17-minute episodes are set at Alamut Castle in the 11th century.
The series used human voice actors. Its scripts reportedly came from human screenwriters Kerem Deren and Çisil Hazal Tenim. Luke Buckmaster gave it a harsh review in the Guardian.
“As soon as the ‘people’ appeared, looking like Vaseline-smeared Madame Tussauds creations slowly melting in the sun, everything came crashing down,” Buckmaster wrote.
Ay Yapım has defended its approach, the review noted.
“This is not a production that bypassed human skill; it is one that used AI to amplify it,” the studio has said.
In China, Sanxingdui: Future Past made about $180,000 in its first four days. It is the country’s first all-AI feature film.