AI Film ‘Gods Don’t Give Gifts’ Sets First Trailer for December Theatrical Run, Plans Oscar Bid for Best Animated Feature

It’ll take a bit longer for the first AI-generated film to make it to theaters — because it’s gunning for an Oscar.

The AI studio Fable has shifted the U.S. release of “Gods Don’t Give Gifts,” the collection of four anthology shorts by the AI-focused YouTuber Gossip Goblin (né Zack London), from Oct. 30 to Dec. 4. While Fable has not yet disclosed a distributor for the film, the film’s trailer will make its debut in theaters on Friday, and its poster will spread across U.S. multiplexes.

Fable and London revealed their ambitious plans for a theatrical rollout in July, hoping to follow the path laid by YouTubers-turned-filmmakers Kane Parsons and Mark Fischbach, or Markiplier, who leveraged their respective YouTube followings to box office successes in “Backrooms” ($401 million) and “Iron Lung” ($51.2 million). Its story — which lies within the “second cycle of humanity” within the Gossip Goblin universe’s “13 cycles” and aims to satirize society’s relationship with AI — traces the fallout of humanity besting earthly limitations like death and memory through technology and how it grapples with humanity as a result.

But the roughly monthlong delay comes with an ulterior motive: a bid to get the project closer to the traditional Oscar campaign season. Fable plans to submit the film for consideration in the best animated feature category for the upcoming Oscars, testing both the Academy’s hesitation toward publicly AI-powered films and whether AI-generated projects can stand among films generally regarded as the year’s best in cinema.

The campaign will also include advanced screenings for Academy voters, pre-release screenings for critics and a billboard advertising campaign across Los Angeles next month, all to celebrate what Fable CEO Edward Saatchi claims is “a seminal, historic moment in animation.”

“For 5 years, the question has been when will an AI film win an Oscar? Gods Don’t Give Gifts is the first that has a shot at a nomination and then it’s all to play for,” Saatchi said in a statement. “We feel it could be this generation’s Toy Story – the fact that this generation’s Toy Story is a dark, satirical, bold statement on all 2026’s fears about AI and our species’ future is an appropriate commentary on the questions we are all confronting as a society.”

London describes the anthology in a statement as “part speculation, part critique” and hopes audiences can “take a premise seriously, follow its emotional consequences, and let the results be strange, funny, grotesque, and sad.”

“I made these films with AI, which some people find ironic,” he said. “But using a medium to interrogate that medium is one of the oldest moves in art; I may just be early to do it with AI. But what AI actually gave me is the ability to transmit stories onto a screen, with minimal filters, intervention, committees or constraints. Its enabled myself and a small talented team to envision an extravagant world, down to its smallest prop, and bring it to life with extraordinary fidelity – from jaw-dropping visuals of leviathans and space ships and talking apes, down to the scuffed up sneakers on a background extra.”

“Gods Don’t Give Gifts” will represent the biggest test of whether the Academy is willing to accept wholesale AI-generated films since its May ban on AI actors or AI-assisted scripts. But generally, according to its published eligibility rules, AI tools “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination” and the relevant Academy branches will “judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.” 

“If questions arise regarding the aforementioned use of Generative Artificial Intelligence, the Academy reserves the right to request more information about the nature of the use and human authorship,” the rules state.

The film’s violence, and “R” rating from the Motion Picture Association, may also serve as a barrier. The first R-rated film nominated for best animated feature was Charlie Kaufman’s 2015 stop-motion picture “Anomalisa.”