Chinese streaming platform iQiyi has released Qitan: Paper Blade Across the Wasteland (《奇谭：纸刃渡荒墟》), which the company describes as the first AI-generated content (AIGC) online story film in China to receive a Network Drama/Film Distribution License and go live on a streaming platform1,2.
The film runs for more than 60 minutes and was jointly produced by iQiyi and DaMeng Innovation. AI was used across the creative and production process, including concept development, prompt workflows, visual asset generation, AI-assisted image transfer, 4K output, and postproduction. A team of more than 20 people created over 200 characters and other visual assets for the film.
Qitan: Paper Blade Across the Wasteland is the first installment of iQiyi's planned Qitan trilogy, which uses Chinese supernatural folklore as its creative foundation. The project serves as a long-form test of whether AIGC can support production workflows beyond short videos and promotional content.
ANALYSIS The licensing milestone is the operative detail here. China's Network Drama/Film Distribution License is a regulatory gate that online-distributed films must clear before going live. That an AIGC-produced feature has passed this gate signals that Chinese regulators are willing to approve AI-generated long-form content for public distribution, rather than confining it to experimental or short-form formats.
The production parameters — more than 60 minutes of runtime, over 200 visual assets, a crew of roughly 20 — offer a concrete data point on the labor and asset economics of AIGC filmmaking at feature length. The ratio of assets to team size suggests heavy reliance on generative tooling for character and environment creation.
Framing the release as the first entry in a trilogy indicates iQiyi is treating AIGC filmmaking not as a one-off experiment but as a repeatable production model, with the initial release functioning as a proof of concept for subsequent installments.