FIFA World Cup 2026

A tournament that doesn't exist yet

The ask: capture the emotion of the biggest World Cup in history before a single match is played.

Scripting chaos into five minutes

Three weeks of boards before a single frame was generated. We wrote the film as eleven match moments (a keeper's fingertip save, a fan's face in extra time, confetti hitting wet turf) and cast each moment to a nation, a kit, a time of day. The edit was locked on animatics first, so every generation had a target to hit.

Generate wide, edit ruthless

Roughly 4,100 shots were generated to land the 160 in the final cut. That is a 25:1 shooting ratio, documentary territory. Every hero shot went through our consistency pipeline: locked character sheets per player archetype, kit and crest control via reference conditioning, and a colour pass that pulls everything to one broadcast-grade look.

Motion was the hard part. Ball physics, crowd surges and camera language (long lenses, deep stadium compression) were iterated shot by shot until nothing read as generated.

The stack

Placeholder — A hybrid pipeline: image models for style frames and casting, video models for motion, and a conventional finish (edit, grade, sound) so the film cuts like broadcast sport, not like a tech demo.

Numbers that travelled

Placeholder — 12M organic views in the first two weeks across YouTube, TikTok and X. Picked up by football media in nine languages. The film became the reference point for 'AI sports storytelling' — and the pitch deck for three follow-up commissions.