InVideo is directing, funding and tooling its own feature film. Beta Builder starts shooting in Mumbai

Jai is a self-taught architect from Dharavi, one of the most crowded neighborhoods in Mumbai, and the only place he gets to build what he imagines is a virtual-reality world. On Thursday 29 October his story started shooting for real, in Mumbai, with Mayur More and Ashlesha Thakur in the lead roles and cameras rolling on live action. The rest of the film, according to its producers, will come out of AI-driven production running alongside the shoot.

The film is Beta Builder, the first feature from a partnership between Abundantia Entertainment's AI division, Abundantia aiON, and the AI video company InVideo. Deadline broke the cast and the start of principal photography as an exclusive, and Bollywood Hungama carried the release text the same day. One outlet, Indian Television, headlined it as India's first gen-AI hybrid feature. The producers didn't make that claim, and nobody has defined what hybrid means on this set: no share of generated footage, no list of scenes and no named models. What is on the record is who sits in which chair, and that is the more interesting story.

One company, four chairs

The director, Hridaye Nagpal, is InVideo's Global Creative Lead. He co-founded GoBo Labs, a studio that made AI-led brand work for clients including Hindustan Times, Lux and Mahindra, and InVideo announced it had bought GoBo Labs on Wednesday 18 February 2026. That was the same day Abundantia and InVideo announced their slate, at the India AI Film Festival in Delhi, an event InVideo hosted with Nvidia as sponsor.

So InVideo hosted the stage where the deal was announced, puts money into the slate, employs the director and makes the software the film will be built with. Abundantia brings a producer's track record (Baby, Airlift, Shakuntala Devi, the Chhorii films, Breathe) and the actors bring screen credits from Kota Factory and The Family Man. Abundantia founder Vikram Malhotra also sat on the festival's jury.

None of that is hidden. InVideo CEO Sanket Shah said as much in his statement to Deadline: "At InVideo, our mission has always been to put powerful tools in the hands of storytellers." He called Beta Builder the place where "that mission takes the form of a full-length film." A tool company making a flagship film with its own tools is a showcase as well as a movie, and readers should watch it as both.

What hybrid means here, and what nobody has said

Deadline describes the production as "pairing full-blown, live-action filming with AI-driven production." Nagpal put it in a single line: "Beta Builder is our bet on that future, with a live-action shoot and AI working side by side." The 23 October title announcement went further and said AI would be used across the production value chain, from development to screen, under what Abundantia calls a human-first, AI-empowered approach.

That is the whole public description. No model, tool or vendor stack is named for this film beyond InVideo itself, which pitches its product as an agent that wires in the major video and image models. The story does split neatly between a real place and a virtual one, so live action for Dharavi and generated environments for the game world would be the obvious division. That's our reading of the story, and the producers haven't confirmed it.

InVideo has shown the method before. Its Academy publishes a hybrid workflow series built around real actors and physical sets combined with AI-generated worlds, and the company lists Penumbra, Juicebox and Hachiko as earlier originals. Whether Beta Builder runs on the same pipeline is not stated.

The money, counted three ways

The slate carries a Rs 100 crore commitment, about $10.5 million at Deadline's conversion. That figure covers five films over three years. It is not the budget for Beta Builder, and no budget for this film has been released.

Who puts up the money depends on which document you read. Bollywood Hungama's 29 October text says "invideo committed Rs 100 crore over three years" for a slate of five AI-driven feature films. The 23 October announcement calls it "a three-film slate backed by an Rs. 100 crores joint corpus between Abundantia aiON and InVideo," and later in the same release calls the film "the first in a slate of five AI-driven films." February's coverage described the partnership as committing the money together. We report it as the partnership's commitment and flag the three-versus-five wobble as the producers' own.

Split evenly, five films would average about Rs 20 crore each. That's our arithmetic, not a disclosed number, and it's modest next to a big Hindi release, a point Fortune India's analysts made when the deal was announced.

The first that isn't in the release

The India's first label is a crowded race already. Maharaja in Denims was announced in 2024, Naisha released a trailer in 2025, and Love You opened in Bengaluru in May 2025. Abundantia itself bills a different film, the fully AI Chiranjeevi Hanuman: The Eternal, as India's first AI-generated theatrical feature, and that film was reported delayed on 1 September. Adding a hybrid first on top of those tells you nothing about the film, which is probably why Deadline and the release text left it out.

There is history in the room too. When Chiranjeevi Hanuman was announced, directors Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane criticized AI replacing artists. A hybrid with known actors and a live shoot reads partly as an answer to that criticism, and the film will be judged on whether the screen bears it out.

The writer the press cycle dropped

Beta Builder is adapted from a novel, Beta Builder: Mumbai In The Metaverse, by the Mumbai writer Sukriti YJ. The 23 October title release named her. None of the 29 October reports did. She developed the story as a screenplay first, at the Writers' INK Lab, before it became a book. Her credit on the film, whether writer, co-writer or source only, hasn't been stated, and that is a question worth putting to the producers before release.

What it means for AI creators

• Vendor-backed features are a real route to a first feature. Nagpal had brand work and long-form series credits, and a tool company that wanted a flagship gave him a cast and a slate.
• The trade is control, because when the funder makes the tools, the tools are the pipeline, and the film doubles as a product demo. Ask who has final cut and what you can say about the workflow before you sign.
• Hybrid is a word, not a spec. Directors pitching hybrid work will be more credible if they can say which shots are generated and why, which this production hasn't.
• Source material deserves loud credit, since a book's author vanished from one news cycle here, and the AI-film audience notices when human authorship gets quietly edited out.

Our take: a tool company directing, funding and tooling its own film is the clearest signal yet that vendors want to own the showcase. Independent AI filmmakers should take the money when it comes and keep the credit, the cut and the method in writing.

Timeline

• Date: 2023 to 2024. Event: Sukriti YJ develops Beta Builder as a screenplay at the Writers' INK Lab; Source: TEDxGateway speaker page; author acknowledgements
• Date: About Oct 2025. Event: Abundantia launches its AI division, Abundantia aiON; Source: Deadline, 7 Oct 2026
• Date: Wed 18 Feb 2026. Event: Abundantia and InVideo announce the Rs 100 crore, five-film slate at the InVideo-hosted India AI Film Festival in Delhi; InVideo announces it has acquired GoBo Labs; Source: HinduBusinessLine, Fortune India, BestMediaInfo, 18 Feb 2026
• Date: Tue 1 Sep 2026. Event: Abundantia's fully AI Chiranjeevi Hanuman: The Eternal reported delayed; Source: Variety India, Times of India
• Date: Wed 7 Oct 2026. Event: Malhotra tells Deadline aiON will become a standalone studio making fully generated and hybrid work; Source: Deadline
• Date: Fri 23 Oct 2026. Event: Title announced: Beta Builder, adapted from Sukriti YJ's novel; Source: Bollywood Hungama release via DesiFormal
• Date: Thu 29 Oct 2026. Event: Cast and director revealed; principal photography begins in Mumbai; Source: Deadline (exclusive), Bollywood Hungama, Indian Television
• Date: Q1 2027. Event: First titles from the aiON slate due to roll out (slate-wide, not a Beta Builder date); Source: 23 Oct 2026 release

Sources and what is unconfirmed: Deadline, Jesse Whittock, 29 Oct 2026 (exclusive); Bollywood Hungama, 29 Oct 2026; Indian Television, 29 Oct 2026 (source of the India's first label); 23 Oct 2026 title release via DesiFormal; HinduBusinessLine, Fortune India, BestMediaInfo and MediaNews4U, 18 Feb 2026; Deadline, 7 Oct 2026; Variety India and Times of India, 1 Sep 2026; ETV Bharat, 2 May 2026; InVideo workshop, FAQ and Academy pages. The start date is the producers' statement; no on-set reporting or set photos were found. Unconfirmed: the AI share and models, the film's budget and release date, who funds the Rs 100 crore, and Sukriti YJ's credit on the film. Deadline dates the partnership to last year; it was announced in February 2026. Deadline also calls Penumbra a Sony LIV title, which we have not verified. X reaction to the announcement was searched and none was usable for this piece.