The makers of the AI-generated film Gods Don’t Give Gifts will be seeking Oscar consideration in animation.
The God’s Don’t Give Gifts will be a collection of four anthology short films from the YouTuber Gossip Goblin (Zack London) with a release date between October 30 and December 4. A distributor has not been selected yet and the film’s trailer will debut in theaters this coming Friday, per Variety:
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.
Academy voters will also be given advanced screenings of the film along with a billboard advertising campaign across Los Angeles next month. Fable CEO Edward Saatchi called it a “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 said that the use of AI gave him “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,” he added.
The Academy has not yet issued a definitive ruling on if it will consider a fully-generated work of AI. According to its eligibility rules, AI tools “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination,” adding that the 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.