Shekhar Kapur reveals AI-driven SCI-Fi series ‘Warlord’

Eminent filmmaker Shekhar Kapur ventures into Uncharted Territory with ‘Warlord’, a science fiction series that has been fully created by artificial intelligence. The project debuts his first teaser today with the first complete episode that arrives within two to three months.

Written by Kapur follows “Warlord” the story of an interdimensional warrior that seems indestructible because his beloved in another dimension attracts him to safety when he is confronted with mortal danger. “The only time that lover can bring him is when he is absolutely close to death,” says Kapur Variety. “So when the sword touches him and he is so close to death, she shifts him to another dimension, and you may see the sword through him, but he is not there.”

The cosmic saga revolves around warriors who have to protect mystical crystals that provide an entire Milky Way with electricity. These crystals represent fundamental particles that go beyond neutrinos that “create the universe” but exist for “only one millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth second,” says Kapur.

Kapur’s vision extends much further than the traditional stories. He plans to make the production design and the characters of the series available to others to use, so that what he calls ‘a rainforest of ideas’ creates. Users can adjust elements of “Warlord” for their own projects, with the provision that they pay one cent per use and make their creations open source for others to build.

“The whole idea is that great stories can become their own platforms,” says Kapur. “They don’t have to be hosted by another platform.”

The director collaborates with Studio Blo, a generative AI company born in Mumbai and represented in Dubai, London and LA that was founded in 2024. Credits include Warner Music Video “The Heartbreak Chhora” with Bollywood Ayushmann Khurrana and music today.

Kartik Shah serves as a composer for ‘Warlord’. The project represents a dramatic deviation from traditional production methods, where Kapur notes that sequences would have lasted “months and months” to create in the past are now being completed in just two weeks.

Kapur is known for his eclectic oeuvre that Indian films “Masoom” and “Mr. India” spanted, hard-hitting biopic “Bandit Queen”, the Oscar-winning “Elizabeth” with Cate Blanchett, “The Four Feathers” in the leading role in the? He also serves as a festival director of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

The filmmaker sees AI as a democratizing power that will challenge the dominance of large studios and streaming platforms. “I think we’ll see the end of the studios,” he says. “The studios followed the wrong model. They assumed that great meant power. Ai will destroy the myth of budgets, be the myth of great.”

He compares the present moment with the Disruption Napster that has been brought to the music industry, suggesting that established entertainment gatekeepers make similar mistakes. “This new technology is capable of the individual,” says Kapur. “It pushes strength back into the empire of imagination and stories.”

The series has innovative design elements, including spaceships inspired by jellyfish that have been conceived as living, organic ships instead of traditional metal vessel. “In the distant future we have materials that will heal themselves,” Kapur explains. “So spaceships will be made from living materials and organic materials that heal and live.”

These organic ships push themselves through the space with the help of “the power of the particles, the fundamental space parts” instead of conventional rocket fuel, “move like sails with the wind of the universe.”

The project will go beyond the series to record films and games, all built in the same creative universe. The philosophical approach to the director’s project is based on observations of nature, in particular how rainforests are maintained by symbiotic relationships. “It’s like putting a seed to create a rainforest of ideas,” he says. “A rainforest of production design, a rainforest of stories. But it comes from one seed and we plant the seed.”

While Kapur continues to work on two feature films “Ebony McQueen” and “Masoom … the new generation”-he marks that the AI-driven character of “Warlord” enables him to concentrate on creative direction instead of traditional production requirements. “I don’t really get along,” he says. “I take care of the design, but by the time you arrive at the end of the first episode, people will be better at than me for this AI design.”

Kapur also has plans to set up a film school in the Dharavi Slum district in Mumbai, with a specific focus on AI technology when making films.

View the teaser here: