A trio of animated shorts set around the Christmas holiday and powered by artificial intelligence is in the works and poised to debut before the end of the year — for free.
The projects got unveiled at a panel discussion during the recent Toronto International Film Festival directly by the collaborators: Massive Studios co-founder Reza Sixo Safai, The Garfield Movie scribes Paul A. Kaplan and Mark Torgove, and veteran Hollywood producer Todd Garner. The three short films come from Massive Studios in partnership with content creation platform CapCut, and are being developed simultaneously using artificial intelligence tools like Video Studio and AI video generation model Seedance 2.5.
Garner, Safai, Kaplan and Togrove at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2026.
Courtesy of Toronto International Film Festival
Safai, a co-founder at Massive Studios — a firm described as a “filmmaker-led” studio that develops film, TV, animation and branded entertainment using AI tools alongside traditional filmmaking ones — will direct the shorts from scripts by Kaplan and Torgove with Garner handling producing duties.
They provided a timeline, too: a trailer will debut Thanksgiving weekend in November, and the final films will be made available free of charge on Christmas Eve. There are some details yet to be announced like a streaming or distribution partner and some creative elements like titles, voice cast, creative collaborators and more.
That said, in statements provided to The Hollywood Reporter, the collaborators insist that the short films are creative-led animated projects that began as hand-drawn designs created by artists. The works will be combined with actor performances to establish the characters’ “proportions, expressions, costumes, textures and personalities before the technology is used to help bring them into motion.”
The team is also expected to include character artists, animators, editors, composers, sound designers, colorists and other creative collaborators. They also see their collaboration as a way to “demystify” new AI filmmaking tools, which can either be the focus of an enthusiastic or thorny conversation in town depending on which circle one is standing in.
Per the backstory, Garner came up with the original concept and brought it to Safai and the writers as a way to resuscitate the genre. “I grew up with Christmas specials, and I miss that tradition,” said Garner, the Broken Road Productions principal who has had a hand in 170 projects over the years including Runner, franchises like Mortal Kombat, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Vacation Friends, Zookeeper, Jack and Jill and more. “There is something wonderful about families discovering these stories together and then coming back to them every year. We wanted to make something new that could have that same feeling.”
Safai said the tools they are using should help them deliver something that feels “emotionally handmade” rather than artificial. He added, “For me, handcrafted doesn’t mean pretending technology wasn’t involved. It means you can still feel the human decisions in the work. The drawings, the performances, the writing, the imperfections, the choices. What matters to me is that you can still feel the people behind every frame.”
Both Safai and Garner noted how the process is allowing them to make something on a budget. “This is no different than any movie I’ve made. You come up with an idea, you find the right people, and you see how the audience responds. To me, it’s all about the artists, the story and the imagination behind it. The technology just gives us another way to get there,” said Garner.
Safai added: “The exciting thing isn’t simply that the tools can make production faster. It’s what becomes creatively and economically possible. We’re interested in using technology to make films possible that otherwise might never get made.”
Kaplan and Torgove previously worked on The Late Bloomer, Dr. Ken, Outsourced, George Lopez, Play Dates, Just Shoot Me! and Spin City.
