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Prime Video has taken global rights to Turkish TV powerhouse Ay Yapim’s AI movie “Çukur: Vartolu,” a spin-off from its hit series “Çukur,” known internationally as “The Pit.”
“Çukur: Vartolu” is produced by Ay Yapim
under its Singapore-based artificial intelligence studio AI Yapim that in August launched the AI-generated historical drama “Castle Walls” also on Prime Video, in what was touted as the first show made end-to-end with AI to bow on a major global streamer.
With “Çukur: Vartolu,” AI Yapım takes the AI-native production approach behind “Castle Walls” – which comprised two 15-minute episodes – “from an original story to an established drama franchise,” the company said in a statement.
Ay Yapim is best known for the International Emmy-winning “Endless Love,” “Fatmagul,” “Ezel” and “Forbidden Love,” among other global hit series.
The “Çukur,” which is known as “The Pit” in international markets, has aired on free-to-air television in 105 countries since its 2017 premiere, according to Ay Yapim. The company underlined that the show’s official YouTube channel has surpassed 6.4 billion cumulative views.
“Rather than revisiting the series, the film opens a new chapter in its world, built around Vartolu’s origins and drawing on Ay Yapim’s catalogue. AI Yapım’s creative team leads the film, with artificial intelligence at the core of its production,” the statement noted.
While the original “Çukur” follows the Koçovalı family and the Istanbul neighborhood under its control, where family loyalty intersects with the criminal world, the spin-off turns to the childhood and choices that shaped Vartolu Sadettin, who is the Koçovalı family’s illegitimate son.
“After losing his mother and grandfather, a boy grows up on the streets, waiting for his father to find him,” says the film’s synopsis.
“When that hope gives way to revenge, Salih becomes Vartolu. Moving between his childhood in Doğubeyazıt, eastern Türkiye, and a confrontation years later in Istanbul, the film traces the losses, love and violence behind that transformation,” it goes on to add.
“A teacher’s kindness and the possibility of a life with the woman he loves offer Salih another path. Yet his desire to settle the past shapes decisions whose consequences reach beyond him. The film connects a child’s need for a family with the reckoning that follows in the next generation,” it continues, and concludes: “The film carries the tagline “No one is more dangerous than a man with nothing left to lose.”
“Every frame of the film was generated with AI, from the characters’ faces to every setting,” the Ay Yapim statement said. However, “The acting is human: actors performed the scenes, and AI generated the characters over their movement, timing and expression. All dialogue was recorded by human voice actors,” it added.
It will be interesting to see how viewers of “Çukur,” a regular live action show that did not use AI, will react to its AI-generated spin off film “Çukur:Vartolu.”
