FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / SEPTEMBER 24, 2026
AI Filmmaking’s Next Big Use May Be Historical Epics. Aztec Revolt Makes the Case
PHOENIX, Ariz. — September 24, 2026
Filmmakers Will Brown and David Hales have secured a place on the Higgsfield Global Film Festival shortlist with Aztec Revolt: Escaping Tenochtitlán, a 22-minute historical epic set during the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
The $1 million global competition received more than 6,000 film submissions. Aztec Revolt earned a Festival Shortlist position of 50 films. Films reaching the Festival Shortlist advance to jury review.
The film has also generated substantial early audience interest, with more than 178,000 views on Higgsfield, 85,000 views on YouTube and 252,000 views on Facebook through Brown’s Incredible History platform, surpassing 500,000 combined views as of September 29.
The festival’s independent jury includes Edwin Catmull, Pixar co-founder and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios; two-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Phedon Papamichael; and filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson, whose credits include the Resident Evil film series and Alien vs. Predator. Higgsfield says films advancing through the festival are evaluated on Directing & Storytelling, Visual Craft, Sound & Editing, and Originality & Concept.
Filmmakers First, Technology Second
Written, directed, produced and edited jointly by Will Brown and David Hales, Aztec Revolt dramatizes events surrounding the catastrophic Spanish retreat from Tenochtitlán in 1520, historically known as La Noche Triste. The film is performed primarily in Spanish and Nahuatl, with fictionalized character names and likenesses created specifically for the production in accordance with festival requirements.
Although the film was made for a competition designed to showcase AI-generated filmmaking, Brown and Hales approached it using a conventional narrative filmmaking process.
The project began with an idea, then a treatment and screenplay. The filmmakers broke the script down scene by scene and shot by shot, planning locations, costumes, weapons, props, weather, lighting, camera angles and dramatic continuity before production began.
Brown and Hales completed the approximately 22-minute film in just under four weeks, with the production carried out by the two filmmakers.
The compressed schedule was particularly demanding because Higgsfield required new AI video and image generation for festival entries to occur within the official competition generation window and inside the Higgsfield ecosystem. Dialogue, voices, music and sound effects also had to be AI-generated, while conventional software remained permitted for editing, compositing, grading, mixing and other non-generative post-production work.
A Deliberately Difficult Test
The filmmakers did not choose the conquest of Mexico because it was easy to produce with AI.
They chose it because it was difficult.
Recreating sixteenth-century Tenochtitlán requires vanished architecture, enormous plazas, armies, historically inspired costumes and weapons, Indigenous and European cultures, multiple languages and environments that no longer exist. The events depicted in Aztec Revolt add large crowds, nighttime scenes, heavy rain, mist, water, complex physical action and large-scale combat, all elements that remain challenging for current generative-video systems when the goal is physical realism rather than highly stylized action.
When the technology could not deliver a particular moment convincingly, Brown and Hales relied on traditional filmmaking solutions: changing coverage, rethinking the visual approach, constructing a different shot, or using editing and sound to communicate the same dramatic information.
Their standard was not simply whether AI could generate a shot.
It was whether the shot belonged in the movie.
Changing What Studios Can Afford to Put on Screen
For Brown and Hales, the larger significance of generative filmmaking is what it could allow mainstream studios, television producers and streaming platforms to make.
Historical epics can require enormous expenditures on sets, period environments, costumes, crowds, armies, visual effects and locations. That can make otherwise compelling stories difficult to justify financially.
Brown and Hales believe hybrid AI production can begin changing that equation by helping studios stretch existing budgets further, create environments that no longer exist, expand large-scale sequences and solve certain production or post-production problems without rebuilding an entire physical production.
Brown and Hales do not see that future as entirely synthetic filmmaking.
They expect high-end productions to increasingly use hybrid workflows, combining real actors and conventional creative departments with generative technology where it offers an advantage.
Actors can provide controlled performances, voices and licensed likenesses. Production designers, costume designers, prop designers, cinematographers, composers, editors and other craftspeople can continue defining the creative material while AI becomes another means of extending and manipulating that work.
For the filmmakers, the important question is not whether AI can replace a film crew.
It is whether it can help the industry make more films and television series that otherwise might never receive a green light.
Opening the Door to Historical Stories That Rarely Reach the Screen
That possibility is precisely why Brown and Hales chose the conquest of the Aztec Empire.
Brown and Hales are now seeking conversations with studios, streaming platforms, producers, development executives, financiers and representation interested in developing the concept as a premium, multi-season historical drama centered on the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.
The proposed series would begin before the worlds of Spain and Mesoamerica collide, establishing the rulers, rivalries, alliances and political struggles on both sides of the Atlantic before following the events that ultimately converge in Mexico.
Rather than presenting the conquest simply as the arrival of Spaniards in Tenochtitlán, the series would explore the complex political environment already underway across Mesoamerica, the powers surrounding the Aztec Empire, the forces driving the Spanish expedition and the decisions of numerous factions whose interests became intertwined.
The history offers the ingredients of large-scale serialized drama: competing rulers, shifting alliances, regional wars, diplomacy, religion, cultural collision, ambition, betrayal and military catastrophe.
Aztec Revolt: Escaping Tenochtitlán is intended as the first demonstration of what that larger project could become.
One Story, Multiple Native-Language Performances
Language is another area where the filmmakers believe generative technology could change both the reach and creative possibilities of mainstream productions.
The festival version of Aztec Revolt is performed in Spanish and Nahuatl.
Brown and Hales are also developing an English-and-Nahuatl version, but their intention is not simply to place an English dub over the Spanish performances.
Generative filmmaking makes it possible to create separate performances for each language so that voices, dialogue delivery and lip movement correspond to that version of the film.
Their goal for a future production is for Spanish-speaking and English-speaking viewers to each experience a version designed for their language, without either audience receiving what feels like a secondary adaptation.
For a story centered on the collision of distinct cultures and languages, Brown and Hales believe that distinction matters.
Two Filmmaking Backgrounds, One Shared Obsession
Brown and Hales came to the project from different but complementary backgrounds.
Will Brown is a former teacher, historical researcher and creator of Incredible History, which reaches approximately 950,000 combined followers and subscribers across YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. His work focuses on bringing historical subjects to broad audiences through research, storytelling and emerging visual-production technology. Brown also teaches AI filmmaking through his online filmmaking community on Skool.
His interest in the conquest of Mexico predates the festival. Brown has researched and produced content covering the Aztec Empire, the Spanish conquest, Mesoamerican history and the wider history of the Americas, with that work reaching tens of millions of viewers and generating hundreds of millions of views across his platforms.
David Hales brings traditional film and television experience spanning producing, editing, building crews, live-action production, and the full filmmaking process from development and pre-production through post-production. Hales created, pitched and led development of ZEROS, a half-hour television comedy developed with NBCUniversal for Syfy, overseeing the project through two years of development and production of a presentation pilot. He also produced and edited the theatrically released feature The Book of Mormon Movie, Volume 1: The Journey. Hales studied filmmaking at Brigham Young University.
Their shared interest in history, storytelling and the rapid evolution of generative filmmaking technology ultimately brought them together.
Rather than approaching AI as a shortcut around filmmaking knowledge, Brown and Hales saw it as a production tool that could be pushed much further when combined with established filmmaking principles.
About Aztec Revolt: Escaping Tenochtitlán
Aztec Revolt: Escaping Tenochtitlán is a 22-minute historical drama written, directed, produced and edited by Will Brown and David Hales.
Inspired by events surrounding the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the 1520 retreat from Tenochtitlán, the film combines Spanish and Nahuatl dialogue with large-scale historical environments, armies, crowd sequences and battles created using emerging generative production technology.
The film has received more than 500,000 combined views across Higgsfield, YouTube and Facebook and has secured a position on the Higgsfield Global Film Festival Shortlist.
Higgsfield’s $1 million worldwide competition is currently screening and compiling its full shortlist from more than 6,000 submitted films. Jury review is scheduled for October 6 through October 11, with winners expected during the final week of October.
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Will Brown & David Hales / Aztec Revolt: Escaping Tenochtitlán