A HISTORICAL FILM / SERIES PROOF OF CONCEPT
AZTEC REVOLT:
ESCAPING TENOCHTITLÁN
THE FILM / 22 MINUTES
Watch Aztec Revolt: Escaping Tenochtitlán
01 / THE CASE
Why Historical Epics May Be AI Filmmaking’s Next Big Use
Aztec Revolt tests whether emerging production technology can make historically ambitious stories more economically viable without abandoning traditional filmmaking discipline. Lost cities, armies, languages, period environments and large-scale battle sequences have long made extraordinary stories difficult to finance at the scale they deserve.
For Brown and Hales, the promise is not to replace filmmaking. It is to help filmmakers, studios and streamers stretch resources further—and put more of the story on screen.
“The technology can generate an image or a performance, but it doesn’t know what movie you’re trying to make. The filmmaker still has to provide the vision and direct the tools toward it.”
— DAVID HALES
02 / THE LARGER PROJECT
Beyond the Short: The Conquistador Series
The story has all the ingredients of a great serialized epic: competing rulers, shifting alliances, betrayal, war, ambition and catastrophe. Yet its most unbelievable turns come from history rather than fiction. Aztec Revolt is a proof of concept for that larger canvas.
Brown and Hales envision a series beginning before Spain and Mesoamerica collide—establishing the rulers, rivalries, alliances, wars and cultures already unfolding on both sides of the Atlantic.
“This is one of the greatest historical epics of all time. The collision of Europe and the Americas reshaped the world. Tomatoes and potatoes transformed European diets, tobacco spread across the globe, and one of the great civilizations of the Americas came to a tragic end. Yet the conquest of Mexico has never received the sustained, large-scale screen treatment this story deserves. Now it can. The technology and economics have finally changed enough to make it possible.”
— WILL BROWN
Seeking conversations with studios, streaming platforms, producers, development executives, financiers and representation interested in developing the project at a larger scale.
03 / THE VISUAL WORLD
The Conquistador World
04 / RECOGNITION
Festival Recognition & Audience
Aztec Revolt advanced through Higgsfield’s Create in Public pathway to the Global Film Festival Shortlist. These 50 shortlisted films advance to jury review.
SHORTLIST
Higgsfield Global Film Festival
6,000+
Film submissions
$1 MILLION
Global competition
500,000+
Combined film views
Current audience: 178,000+ Higgsfield / 85,000+ YouTube / 252,000+ Facebook / Incredible History
THE FESTIVAL JURY
Edwin Catmull — Pixar co-founder and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios
Phedon Papamichael — two-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer
Paul W.S. Anderson — filmmaker, Resident Evil and Alien vs. Predator
Judging: Directing & Storytelling / Visual Craft / Sound & Editing / Originality & Concept
05 / PERFORMANCE
One Story. Multiple Native-Language Performances.
The festival version is performed in Spanish and Nahuatl. Brown and Hales are also developing an English-and-Nahuatl version—not as a conventional dub, but with separate performances so voice, delivery and lip movement belong naturally to each version.
“One of the most exciting things for me was hearing these different worlds actually speak. Our Spaniards could speak Castilian Spanish, while the Mexica characters spoke Nahuatl. We also have an interpreter based on a historical Nahuatl-speaking figure who spoke Spanish, and we were able to give her a distinctly different accent from the Spaniards. Those kinds of details make the languages part of the storytelling instead of something added afterward.”
— WILL BROWN
06 / PRODUCTION
Traditional Filmmaking. New Production Tools.
Brown and Hales used the same basic planning principles as traditional narrative filmmaking, from screenplay and shot breakdown through editorial, grading and sound mixing.
01 / STORY
Idea → treatment → screenplay. Then scene and shot breakdown.
02 / WORLD
Locations, costumes, props, lighting and camera planning.
03 / EXECUTION
22 minutes made in just under four weeks using AI-generated media under festival rules, with conventional editing, compositing, grading and sound mixing.
When a generated shot did not work, they changed coverage, redesigned the shot, edited around the limitation or used sound to communicate the dramatic information.
07 / THE FILMMAKERS
Will Brown & David Hales
Will Brown
A former teacher, historical researcher and creator of Incredible History, Brown reaches approximately 950,000 combined followers and subscribers across YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. His historical storytelling has reached tens of millions of viewers and generated hundreds of millions of views. He has researched the Aztec Empire, Spanish conquest and wider history of the Americas, and teaches AI filmmaking through his Skool community.
David Hales
A traditional film and television producer experienced in 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.
08 / PRESS & MEDIA
Press & Media
For journalists and media partners
09 / CONTACT
Let’s Talk
For development, production, representation, distribution and media inquiries: