Hollywood
Zee Studios’ ‘12th Fail’ sparks a #Restart movement with leading brands
Mumbai: The movie 12th Fail explores the journey of Manoj Kumar Sharma and despite all odds, how he restarted his journey towards success. The banter was appreciated by the media, critics and brands alike.
Zee Studios’ latest film 12th Fail has been creating a buzz everywhere through its raw emotions with a story that connects to the hearts alongside a striking performance by Vikrant Massey. The story revolves around IPS aspirant Manoj Kumar Sharma played by Vikrant Massey. Despite all the challenges, with hope and courage, he always chose to restart.
The story weaved a seamless connection with the audience as it portrayed the real struggle of a UPSC aspirant and the idea of never giving up. This became the very reason for the movie to receive humongous support from the brands.
Leveraging the central theme of the film i.e. never giving up, Zee Studios kicked off a unique brand banter on X with the hashtag #Restart. Brands across the nation resonated well with it, and the audience as well shared their ‘Restart’ journey.
Popular and significant brands like Zepto, Lenskart, Yatra.com, Ixigo, Xiaomi India, Nerolac Paints India, Sugar Cosmetics, Ajio, Magicpin, CoinSwitch, Eloelo, Meesho, Snapdeal, iQOO India & Mivi participated and integrated their products and services in this fun banter.
Here’s how brands participated and shared their #restart journey:
The movie 12th Fail is an inspiration, not just for UPSC aspirants but for everyone to lead their way to success, rise back stronger after failures, and fly high!
This activity was a major part of the movie campaign that gained a lot of attention and created ripples of conversations. The movie 12th Fail is produced by Zee Studios and marketed by White Rivers Media, an integrated, independent digital marketing agency.
Hollywood
Utopai Studios partners Huace to deploy PAI for long form content
Deal includes revenue sharing as Huace adopts AI engine across global ops
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… algorithm, the script just got a silicon co-writer. In a move that signals how storytelling itself is being re-engineered, U.S.-based Utopai Studios has partnered China’s Huace Film & TV Co. Ltd. to bring artificial general intelligence into the heart of long-form content creation.
At the centre of the deal is PAI, Utopai’s cinematic storytelling system, which Huace will deploy as a core engine across its production pipeline from development and creative iteration to global localisation. The partnership includes a large-scale annual usage commitment from Huace, alongside a usage-based revenue-sharing model, underscoring both ambition and commercial confidence on both sides.
For Huace, one of China’s largest film and television companies, the bet is not on automation alone but on scale with control. With distribution spanning over 200 countries and a presence across more than 20 international platforms, including Netflix and YouTube, the company brings a vast content ecosystem where even marginal efficiency gains can translate into significant output shifts. Its extensive TV IP library further positions it as fertile ground for AI-assisted storytelling workflows.
The choice of PAI follows what Huace described as a rigorous evaluation of existing AI tools, many of which remain limited to fragmented use cases such as video generation or editing. What tipped the scales, according to the company, was PAI’s ability to handle long-form narrative complexity maintaining continuity, structure, and creative coherence across entire story arcs rather than isolated clips.
Utopai, for its part, is using the partnership to anchor its international expansion strategy, pitching PAI as an enterprise-ready system built for customisation, privacy, and regulatory adaptability across markets. That positioning becomes particularly relevant as global media companies increasingly scrutinise how AI integrates into proprietary workflows.
The timing is notable. Earlier this month, Utopai upgraded PAI to support three-minute 4K video generation and advanced multi-shot sequencing features designed to tackle one of AI storytelling’s biggest hurdles: consistency across scenes.
What emerges is not just another tech collaboration, but a glimpse into how the grammar of filmmaking could evolve. Because if stories were once crafted frame by frame, the next chapter might just be coded scene by scene.
