How do you bring together a TV series sweeping from South Africa’s 19th-century Frontier War to a modern-day police siege of a house inspired by 2006’s ‘Jeppestown Massacre’ with the ancient tradition of muti at its core – on a tight budget?
Pioneering South African AI film production company DragonStudios.ai’s Bad Muti – recognised as a winner at the 2025 Outstanding Screenplays TV Pilot Competition – is harnessing the power of AI filmmaking to realise a time-travelling series of epic proportions.
Writer and DragonStudios.ai Creative Lead Steven Cholerton’s pilot script was lauded by competition judge, two-time Emmy Award and two-time Golden Globe-winning producer and writer Erik Bork (Band of Brothers), as ‘the best script he’d read in six years of judging the competition’ and landed him as a mentor to Cholerton.
“The origin of Bad Muti is the ‘Jeppestown Massacre’ of 2006 and several episodes of the first season are devoted to a similar police ‘siege’ of a house in Jeppestown,” explains Cholerton. “Some of the gang members claimed they were visiting the house to consult a local sangoma and I subsequently learned, in discussions with a journalist at The Star, Alex Eliseev, that the gang may been using muti in the belief that it would protect them during their heists. This dovetailed with my research into the Frontier War period in South African history, where the belief in muti as conferring supernatural protection originated under the war doctor Makhanda, who provided muti to his warriors fighting the British in the early 19th century. In researching all of this, I was lucky to have the help and advice of Mputhumi ‘Mpush’ Ntabeni, the historian and novelist”.
Bad Muti uses the familiar police procedural-type story of a hard-boiled detective trying to crack a criminal cartel who are using muti to interrogate South African history and the role that muti has played – with Cholerton and fellow Creative Lead Donovan Marsh using the two stories as a jumping off point for a ‘what if…’ story, imagining a world in which the muti worked and made warriors and criminals alike, invincible.
“One interesting thing about Bad Muti is that the story goes both back in time to the Frontier War and forward in time to a dystopian Johannesburg, circa 2042 – the high concept at the heart of the story,” says Cholerton. “This highlights AI’s possibilities, making both period dramas and futuristic sci-fi stories much more feasible – and yet another potential blessing for African storytellers. The proposed series is now part of the DragonStudios.ai slate and our hope is to produce the film either as a hybrid of AI and traditional filmmaking, or even as a fully-realised AI film, producing a template for African science-fiction, which previously has been hamstrung by budget limitations”.
DragonStudios.ai’s 10-episode vertical drama series Mountain of Graves was also selected as a finalist in the Topwave Vertical Films Competition at the 3rd Annual Neu Wave AI Film Festival – part of LA Tech Week.
Mountain of Graves was commissioned by Buka Africa and written by DragonStudios.ai creative leads Donovan Marsh and Steven Cholerton in collaboration with creator and writer Phuti Lehong, and produced entirely using AI filmmaking platforms. The series sees two brothers fighting to stop a mining company taking the mountain where their ancestors are buried. Thumi plants a spear in the red earth. Kabelo fights it in the archives. Neither of them knows the mountain has started fighting back.
Having already received several nominations, selections and special mentions at international film festivals, DragonStudios.ai’s The Dragon Hunter, directed by Donovan Marsh, has added to its impressive resume with nominations in both the ‘Jury – Audience Choice Award (Africa)’ and ‘Best AI Short Film’ categories at the 2026 BlackAIFest in Worcester, UK. The festival hosts screenings of AI-supplemented and generated films from around the world, as well as facilitating important conversations like ‘The Uncomfortable Conversation – AI in Film’ and explores themes including AI, copyright and creative rights.
