Utopai Studios and Huace Film & TV Co., Ltd. today announced a new co-production deal for Journey to the West: The Lost Five Hundred Years, a fully AI-generated animated series created using PAI, Utopai Studios’ cinematic storytelling AI system, and the opening chapter in a planned global animated and theatrical franchise inspired by one of China’s most influential literary and mythological classics.

The new series reimagines the untold origin of one of the most iconic relationships in Asian storytelling: why Sun Wukong, the Monkey King — a rebellious trickster, warrior, and immortal force of nature imprisoned beneath a mountain for five hundred years — would ultimately become the protector of a monk he had never met before.

Under the agreement, Huace will produce the animated series using PAI, while Utopai Studios will hold all distribution rights to the property outside China. The first season is planned as an animated series for distribution across broadcast, streaming, and digital platforms, with the broader franchise developed for future theatrical expansion. The project marks the first new series to move forward under the strategic partnership previously announced by Utopai Studios and Huace, under which Huace selected PAI as its core engine for long-form narrative creation.

“Journey to the West is not only one of China’s most beloved cultural treasures — it is one of the great mythological universes in world entertainment,” said Cecilia Shen, Co-Founder and CEO of Utopai Studios. “With Huace, we have the opportunity to build a bold new interpretation of this story, beginning with the untold emotional origin of Sun Wukong and the companions who would one day change the course of the journey west. This is exactly why we built Utopai Studios: to help partners unlock iconic IP, expand worlds at franchise scale and bring ambitious stories to life in ways that were not possible before.”

“Journey to the West is a story Chinese audiences have lived with for generations, and it deserves to be reintroduced with scale, emotion and imagination,” said Binxing Fu, CEO of Huace Group. “By partnering with Utopai Studios, we can bring this mythology into a fully AI-generated animated format while preserving the cultural depth, emotional power and sense of wonder that have made the story endure for hundreds of years. This partnership also gives us a path to build the property across animated series and theatrical opportunities for audiences around the world.”

For centuries, Journey to the West has stood as one of the great engines of Chinese imagination, shaping generations of film, television, animation, games, literature and stage productions across Asia and around the world. Its characters — including Sun Wukong, Tang Sanzang, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing — remain among the most recognizable figures in Chinese popular culture, while its themes of destiny, rebellion, sacrifice, loyalty and transformation continue to resonate across cultures.

The Lost Five Hundred Years builds on that foundation by exploring one of the classic tale’s most powerful unanswered questions: what happened before the journey began?

The series follows Jin Chanzi, a fallen celestial monk condemned to ten reincarnations to complete an impossible pilgrimage from the Eastern Land to the Western Heaven. Across nine failed lifetimes, he must find the companions destined to protect him — only to discover that each has abandoned the mission, and the most powerful among them is actively trying to kill him.

Through these lifetimes, Jin Chanzi must transform a group of broken, reluctant outcasts into the unlikely team that will one day become legend. The series reframes the familiar pilgrimage not as the beginning of the story, but as the culmination of centuries of failure, betrayal, punishment and redemption.

PAI is Utopai Studios’ cinematic storytelling AI system, built for the complexity of long-form media. For The Lost Five Hundred Years, PAI will support mythological world-building, character continuity, stylized action, multi-episode storytelling and reusable digital assets designed to evolve across future seasons and theatrical extensions.

The series is designed as the opening chapter of a larger Journey to the West universe, with each season telling an independent story while remaining connected to a broader narrative architecture. The franchise will reinterpret the classic from multiple perspectives, giving overlooked characters their own emotional arcs while connecting the mythology to contemporary questions about identity, destiny, pressure, sacrifice and self-determination.