Love thy neighbour

Back in July, I discussed the rise of AI generated and disseminated content in China’s social media landscape. At the time of reporting, it was hard imagining Australia would take the same leap. Last week, The Guardian reported that the Network 10 cult classic, Neighbours, was being given a new and unexpected life on the feeds of Australians, seemingly powered by AI.

The ‘new’ social-first series focuses specifically on Margot Robbie’s character, Donna Freedman, and explores the plot and story arcs that surround the character, while omitting the wider spectrum of conflicting storylines that usually occur in an episode. 

Neighbours had its finale in 2025 after a 9,363-episode run starting back in 1985. The program’s main viewership was in Australian and British households, and who better to decide the fate of Neighbours than New York based startup, Roseberry Media, which create “Premium Vertical Television for a mobile-first world.”

Chinese media companies, for a while now, have been creating entirely AI-generated feature length films, then using AI to process those films into 1–2-minute digestible, vertical clips for social media platforms. RoseBerry Media is effectively focusing on that second step, sending their AI to claw through 354 episodes that feature Robbie between 2008-2011 to create a new source of revenue for Freemantle Australia, the original production company behind Neighbours. 

The concept of scrolling through clips of existing films and TV series is not new. Seemingly random social media accounts have been posting fragments from big films and garnering millions of views. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for film (besides the obvious copyright issue); a 2024 study from TikTok drew a direct link between TikTok users watching clips of movies on the platform and subsequent purchase of tickets at the box office. In March of this year, TikTok created a solution for movie studios called ‘Box Office Lift’ connecting TikTok film ads directly to verified ticket purchases using a range of personalised data. And the big studios are capitalising on this: in 2023 Paramount Pictures released Mean Girls in its entirety split in 23 parts on TikTok to promote the release of Mean Girls: The Musical. In January of this year, Disney did the same, splitting High School Musical into 52 TikToks to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Big studio involvement largely rests in the interest of PR, but Freemantle Australia is seeking a different form of value from this decision. The more I delve into RoseBerry Media, the more I am reminded of the Chinese media houses I toured in July. There is a profound atmosphere that the entire organisation is heavily leveraged on the success of their AI system. The RoseBerry Media website itself seems entirely built with AI as it includes code that has hallmarks of being made using Loveable, an AI website and app builder. These AI models are far from perfect, and what I saw in my various tours was a lot of human oversight (despite the CEOs of these companies ignoring the incompetence of the AI models). So, given the gamble both Freemantle Australia and RoseBerry are taking on AI, what’s the payoff?

In Australia, Instagram and TikTok don’t pay creators for their content, meaning they’re left to hedge their bets on YouTube Shorts and Facebook, two platforms that do pay Australians. So, what’s Freemantle Australia’s goal? Do they want to bring people back to streaming the full episodes? Do they want to capture a new international audience? 

Neighbours was created with and by real people, while Freemantle Australia remains set on their AI-fueled plan to “unlock new value from our diverse catalog and content library.” Maybe we’ll soon see Kylie Minogue in the crosshairs of the AI curators, or if we run out of archived media, an AI version of Kylie.

For now, we might still be safe from AI generated TV series and films. Last week, China's first AI generated theatrical film, Sanxingdui: Future Past, hit the theatres and reportedly flopped, making just over 10% back of its $1.5 million budget. In an interesting contrast, a Chinese animated film, Niu Lai, created on a $200 budget by a mother and son, has raked in nearly $10 million at the box office since its August release. Despite Nui Lai's repeatedly mocked poor animation, it illustrates an interesting and hopeful story about the resilience of human-made content.

References:

Harry Craigie. (2026, July 30). Chinese AI and brokenhearted users. CMT Newsletter. https://www.uts.edu.au/news/2026/07/chinese-ai-and-brokenhearted-users 

Caldwell, I. (2026, October 26). Neighbours is being recut into a microdrama focused on Margot Robbie – and her co-stars aren’t happy.

The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/oct/26/neighbours-soap-recut-ai-microdrama-mobile-series-feat-margot-robbie 

Roseberry Media. (n.d.-b). RoseBerry | LinkedIn. Retrieved October 27, 2026, from https://www.linkedin.com/company/roseberrymedia 

Weaver, J. (2023, June 13). TikTok’s becoming a TV platform. One pirated clip at a time. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/tiktok-movies-1.6874102 

TikTok. (2024, September 3). TikTok’s Impact on Movie Marketing: Driving Audiences from Screen to Theater | TikTok For Business Blog.

TikTok For Business. https://ads.tiktok.com/business/en/blog/movie-marketing-research-ticket-sales 

TikTok. (2026, March 5). TikTok And Samba: Driving Measurable Box

Office Growth For Studios | TikTok For Business Blog. TikTok For Business. https://ads.tiktok.com/business/en/blog/samba-meta-analysis-box-office 

Yang, A. (2023, October 3). ‘Mean Girls’ is on TikTok now—In 23 parts. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/mean-girls-tiktok-full-movie-october-third-paramount-pictures-rcna118576 

Appleby, J. (2026, January 29). Disney put an entire movie on TikTok?! Future Social. https://futuresocial.beehiiv.com/p/disney-put-an-entire-movie-on-tiktok 

Roseberry Media. (n.d.-a). Powering vertical TV. Roseberry Media. Retrieved October 27, 2026, from https://roseberry.media/ 

Lovable. (n.d.). AI Website & Landing Page Builder. Lovable. Retrieved October 27, 2026, from https://lovable.dev/use-cases/websites 

Ganglani, J. (2026, October 27). China’s first AI-generated film to get a theatrical release flops at the box office. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2026/10/27/china-first-ai-film-sanxingdui-box-office/ 

Lang, J. (2026, October 26). China’s First AI Feature Flops At The Chinese Box Office. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/box-office-report/chinese-ai-film-sanxingdui-future-past-box-office-flop-268426.html 

Ewe, K. (2026, August 17). Niu Lai: Movie that went viral for terrible animation becomes China box office hit. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4r0mrmlpo 

Schneider, M. (2026, September 28). Margot Robbie’s ‘Neighbours’ Episodes to Be Recut Into a Microdrama by RoseBerry for Its Epis Platform (EXCLUSIVE). Variety. https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/margot-robbie-neighbours-microdrama-episodes-roseberry-1236876975/ 

Neighbours Wiki. (n.d.). Kylie Minogue. Neighbours Soap Opera Wiki. Retrieved October 27, 2026, from https://neighbours-soap-opera.fandom.com/wiki/Kylie_Minogue