Meet Dino Mukk: This AI-generated dinosaur town in Kerala goes viral

Dino Mukk
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

“Idhu, Palakkadu jilla-yile Dinomukku” (This is Dinomukku in Palakkad district), announces the narrator in a familiar, almost nostalgic tone. The visuals unfold: rolling green hills, misty fields, and the quiet charm of rural Kerala. It could be a scene from an old episode of Krishi Darshan on Doordarshan. But then, the surreal takes over. A T-Rex, towering yet oddly domesticated, carries a tender coconut and hands it to a farmer. In the fictional town of Dinomukku, dinosaurs are not prehistoric relics but farm animals, helping with agriculture, providing eggs and meat, even playing with children. 

This AI-generated minute-long Malayalam mockumentary by Storytellers Union has struck a chord, amassing over 2.2 million views on Instagram and earning praise from film stars like Sivakarthikeyan and Aishwarya Lekshmi. The short video feels like a time capsule and a glimpse into an alternate reality, one where nostalgia meets science fiction.

College dream

For Gokul S Pillai, one of the founders of Storytellers Union, filmmaking was an ambition nurtured since his college days. As a B.Tech student, he and his childhood friends, Sanjay Siby and Sidharth Sobhan, started making short films with whatever resources they could afford. His co-founder, Shine Naushad, was his college mate and later became his creative partner in what would eventually evolve into Storytellers Union — a collective of filmmakers with expertise across various aspects of visual storytelling.

Gokul Pillai
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

What started as a collective of freelancers soon transformed into a creative agency, working with leading brands. By 2023, Storytellers Union had set its sights on longer-format storytelling, developing film and series projects while continuing commercial work.

However, the constraints of traditional advertising soon became frustrating. “At one point, our ads became very templated, and we couldn’t contribute creatively,” Gokul explains. With the rise of AI tools, the team began experimenting — first using AI for pitches, storyboards, and voiceovers, and later exploring AI-driven video generation. By early 2025, they had developed an AI-generated teaser as a pitch tool for a feature film. The success of that experiment led them to refine their AI workflow further, culminating in the idea for Dino Mukk.

“We realised that a documentary format would work well within our AI-generated workflow,” Gokul says. The concept of a rural town farming dinosaurs emerged during a brainstorming session, with Sanjay Siby drawing inspiration from Kerala’s classic agricultural TV programmes like Krishi Darshan. They quickly put the plan into action. The first AI-generated shot — a dinosaur playfully kissing a child — came out so well that it bolstered their confidence. Within just eight days, the team completed the entire video, blending nostalgia with an outlandish yet oddly believable premise.

The future of storytelling

Setting Dino Mukk in Palakkad was not just an aesthetic choice; it was a way to ground the story in a place that immediately evokes the essence of Kerala. Considered an agricultural hub of the state, Palakkad’s lush paddy fields and mountainous backdrops provided the perfect setting for a dinosaur farm. But blending dinosaurs into this world was a challenge. “We didn’t want them to be aggressive, like in most films. Instead, we aimed to make them cute,” Gokul says. Through careful selection of angles and character interactions — such as a dinosaur playfully standing beside a grandmother pouring water — they ensured that these creatures felt both surreal and endearing.

The AI-driven production process was a mix of offline and online tools. Gokul first fed AI models with reference images of Kerala’s landscapes, traditional attire, and common people to achieve authenticity. “I googled a lot of different dinosaurs and Kerala imagery and trained the AI accordingly,” he explains. He used tools like Midjourney, Krea AI, and Freepik for image generation, while Kling and Sora played a key role in video production. A combination of local and cloud-based AI processing allowed them to fine-tune the visuals to cinematic perfection.

Dino Mukk
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

But for Gokul, AI is not just a tool; it is a storytelling method. “There are many AI artists creating deep fakes and reels, but when you use AI for storytelling, it should resonate with people,” he says. He believes AI is democratising content creation, allowing independent filmmakers and agencies to push creative boundaries. “The real magic isn’t in the technology itself, but in how you use it to tell a story.”

With aspirations of becoming one of India’s first AI-driven production houses, Gokul sees AI as the next big leap for filmmaking. “Malayalam cinema has always been about grounded stories. Now, we have the chance to create larger-scale projects — our own sci-fi and grand narratives — without being held back by budget constraints.”