On June 9, iQIYI, China's leading online entertainment platform, launched the psychological thriller 'None Shall Escape' on iQIYI and iQIYI International. The film is part of the platform's Emerging Film Project initiative and is among the first feature films produced with the support of NadouPro, iQIYI's AI platform for professional film and television production. NadouPro helped the production achieve a nearly 50% improvement in overall shot production efficiency.
Plot Overview
'None Shall Escape' follows a young medical student who travels alone to a secluded Western-style manor in search of her missing twin sister. Her desperate search turns into a psychological ordeal as she uncovers the estate's dark secrets, navigating the line between reason and madness to survive.
Revolutionizing Visual Effects Workflow
NadouPro's workspace addresses a major pain point in large-scale productions: managing massive visual effects shots across teams. Through a project management feature built for professional workflows, it provides teams with a centralized, scalable environment for shot tracking and scene management.
Yu ZHANG, Visual Effects Director of 'None Shall Escape', noted: 'NadouPro connects to many different large-model tools, allowing us to run the same prompt across models and identify which performed best for each shot type. The project management interface also allowed our team to organize shots, track progress, and communicate in real time, something other AI tools we had used simply could not offer.' Zhang is part of a seasoned visual effects team with experience across multiple major drama series and film projects.
From Concept to Screen
Using NadouPro, the production team handled conceptual art design and shot generation for multiple visual effects sequences. They also applied the platform to enhance live-action footage through effects refinement, prop replacement, and atmosphere augmentation. For one of the film's most AI-intensive sequences—depicting human cells mutating under an experimental drug—NadouPro compressed what would have been nearly a month of atmosphere development under a traditional workflow into under one week, saving approximately three weeks overall.
For another scene requiring post-war smoke and haze around the manor exterior, the traditional approach would have demanded extensive particle simulation and compositing, with frame-by-frame work covering smoke dynamics, light matching, and camera tracking. With NadouPro, the team imported the live-action footage directly into the platform and, using its integrated large-model tools, rapidly generated multiple stylistic variants that closely replicated real on-set conditions.
Post-production Director Xingsheng HAN noted that integrating NadouPro into the visual effects pipeline improved overall shot production efficiency by nearly 50%. He emphasized that AI is not a replacement for human creativity but a tool that frees production teams from repetitive work, allowing them to redirect energy toward the creative process. 'Even without AI, experienced visual effects professionals could produce these shots,' he said. 'The real question is how we draw on existing production expertise to complete long-form projects more efficiently and to a higher standard.'
Rapid Adoption and Global Expansion
'None Shall Escape' is among the first feature films completed with NadouPro support, marking a step forward in iQIYI's progress toward an industrialized AI workflow for feature film production.
Since opening for commercial use on April 20, NadouPro has onboarded more than 10,000 active creators and supported over 100 iQIYI original productions in under one month, reflecting strong early adoption across the industry. As NadouPro continues to roll out new features and expand internationally, these milestones further demonstrate the platform's capabilities to support professional long-form content creation.
Contact: iQIYI Press, press@qiyi.com
