'Cocaine Cowboys' is getting an AI-enhanced makeover for its 20th birthday

• The cult documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" is celebrating its 20th anniversary in November.
• The movie will be re-released for free online and feature AI-enhanced scenes.
• Director Billy Corben and producer Alfred Spellman broke down their thought process exclusively to BI.

Some movies celebrate an anniversary with a glossy Criterion Collection release; others get a multi-city theatrical run. The guys who made "Cocaine Cowboys" are celebrating its 20th anniversary a little differently.

The beloved 2006 documentary, which chronicled how 1970s Miami became the ultraviolent entry point for the illegal drug trade in the US and introduced the world to "Godmother of Cocaine" Griselda Blanco, is getting a free re-release online — with some improvements.

Director Billy Corben used artificial intelligence to sharpen the movie's look, enhancing many of the still photos featured in the doc with a richer texture. Instead of the former drug cartel members and hitmen simply telling stories on-camera, Corben's re-release also accompanies them with AI-shot reenactments.

"It still plays unlike any documentary I have seen before; it still has a unique style and pace," Corben exclusively told Business Insider. "So we wanted a version that we would be proud to show to somebody now. A version that fans could appreciate and respect and enjoy, but also that we could introduce to a whole new generation of people who might have never heard of it, let alone seen it."

The re-release will be streaming for free on CocaineCowboys.com beginning November 13 at 5 p.m. ET.

The goal was to make 'Cocaine Cowboys' look like it was released today

The idea to use AI came to Corben and his producing partner Alfred Spellman last fall after the movie's rights reverted back to the duo's production company, Ratonkur. They turned to the AI studio New Territory Media to give a facelift to the 4,000-plus shots in the movie, doing everything from enhancing the resolution of the original interview footage and adding new motion graphics to creating entirely new reenactments of events that interview subjects described.

"What we hoped was this would look like a movie that was released in 2026," Spellman said.

"Cocaine Cowboys" became a cult hit in the late 2000s, which led to Corben releasing a sequel in 2008, "Cocaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' with the Godmother." The movies found a second life on streaming, resulting in Corben making the 2021 Netflix docuseries, "Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami." The franchise gained interest again in 2024 thanks to the popular Netflix miniseries "Griselda," which starred Sofia Vergara as The Godmother.

The use of AI has become a hot-button debate in Hollywood, as many fear it will leave humans out of work. Nevertheless, AI usage in Hollywood is increasing: An AI version of the late Val Kilmer recently starred in a movie, and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney featured an AI version of Elon Musk in his documentary on the richest man in the world, "Musk."

Corben and Spellman see AI as another tool they can use to tell stories.

"We're able to scale our style and quality of storytelling in a way that would have been impossible for us to do before," Spellman said of AI.

"Every month that we worked on this project, it got better," Corben added. "The only downside of that was resisting the temptation to start all over again." 

Watch the "Cocaine Cowboys" re-release trailer: