Ricardo Morales

Ricardo Morales is the director and producer of Copán: La Leyenda (2026) and CEO of Level 7 Studios, which made it. He has said the idea goes back to a visit to the Copán ruins when he was seven, and that some members of the Level 7 team have worked with him for 18 or 19 years.

Morales says the project began about 15 years ago, with roughly ten years spent building characters and environments in traditional 3D animation, self-financed until the cost forced a pause; the team then used AI tools to finish it. He told La Prensa the tools are directed by the team rather than working on their own, and he has argued that a production of this scale was not affordable in Honduras before them.

The 74-minute film, about an archaeologist and his grandson who find a portal to the Maya underworld, opened in Honduran cinemas on 7 May 2026 with promotional backing from the Honduran Institute of Tourism and Banco Atlántida. Critics and many local artists panned it, and Cartoon Brew reported that some schools required students to attend. Wikipedia, citing The Hollywood Reporter en Español, says watermarks from a Gemini image generator were reportedly visible in promotional material.