Great piece. I worked for Warner Bros for several years in the early 2000s. At the time they were struggling with the transition from DVDs to electronic sell through (Apple was the only means of digital distribution at the time). The whole studio was built on a franchise tent-pole film strategy supported by popular source material and/or big name actors. The economics of this "4 quadrant" approach, as they used to call it, just don't work anymore. Nobody cares to go to a theater and ancillary revenue streams have vanished.
In 10 years I think AI will ultimately enable hyper-personalized content for smaller-and smaller groups of people. Sports will be the last place for large scale shared experiences.
The vision of hyper-personalized content tailored for viewers in real-time is an interesting one. I hear people talk about it, but unsure what it would be like in reality. It requires special hardware or a totally new platform where viewers could "load in" in their preferences.
let’s be real—most people are way too lazy to explain the movie they want to see. We’d just end up rewatching The Office… except with ourselves as the characters. Wait… that actually sounds awesome.
Amazing piece. Thank you. As somebody who has worked in the industry for a decade, I was trying to explain this to somebody the other day. Hollywood and television had a fantastic business model that worked well for everybody involved. Netflix disrupted that and then all the studios tried to replicate it and they failed pretty miserably. What’s left is not a good model for either hollywood or the consumer.
There’s also a cultural component as well. To me, Hollywood is always late culturally speaking. It’s probably because films take years to produce so they get released in a different environment from the one in which their conceived. There’s also a culture of conformity and fear, which creates a black list phenomenon.
Overall, it’s hard to imagine a future for Hollywood.
Yes and yes. I'd add that Hollywood is not just culturally late, it's also creativity by committee. This has a 'cafeteria food effect'. You're not going to serve something to a billion people until you know it's popular and have removed the popular allergens & spicy ingredients. As audiences fracture into smaller and more specific groups, one thing I look forward to is films made by less people with stronger sensibilities and choices behind them. Thanks for the insightful comment, Pat.
I’m not sure most people realize that most movies/TV shows are sadly, not even shot in Hollywood: they’re shot in New Mexico, Georgia, Slovakia, England, Vancouver, etc. And while there are salient points here, Hollywood is a highly adaptable Leviathan, so much of these AI tool chests will be absorbed right back into the Hollywood ecosystem and it will still be a game of who’s got the loudest microphone and maybe more importantly, the drive and the staying power to stay at it. Lots of people now flocking to these tools will discover they can’t make the barest of living making this free, easily spewed content which thrives almost on inherent disposability and they’ll migrate into other ways of making revenue like e-commerce or crypto or 3-D print making, etc. Much of this YouTube/social media driven content out there is created by influencers and there’s lots of data showing we are at peak influencer inundation and burnout, with many of the biggest names transitioning out. I also think people’s desire for communal experiences still endures even through these transition periods—peak movie theater attendance was the year 1947, and audiences are still going.
That's a possibility. I suspect that yes Hollywood will absorb many AI tools, but not be able to significantly lower their costs. And Hollywood alternatives will make similar quality films at fractions of the price by the sake of being upstarts.
That was a fantastic read. I think I'm... oh god, do I feel inspired? That always leaves me with a horrible comedown. All the same, superbly written and argued piece.
Good, I hope it bleeds into 2d animation and video-game production, as someone who has studied both and is a novelist and writer hereon Substack, I gotta say I'm sick of the gatekeeping by the humongous corpos. Screw 'em and their crappy stories and movies.
I see that I'm very late to the party as I'm writing almost 11 months after this article was published. But I'm new to Substack and I just got this excellent article in my feed. I agree with most of what was written about the broken state of Hollywood. It was bad back in Dec 2023 when this article was written after 7 long difficult months of strikes by the WAG and SAG that shut down Hollywood based film productions worldwide. Unfortunately, fast forward to today and the industry still has not recovered. The film industries in the US and Canada employ over 600,000 and at least 20% of these film workers are unemployed at the moment. But it is far too early to write Hollywood's obituary.
Hollywood has reinvented itself again and again in its 110 year history. It has survived each major technological change and it will do it again. Talkies didn't kill Hollywood nor did television. Home videos didn't do it either. Streaming has certainly broken the business model but it will figure itself out. Gen AI is no different. Remember, Gen AI is a tool for creatives and not a creative tool.
Making movies is a complex and long process. We start with Development, then to Pre-production, then Production, Post-production and finally to Marketing and Distribution. Gen AI will make all of these steps more cost effective, but it can't replace them. We certainly can't prompt our way into a series of cohesive shots with the same level of nuance and control that's needed in every frame to make an entire movie production ready. Technology and controls will improve but there is much more to making a movie than generating beautiful, jaw-dropping videos. Characters on the screen need to connect with audiences at a human level in order for it to have meaning and resonance. Perhaps someday, we will have AI systems that will be indistinguishable from a human being. But we are not there yet and Hollywood isn't going anywhere either.
"Keep in mind Youtube spends ~$0 on producing content" - that caption blew my mind, I mean, sure we all know this, but in that YouTube vs Netflix chart context... wow!
Is there anything to be learned from what has already happened in music?
While technology has enabled lots of people to create new music, and barriers to distribution have come down, I’m not convinced that the best ideas have risen to the surface. Perhaps it’s simply too much work to find the great new stuff as there are a sea of creators all rushing to the same sound, in the same few genres, most (not all) of it mediocre. Unchecked, this can lead to consumer disengagement.
This (distribution, curation, & consumption) is the biggest question mark to me. I don't know how it will turn out. I have some guesses I'll write about in the future.
I haven't watched a Hollywood-made movie made in the past forty years, regardless of the medium of transmission. I find the content of the trailers I've watched and the partial films I've sat through to be uniform, execrable and boring, the direction routine and ham-fisted, the acting unpersuasive and unsophisticated, the language impoverished and very often profane. Junk food.
As a film editor, the current expectations and optimism around GenAI feel a bit empty. Even though movie production is difficult, it has always been the fastest part of the filmmaking process. Once people create a few Hollywood level images from their prompts, they will realize that writing a coherent and engaging script and editing a film for 6 months is far more than they bargained for. They will quickly give up. I do think AI will quickly revolutionize the creation of commercials and other short form content, but the idea that lots of people are going to be able to use GenAI to make feature films will threaten Hollywood feels like a fantasy. All that being said, I think that there will be a new crop of very experienced indie filmmakers that will leverage AI to make lower budget films that Hollywood will embrace.
Mike you're really fucking smart and you're a great writer this was interesting and witty and concise and clear etc etc various positive words but yeah this totally has big substack energy lol.
Honestly it reminds me of how NBA basketball analysis and commentary on TV is a fraction of how good all the stuff on YouTube and even substack is now, someone of which is produced by retired and active players. Like go watch a few Jxmy Highroller or Thinking Basketball videos and JJ Redick interviews.
Thanks Bryan. I used to write religiously. It's been a while since I've flexed the muscle. We'll get to watch me get into shape together. When will you publish your writing?
It’s whimpering now, but the idea that AI-driven basement filmmakers will flood the market and replace the traditional industry overlooks the most important factor—us. Audiences aren’t going to abandon films like Dune—rich in complexity and crafted with care—for an endless stream of AI-generated content. Making a film, show, or even a commercial is a complex dance of creativity, logistics, and human collaboration. Directors are chosen to curate a vision shaped by countless creative inputs, and that’s why some films soar while others fall flat. It’s not just the final product—it’s the entire experience, from behind-the-scenes TikTok buzz to Late Night Show appearances, write-ups, and the celebrity fanfare that real people bring.
Netflix’s in-house production model offers a glimpse of this shift, where volume is prioritized over creativity—centralized control reminiscent of old Hollywood. At least they still use real people. I doubt audiences will let AI dominate content creation because if we do, we risk ending up with cheaper but hollow output. Great films and shows come to life through the collaboration of top talent across all roles, and it’s that human touch that makes the art truly remarkable.
Even if AI-generated films and ads become more common, they’ll likely remain novelties—much like AI art, which often feels repetitive. New technology has always transformed industries—look at how VCRs and Blockbuster rentals, once seen as threats, ended up boosting revenue. But just as straight-to-video films were often subpar, AI-generated content would likely share the same fate.
If we don’t want to be force-fed straight-to-video quality content and see Hollywood go from glamour to a chatbot experience, those of us in the industry need to rethink and adopt solutions that address how we create as much as what we create. The current production model is outdated and lags behind advancements in other industries. New technology shouldn’t replace the human touch that breathes life into stories. Even if audiences can’t explain it, they’ll know when something essential is missing.
I think you nailed it. I love going to the movies, but I find myself going less and less because, honestly, big budget movies have gotten more and more boring. Formulaic, white washed, unauthentic and refusing to take any real risks. I have friends who believe that it is because big studio executives want to put their grubby hands on everything, believing they know better, thus ruining potentially innovative projects. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think it is plausible - and if not, whatever it is, you can see the poor results...
Great piece. I worked for Warner Bros for several years in the early 2000s. At the time they were struggling with the transition from DVDs to electronic sell through (Apple was the only means of digital distribution at the time). The whole studio was built on a franchise tent-pole film strategy supported by popular source material and/or big name actors. The economics of this "4 quadrant" approach, as they used to call it, just don't work anymore. Nobody cares to go to a theater and ancillary revenue streams have vanished.
In 10 years I think AI will ultimately enable hyper-personalized content for smaller-and smaller groups of people. Sports will be the last place for large scale shared experiences.
The vision of hyper-personalized content tailored for viewers in real-time is an interesting one. I hear people talk about it, but unsure what it would be like in reality. It requires special hardware or a totally new platform where viewers could "load in" in their preferences.
Isn't this basically a video game and a VR headset? Westworld in VR?
Brain interfaces that inputs what you think! it will come sooner than you think .
let’s be real—most people are way too lazy to explain the movie they want to see. We’d just end up rewatching The Office… except with ourselves as the characters. Wait… that actually sounds awesome.
Amazing piece. Thank you. As somebody who has worked in the industry for a decade, I was trying to explain this to somebody the other day. Hollywood and television had a fantastic business model that worked well for everybody involved. Netflix disrupted that and then all the studios tried to replicate it and they failed pretty miserably. What’s left is not a good model for either hollywood or the consumer.
There’s also a cultural component as well. To me, Hollywood is always late culturally speaking. It’s probably because films take years to produce so they get released in a different environment from the one in which their conceived. There’s also a culture of conformity and fear, which creates a black list phenomenon.
Overall, it’s hard to imagine a future for Hollywood.
Yes and yes. I'd add that Hollywood is not just culturally late, it's also creativity by committee. This has a 'cafeteria food effect'. You're not going to serve something to a billion people until you know it's popular and have removed the popular allergens & spicy ingredients. As audiences fracture into smaller and more specific groups, one thing I look forward to is films made by less people with stronger sensibilities and choices behind them. Thanks for the insightful comment, Pat.
Such a good analogy! Maybe AI will democratize the medium so we can have more of what you describe.
I’m not sure most people realize that most movies/TV shows are sadly, not even shot in Hollywood: they’re shot in New Mexico, Georgia, Slovakia, England, Vancouver, etc. And while there are salient points here, Hollywood is a highly adaptable Leviathan, so much of these AI tool chests will be absorbed right back into the Hollywood ecosystem and it will still be a game of who’s got the loudest microphone and maybe more importantly, the drive and the staying power to stay at it. Lots of people now flocking to these tools will discover they can’t make the barest of living making this free, easily spewed content which thrives almost on inherent disposability and they’ll migrate into other ways of making revenue like e-commerce or crypto or 3-D print making, etc. Much of this YouTube/social media driven content out there is created by influencers and there’s lots of data showing we are at peak influencer inundation and burnout, with many of the biggest names transitioning out. I also think people’s desire for communal experiences still endures even through these transition periods—peak movie theater attendance was the year 1947, and audiences are still going.
That's a possibility. I suspect that yes Hollywood will absorb many AI tools, but not be able to significantly lower their costs. And Hollywood alternatives will make similar quality films at fractions of the price by the sake of being upstarts.
Hollywood has too many embedded cost obligations to radically lower production costs, *even if* they adopt AI technologies.
That was a fantastic read. I think I'm... oh god, do I feel inspired? That always leaves me with a horrible comedown. All the same, superbly written and argued piece.
Good, I hope it bleeds into 2d animation and video-game production, as someone who has studied both and is a novelist and writer hereon Substack, I gotta say I'm sick of the gatekeeping by the humongous corpos. Screw 'em and their crappy stories and movies.
This is so concise and interesting to analyze. Great writing also!
I see that I'm very late to the party as I'm writing almost 11 months after this article was published. But I'm new to Substack and I just got this excellent article in my feed. I agree with most of what was written about the broken state of Hollywood. It was bad back in Dec 2023 when this article was written after 7 long difficult months of strikes by the WAG and SAG that shut down Hollywood based film productions worldwide. Unfortunately, fast forward to today and the industry still has not recovered. The film industries in the US and Canada employ over 600,000 and at least 20% of these film workers are unemployed at the moment. But it is far too early to write Hollywood's obituary.
Hollywood has reinvented itself again and again in its 110 year history. It has survived each major technological change and it will do it again. Talkies didn't kill Hollywood nor did television. Home videos didn't do it either. Streaming has certainly broken the business model but it will figure itself out. Gen AI is no different. Remember, Gen AI is a tool for creatives and not a creative tool.
Making movies is a complex and long process. We start with Development, then to Pre-production, then Production, Post-production and finally to Marketing and Distribution. Gen AI will make all of these steps more cost effective, but it can't replace them. We certainly can't prompt our way into a series of cohesive shots with the same level of nuance and control that's needed in every frame to make an entire movie production ready. Technology and controls will improve but there is much more to making a movie than generating beautiful, jaw-dropping videos. Characters on the screen need to connect with audiences at a human level in order for it to have meaning and resonance. Perhaps someday, we will have AI systems that will be indistinguishable from a human being. But we are not there yet and Hollywood isn't going anywhere either.
"Keep in mind Youtube spends ~$0 on producing content" - that caption blew my mind, I mean, sure we all know this, but in that YouTube vs Netflix chart context... wow!
Very well analyzed. Endorse
Is there anything to be learned from what has already happened in music?
While technology has enabled lots of people to create new music, and barriers to distribution have come down, I’m not convinced that the best ideas have risen to the surface. Perhaps it’s simply too much work to find the great new stuff as there are a sea of creators all rushing to the same sound, in the same few genres, most (not all) of it mediocre. Unchecked, this can lead to consumer disengagement.
Why will things turn out differently with video?
This (distribution, curation, & consumption) is the biggest question mark to me. I don't know how it will turn out. I have some guesses I'll write about in the future.
I haven't watched a Hollywood-made movie made in the past forty years, regardless of the medium of transmission. I find the content of the trailers I've watched and the partial films I've sat through to be uniform, execrable and boring, the direction routine and ham-fisted, the acting unpersuasive and unsophisticated, the language impoverished and very often profane. Junk food.
As a film editor, the current expectations and optimism around GenAI feel a bit empty. Even though movie production is difficult, it has always been the fastest part of the filmmaking process. Once people create a few Hollywood level images from their prompts, they will realize that writing a coherent and engaging script and editing a film for 6 months is far more than they bargained for. They will quickly give up. I do think AI will quickly revolutionize the creation of commercials and other short form content, but the idea that lots of people are going to be able to use GenAI to make feature films will threaten Hollywood feels like a fantasy. All that being said, I think that there will be a new crop of very experienced indie filmmakers that will leverage AI to make lower budget films that Hollywood will embrace.
Mike you're really fucking smart and you're a great writer this was interesting and witty and concise and clear etc etc various positive words but yeah this totally has big substack energy lol.
Honestly it reminds me of how NBA basketball analysis and commentary on TV is a fraction of how good all the stuff on YouTube and even substack is now, someone of which is produced by retired and active players. Like go watch a few Jxmy Highroller or Thinking Basketball videos and JJ Redick interviews.
Thanks Bryan. I used to write religiously. It's been a while since I've flexed the muscle. We'll get to watch me get into shape together. When will you publish your writing?
Jimmy Highroller & Thinking Basketball are phenomenal. Haven't watched JJ Redick's interviews, but I'll check them out.
It’s whimpering now, but the idea that AI-driven basement filmmakers will flood the market and replace the traditional industry overlooks the most important factor—us. Audiences aren’t going to abandon films like Dune—rich in complexity and crafted with care—for an endless stream of AI-generated content. Making a film, show, or even a commercial is a complex dance of creativity, logistics, and human collaboration. Directors are chosen to curate a vision shaped by countless creative inputs, and that’s why some films soar while others fall flat. It’s not just the final product—it’s the entire experience, from behind-the-scenes TikTok buzz to Late Night Show appearances, write-ups, and the celebrity fanfare that real people bring.
Netflix’s in-house production model offers a glimpse of this shift, where volume is prioritized over creativity—centralized control reminiscent of old Hollywood. At least they still use real people. I doubt audiences will let AI dominate content creation because if we do, we risk ending up with cheaper but hollow output. Great films and shows come to life through the collaboration of top talent across all roles, and it’s that human touch that makes the art truly remarkable.
Even if AI-generated films and ads become more common, they’ll likely remain novelties—much like AI art, which often feels repetitive. New technology has always transformed industries—look at how VCRs and Blockbuster rentals, once seen as threats, ended up boosting revenue. But just as straight-to-video films were often subpar, AI-generated content would likely share the same fate.
If we don’t want to be force-fed straight-to-video quality content and see Hollywood go from glamour to a chatbot experience, those of us in the industry need to rethink and adopt solutions that address how we create as much as what we create. The current production model is outdated and lags behind advancements in other industries. New technology shouldn’t replace the human touch that breathes life into stories. Even if audiences can’t explain it, they’ll know when something essential is missing.
They won’t die. They’ll adapt. TV didn’t kill the radio star.
Yes, that's more exact. The Hollywood we've known will die. But it will still exist in some form.
I think you nailed it. I love going to the movies, but I find myself going less and less because, honestly, big budget movies have gotten more and more boring. Formulaic, white washed, unauthentic and refusing to take any real risks. I have friends who believe that it is because big studio executives want to put their grubby hands on everything, believing they know better, thus ruining potentially innovative projects. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think it is plausible - and if not, whatever it is, you can see the poor results...