Did AI Just End Hollywood?
With Google's New AI Tool Anyone Can Be a Filmmaker—That Threatens Tinseltown
I always felt lucky I got into film school.
Unlike my peers at Chapman’s MFA program, I did not major in anything related to movies. My undergrad was in Philosophy—which says a lot about why I created this Substack.
Anyway, back to film school.
I received my degree in Screenwriting. This emphasis was not technical. Pretty much the only thing I had to do involving “film skills” was edit a few short videos.
Instead, I spent my time screenwriting movie and TV scripts. Chapman has a collaborative model. For our final, we created a short film. This meant those grads studying to be directors in our program first picked a script they liked. Then they assembled a team of multi-faceted creatives—cinematographers, producers, editors, gaffers, even set designers.
All these people were Chapman students like me. Together we made a cinematic product that was the result of all our hard work and creative input.
That was in 2007.
In May 2025, this moviemaking model collapsed under the weight of AI. Or at least that’s what the pundits would have you believe.
As Axios reports:
“Google's newest AI video generator, Veo 3, generates clips that most users online can't seem to distinguish from those made by human filmmakers and actors.”
Please see this from Kingy AI:
“The entertainment capital of the world stands at an unprecedented crossroads. In the sprawling studios of Burbank, the gleaming offices of Beverly Hills, and the creative enclaves of Silver Lake, a technological revolution is quietly unfolding—one that promises to fundamentally alter how stories are conceived, produced, and brought to life on screen.”
Creativity For All—Courtesy of AI
Profound technical capabilities are what we’re really talking about. For the first time in history, nearly anyone can be a filmmaker. So much for film school. So much for technical skills. So much for even movie literacy.
This is utter creative democratization.
To understand why, consider this. The short film I created at Chapman required dozens of people. It cost around $20,000 and took months to produce. After the script was locked, we had to cast actors, scout locations, secure food and drinks for the crew (craft services), set up ideal lighting, and then edit the whole thing when it was done.
Now along comes Veo 3 and suddenly all that’s moot.
Using a video generation model developed by DeepMind, anyone can talk a movie into existence. (Right now Veo 3 can only handle short clips, but you can bet it will soon expand to feature length content.)
Fallout
This development has profound implications to put it lightly. Ever since its genesis, Hollywood has operated in a collective, ensemble fashion. Much like my film school experience, it required numerous people to produce content.
Not anymore.
Future entertainment may not even require cinematographers. One could simply prompt an AI to represent any location—from a castle to a spaceship without filming anything. Editing jobs may be on the chopping block too. Why pay someone to cut up and arrange footage when you can prompt AI to do whatever you want.
And as for flesh and blood actors? They may be on the way out too. Already Veo 3 has proven its ability to fashion actors so lifelike they’re indistinguishable from living people.
How Will People React?
Purists will push back on these concerns, of course.
They’ll counter by saying audiences will demand to see movie stars playing roles. But even this concept is soon becoming a relic, especially as platforms like YouTube and TikTok usurp the feature film’s dominance.
Increasingly, young people have no interest in watching full length movies or engaging with what they view as an antiquated medium. As The Daily Free Press puts it: “The movie star is dead—a reflection of a changing landscape that’s become increasingly worrying to both actors and filmmakers alike.”
The Road Ahead
What do these changes herald for creativity’s future? On the one hand, there’s something liberating about the idea anyone can be a filmmaker. Tinseltown—with all its virtue signaling nonsense—is no longer a gatekeeper. Thanks to AI, anyone can make the movie or TV show they desire.
But the question is, who will watch it?
This is the very topic I discussed with The Matrix’s VFX designer John Gaeta with the launch of his own AI platform escape.ai. Because on the other hand, all this technical power still doesn’t solve the distribution problem.
For all its missteps, that’s something Hollywood got right. For decades, it was adept at disseminating entertainment wares to an eager public. For better or worse, it created a shared monoculture.
We watched together. We laughed together. We cried together.
Now along comes AI and suddenly, we can create visual masterpieces with a verbal prompt. But who’s going to watch? And who’s going to care?
I can see why you say that, Jurgen. But perhaps this development will spark something new, even breathing new life into creative fields like movies that were stymied by the old studio gatekeeper system.
Another well thought out article, Michael.
So far in film, we have seen five major ages in filmmaking. 1) The invention of the movie camera, 2) Talkies 3) Color 4) VCR/Camcorders and 5) Phone cameras.
We are now entering the sixth, and what I believe to be, the most important age of filmmaking - the age of AI moviemaking.
Now, I've done two feature-length AI-powered films so far, and a number of shorts. My first feature, The Wizard and The Scholar (every director should do a Robin Hood film at some point in their career), had a scene showing a dozen or so medieval ships exploding in a port. That scene took me.... 5 minutes (?) to create with AI at a minimal cost - an investment most people could afford.
But what would have been required to create that scene alone (especially live action) without AI? I sometimes joke that I'll put the environmental impact of all AI filmmaking against the environmental cost of just Titanic alone. :)
And the monetary costs to do that live would have been outrageous.
That is part of what keeps millions of people from seeing their dreams of being a filmmaker come true. One needs to either have money, connections, or both to get a break in Hollywood.
So, with enormous costs running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, mega-studios need mega-investors.
So mega-films get made for the sole purpose of making a return for the investors. Well-known actors get paid $80M for 10 days of work playing dead superheroes for the sole cold metric of who will put butts in seats.
Even if your favorite actor or director is a one-in-a-million talent, then there are still 330 people in the US alone as talented as they.
Hollywood’s model isn’t built to find the "one in a million." It’s built to de-risk art.
A $200M film can’t bet on unknown voices. It needs proven formulas, franchises, and familiar faces.
Result: Thousands of visionary storytellers—the undiscovered Camerons, Fosters, Howards, Nairs, and Tarantinos—get sidelined not for lack of talent, but for lack of access.
AI doesn’t just lower costs—it obliterates the gate, opening a flood of new, unrecognized talents.
The most interesting art isn’t where the money is. It’s where the constraints vanish.
James