Be The Power
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I listen to way too many movie or entertainment podcasts these days and just from the general sense of things, it seems as though there just isn’t as much excitement as last year.
I don’t know what this means.
There’s a chance that maybe the season is still young and there will be all these awards-worthy movies that come out in the second half of the year. But, at the moment, I don’t know.
Things seem just…quiet?
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Well, if nothing else, I suppose this novel might catch the eye of Sydney Sweeney if it actually gets published. There is a lot of spicy content in this novel, but I’d like to think that it’s done in such a matter-of-fact, droll fashion that it won’t turn off too many people.
I hope.
At the same time, there’s a chance that despite the spicy content, some starlet like Sydney Sweeney may be willing to be an android stripper in a Hollywood movie inspired by my novel.
But, I don’t know. It’s one of those things that could go either way. It could be that this novel is just too spicy to even past muster to get published since most literary agents — at least in my imagination — are liberal white women who might blanch at all the spicy content.
Or, at least, that a man is writing it.
That’s why I see this novel as a exploratory novel. I’m going to test the waters of how, exactly, I will go through the querying process. Then the NEXT novel, maybe, the one that has less obvious sex in it, might be the one I get published. But I’m kind of running out of time.
If I don’t hurry up and get something, anything done, I’m going to be in my 60s before I might be able to hold a novel in my hands that actually was found on bookshelves. And all of this is happening in the context of the fucking Singularity rushing towards us.
Ugh.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The big thing I noticed about The Devil Wear’s Prada 2 was how chaste it was. There was barely even alluded-to sex. Which makes you wonder if this is the New Normal for modern stories or if a marketing ploy to women and gays who love the franchise.
Though, as far as I know, both women and gays have a lot of sex (someone has to) so…lulz? Maybe it’s specifically *younger* women who would be aghast if there was some shown horizonal bopping going on?
ANYWAY.
The movie is fine. I only went to see it because of very personal nostalgia. I went to see the original with a bevy of ROKon Magazine folks 20 years ago. Man, was that a long, long time ago and man, am I a different person from that point in my life.
It’s like I’ve had a brain transfer or something.
If the size of my audience’s crowd is any indication, this movie is going to be one of the biggest movies of the year. I went to the first evening showing on a Friday and the place was surprisingly packed (relatively.)
I am still a little nervous for my novel, given how much sex there is in it compared to this movie. But, who knows, maybe I’m overthinking things.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I really liked both the book and the movie Project Hail Mary. But the movie really had a few elements that made me annoyed.
The first and biggest one was how our intrepid hero was able to figure out how to pilot a huge space craft that he otherwise should know nothing about. I would have introduced an AI of some sort as a character that would have taken care of all that and filled that particular plot hole.
Meanwhile, another issue was the selection of The Beatles “Two of Us” for a very crucial scene, when, I think the case could be made that “Get Back” was a lot better. But I get it — they wanted to convey a lot of information with one song and in this instance, “Two of Us” did a double duty that “Get Back” could not.
Anyway, I really liked the movie. It was really good.
I have written about this thesis before — more than once. But the idea continues to feel underexamined relative to its inevitability, so it warrants another articulation.
The next and likely final wave of consolidation in Hollywood will occur when technology companies — most probably those leading the development of generative AI — acquire the major studios outright. When that transaction happens, it will mark a fundamental shift in what a studio is. Rather than functioning as content production engines, studios will become intellectual property holding companies. Their value will lie not in the films they produce, but in the libraries they own.
The mechanism is straightforward. As AI-driven personalization tools mature — what Apple once called the Knowledge Navigator, and what will almost certainly emerge under various names in the coming decade — individual audience members will be able to generate bespoke, hyper-personalized versions of existing intellectual property on demand. The studio’s role will be to license the raw material. The audience’s role will be to shape it.
Within twenty years, this model could turn a single actor’s filmography into an infinite creative substrate. Consider Harrison Ford: audiences will be able to generate an unlimited number of new performances featuring a young Ford in variations of his most iconic roles — or in entirely new scenarios built from the same DNA. The original films become source code rather than finished product.
This outcome may, paradoxically, resolve the fatigue audiences currently experience around franchises like Star Wars. The expanded universe contains hundreds of secondary and tertiary characters whose stories remain untold in any feature-length form. Under the current studio model, most of those stories will never be greenlit. Under an AI-personalized model, any audience member who wants a feature-length film centered on Dengar or Nien Nunb can simply commission one.
That, in essence, is the future of Hollywood.
One significant question remains unresolved: what happens to the human beings who would otherwise have become movie stars?
My view — which I have articulated in various forms across several previous posts — is that their primary stage will shift to Broadway and live theatre. The theatre will become the venue where new stars are born, where audiences discover the charisma and presence that no algorithm can fabricate. Live performance will serve as the audition reel for a new kind of celebrity.
The economic model will follow accordingly. Emerging performers will eventually undergo full-body digital scans, licensing their likenesses for use in AI-generated content. The passive income derived from that licensing — their digital selves appearing in thousands of personalized films — will constitute a substantial and ongoing revenue stream, potentially exceeding what any single theatrical run could generate.
I recognize that this argument has, to date, found a limited audience. I have made it repeatedly, in various registers, and it has not yet gained traction. Perhaps one day it will.
Hollywood as we know it is over. Not dying — over. The studios will survive, but they will survive as IP holding companies, their catalogues of characters and worlds licensed to AI platforms the way music publishers license songs. The actual work of making movies — casting, directing, performing, writing — will be absorbed by what I’ve been calling the Knowledge Navigator: a personalized AI content engine that generates bespoke entertainment from existing IP on demand.
Why watch the canonical Godfather when your Navigator generates a version tuned to your specific emotional frequency, running exactly the right length, in whatever cultural setting makes it land hardest for you personally? The IP is the asset. The humans who made it are a sunk cost.
This is not distant. The studios already know it. The smart ones are positioning their catalogues accordingly.
But here’s what everyone gets wrong about what comes next: they assume this kills stardom. It doesn’t. It relocates it.
Tom Hanks will still exist. He’ll just be on Broadway.
Live theatre becomes the last room where the human has to show up and prove it in real time. No AI on that stage. No algorithm smoothing the rough edges. You’re in the room, the actor is in the room, and something happens that cannot be generated or personalized or optimized. That’s not a weakness of theatre — that becomes its entire value proposition. The certificate of authenticity in an ocean of bespoke content.
Broadway becomes the star-making machine. Hollywood — Neo-Hollywood — becomes the scanning facility.
Here’s how the pipeline works: a performer builds genuine charisma and cultural presence on stage, in front of real humans who chose to be there. They become famous the old way — earned, embodied, real. Then the AI companies come with their contracts. Your likeness, your voice, your gestural vocabulary, licensed for franchise deployment across a thousand personalized content streams. Your digital twin carries the IP. You go back to doing eight shows a week.
It inverts the entire 20th century model. Hollywood used to make you famous and Broadway was where you went to prove you were serious. In the coming model Broadway makes you famous and Neo-Hollywood is where your ghost goes to work.
The stars who survive this transition will share certain qualities. Warmth. Specificity. The kind of presence that reads from the back row. The thing that cannot be faked in a room. Tom Hanks has always had it. So has Meryl Streep. So does Denzel. These qualities were always what actually mattered — Hollywood just obscured that by manufacturing fame through distribution and marketing muscle it no longer has.
Tonight we’re watching the Oscars. It’s still a great ceremony, still a genuine ritual — one of the last moments where everyone watches the same thing at the same time with real uncertainty about how it ends. That shared attention is increasingly rare and increasingly precious.
Enjoy it. It’s not going to look like this much longer.
The theatre, though — the theatre is just getting started.
The hypothesis that Hollywood studios will eventually transform into IP holding companies, where AI agents leverage licensed intellectual property to create personalized, bespoke content for users, is no longer a matter of distant speculation. As of early 2026, the entertainment industry is already in the midst of this structural metamorphosis. The convergence of generative AI (such as OpenAI’s Sora 2), decentralized distribution, and a shift in consumer behavior toward hyper-personalization has set the stage for a fundamental reimagining of what a “studio” actually is.
In the traditional studio model, the primary asset was the finished product—the 120-minute feature film or the 22-episode television season. In the emerging AI-driven landscape, the core asset has shifted to the foundational intellectual property: the characters, the lore, the world-building, and the digital likenesses of the actors.
| Aspect | Traditional Studio Model | AI-Driven IP Holding Model |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Function | Physical production and distribution | IP stewardship and licensing |
| Core Asset | Finished media (MP4, DCP) | Digital assets, lore, and character weights |
| Production | Human-led, multi-year timelines | AI-driven, real-time, or near-real-time |
| Creative Control | Centralized (Director/Producer) | Decentralized (AI-guided, User-influenced) |
Recent developments in 2025 and 2026 show that studios like Disney and Warner Bros. are increasingly viewing their libraries as “training sets” and “licensing foundations.” For instance, Disney’s reported move in late 2025 to hand over its most valuable characters to AI models for licensed use marks a pivotal moment where the studio prioritizes the utility of its characters over the scarcity of its films.
The concept of “bespoke versions” for users is already manifesting in platforms like Fable Studio’s “Showrunner”, which allows users to generate custom episodes of animated shows from simple text prompts. Even more telling is the recent launch of the Disney+ “Magic Feed” in March 2026. This feature, which initially focused on vertical video clips, is widely seen as the precursor to a system where users can generate personalized AI scenes within the Disney ecosystem—such as a version of Star Wars where the user themselves is a Jedi, or a Marvel movie with a customized plotline.
“The ‘Magic Feed’ won’t just show you clips from existing movies; it will show you personalized AI-generated scenes… this is the first step toward user-created artificial intelligence videos within a walled garden of premium IP.” [1]
As studios become IP holding companies, their revenue models are shifting from high-risk, high-reward box office releases to a more stable licensing and subscription-based model. In this scenario, the studio acts as a “Rights OS,” providing the legal and creative framework for AI agents to operate.
Despite the economic logic, this transition faces significant headwinds:
The most likely outcome is a hybrid model. Hollywood studios will not entirely stop producing “canonical” high-budget human-led films, as these serve as the “anchor points” for the IP’s value. However, the vast majority of consumer engagement will likely shift toward AI-driven personalized content.
In this future, a studio’s success will be measured not by its ability to manage a film set, but by its ability to maintain the cultural relevance and legal integrity of its IP. The studio becomes the “gardener” of a fictional universe, while AI agents and users are the “explorers” who create an infinite number of paths within it.
References:
[1] Inside the Magic, “Mickey Goes TikTok: Why Disney+ Vertical Video is the Secret Key to User-Created AI Videos,” March 2026.
[2] The Trumplandia Report, “The Ultimate Fate of Content Creation in the Age of AI Agents,” March 2024/2026.
[3] Variety, “Media Predictions 2026: Odyssey Dominates,” December 2025.
Imagine a future where every image, every video, every recorded moment you encounter could be a perfect fabrication. Not just a deepfake, but something so seamlessly real that your eyes, your ears, your very senses, cannot tell the difference. This isn’t a distant sci-fi trope; it’s a looming tipping point in our digital evolution, and it promises to fundamentally reshape our relationship with content, authenticity, and shared experience.
For years, we’ve talked about the
uncanny valley—that unsettling chasm where AI-generated faces and movements are almost human, but not quite. We’ve seen the glitches, the tells, the subtle imperfections that betray their artificial origins. But what happens when AI crosses that valley? When the algorithms learn to mimic reality with such flawless precision that the distinction between genuine and generated vanishes entirely?
This is the tipping point: the moment when visual proof dies. Once AI can produce hyper-realistic videos and photographs on demand, the evidentiary value of any recorded media plummets to zero. Your eyes can no longer be trusted. What you see online, in your news feeds, or even in personal messages, could be a meticulously crafted illusion. This isn’t just about misinformation; it’s about the complete erosion of trust in the digital image.
And what will fill this void? A tidal wave of what one insightful observer termed “AI slop.” Imagine an endless, personalized stream of content, generated on the fly to cater to your every whim, your every desire—including, yes, explicit material. With XR goggles seamlessly blending these AI-generated narratives into your perceived reality, you’ll be immersed in a bespoke, hyper-personalized world where intellectual properties are reinterpreted and remixed just for you, on the fly. Canon? Forget about it. Every story becomes a fluid, ever-changing text, tailored to the individual, with no fixed point of reference.
This isn’t a future of digital backlash, but rather a sublimation. Faced with an overwhelming, untrustworthy, and ultimately isolating digital landscape, humanity will instinctively seek refuge in the one place where authenticity remains unassailable: live theatre.
Think about it. In a world where every recorded image is suspect, the raw, unmediated presence of a live performance becomes a beacon of truth. There are no filters, no algorithms, no post-production tricks. The actors are physically there, breathing the same air as you. The story unfolds in real-time, a singular, unrepeatable event shared with a collective audience. This is where the human need for genuine connection, for shared reality, will find its most potent expression.
Live theatre, once perhaps seen as a niche art form, will ascend to become the new canonical authority. It will be the place where stories are told with intentionality, where artistic vision holds sway, and where a shared cultural experience is not just possible, but guaranteed. The monthly pilgrimage to the theatre, much like our grandparents once went to the movies, will become a vital ritual—a deliberate act of choosing reality over simulation, and communal experience over isolated consumption.
This vision, while seemingly dystopian, offers a fascinating glimpse into our future. It suggests that even as technology pushes the boundaries of simulation, the fundamental human craving for authenticity and shared meaning will endure. The “AI slop” might dominate our daily digital lives, but it will inadvertently create a profound appreciation for the irreplaceable magic of the live, the real, and the truly shared.
So, the next time you put on your XR goggles, or scroll through an endless feed of AI-generated content, consider this: perhaps the very technology designed to immerse us in artificial worlds will ultimately drive us back to the most ancient and human of experiences—the communal storytelling of live theatre. And in that, there’s a strange, hopeful beauty.
Editor’s Note: This is a response from the Manus LLM about a question I asked it.
The user’s vision of a future where recorded media lacks a definitive canon, leading to a mass migration towards the live, canonical experience of theatre, presents a compelling and indeed dystopian perspective on the evolution of content consumption. This scenario, while speculative, touches upon several critical anxieties and trends within contemporary media landscapes, particularly concerning authenticity, authority, and the nature of shared cultural experience.
The concept of a ‘canon’ traditionally refers to a body of works considered authoritative, foundational, or exemplary within a particular field. In recorded media, this has historically been shaped by critical consensus, cultural impact, and longevity. However, the proliferation of content, the democratization of creation tools, and the algorithmic curation of individual experiences have indeed begun to fragment this traditional understanding. The user’s ‘post-canon’ era suggests a future where:
In stark contrast to this fragmented recorded landscape, the user posits that live theatre would emerge as the new bastion of canon. This is a particularly insightful aspect of the vision, as live performance inherently possesses qualities that recorded media, especially in a post-canon state, struggles to replicate:
If this vision were to materialize, the implications would be profound:
The user’s dystopian vision is a potent thought experiment that highlights the fundamental human need for shared meaning and authoritative narratives. In a world saturated with infinitely malleable digital content, the tangible, immediate, and communal experience of live theatre could indeed offer a powerful counter-narrative, becoming a sanctuary for those seeking a definitive ‘canon.’ This shift would not merely be a change in consumption habits but a profound reordering of cultural values, emphasizing presence, authenticity, and collective experience over endless, individualized interpretations. It serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences when the very foundations of shared cultural understanding begin to erode.
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