As I often like to remind people, they say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once and if all three major Hollywood unions go on strike there’s a pretty good chance that AI will be adopted far quicker by the Studios than it might otherwise be.
And I say this as someone who is rather Norma Ray when it comes to entertainment Unions. I’m all for them, I just think we’re careening towards a future that is pretty fucked up to the point that we either have something akin to a neo-Luddite movement or we, as a society, decide there have to be expansive and strict carveouts for humans.
The thing I’ve been the most shocked by is how AI generated art belies the idea that there is something uniquely human about art. Turns out, lulz, even something as human as telling a joke has something akin to a mathematical formulate to it that an AI can figure out.
And, remember, the issue is not that AI will generate Casablanca, it’s that whatever it generates will be JUST GOOD ENOUGH that the mass of people will watch it — or listen it while they fold their clothes. In fact, if you get all Black Mirror about it, I just don’t see traditional human-generated Hollywood surviving if the very idea of “mass” media becomes quaint.
If your TV, laptop or phone does a scan of your face to figure out what mood you’re in then gives you entertainment specifically not just to you, but to the specific mood you’re in at that very moment….well, game over.
This leads me to wonder, again, if maybe Broadway and other live theatre is about to see a significance resurgence as people with taste want actual, human interaction in their act.
The thing about A.I. that a lot of my fellow writers — many of the far better writers than I will ever be — miss is that most people watch and enjoy dreck. As such, whatever A.I. produces just have to be good enough to be on in the background of daily life for most people to accept it without even thinking about it.
As such, I think there is a real possibility that if the Hollywood writers’ strike lingers long enough that A.I. will not just break the strike, but render it moot. Barring something I can’t predict — I am wrong all the time, afterall — it definitely seems as though Hollywood is on the cusp of being radically transformed — “Moneyballed,” if you will — to the point that the only people making any money will be studio execs and actors who live passively off of full body scans.
And that’s if the actors are lucky!
It could be that ultimately even actors will be rendered moot as a cost-cutting measure on the part of Hollywood studios. All those 90s dystopian movies about faux movie stars generated by AI will become a reality and people will grow to have parasocial relationships with stars that don’t even exist in reality at all.
Stranger things, and all that.
If you throw in the growing likelihood of a severe economic downturn happening very, very soon because the US defaults, well, there you go. Before you know it, people will turn to Broadway and their local live theatre if they want to have any sort of human-generated entertainment.
There is a disturbance in the force. It definitely seems as though we’re about to experience a serious case of future shock over the course of the next few months. The entire knowledge economy could be not just drastically transformed by AI, but face serious contraction as well.
It could be that a lot sooner than you might think, the issue won’t be who gets paid for writing what, but audiences deciding that “artisanal art” has unique value unto itself. So, it’s possible to imagine a future where 99% of all art is AI generated, with the remaining 1% being created by humans who make a lot of money.
All of this might happen in the context of a real resurgence in live performances of all sorts. If I could, say, have an endless supply OK Computer era Radiohead, then seeing them live with new stuff will be something that people will pay an even bigger premium for.
Or, put another way, it could be that the average person won’t even notice that most of the entertainment they consume on a daily basis is AI generated. The entire greater showbiz industry will effectively collapse. It could be, in a sense, an extinction-level event for the entire concept of humans producing recorded entertainment.
It might happen so fast that even if the Hollywood writers’ on strike now are able to get some concessions from producers that it will all be moot. The only people in the future making money will be producers and the actors living passively off their full body scans. Otherwise, lulz.
That’s why I think for the Writers’ Strike to be successful, they need to be very, very aggressive on the AI front. They need to demand strict, clear carveouts for human writers. I would prefer a total prohibition on the use of AI to create a movie, but I think that’s probably pushing it.
As I understand it, the entire movie industry pretty much runs on hookers and blow in the sense that a lot, A LOT, of the industry is pretty much just vibes. And I could see from the producers’ point of view that the use of AI would be part of a broader effort to “modernize” showbiz.
Instead of any connection to the human touch, the vast majority of (bad) movies will be AI generated. Live entertainment will gain in value significantly and the only old-school movies that will exist will be high-end movies with a very specific vision.
But, wait, there’s more!
All of this would be happening just as movies and video games fuse. It could be that what movies exist in the future will be immersive in nature and the audience will collectively “play” the movie as a group in some sort of metaverse hellscape.
The point is — these may be the waning days of the Hollywood industry that has existed for about 100 years. It could be that the very idea of a “passive” human generated movie is going to be seen a very quaint a lot sooner than you might otherwise imagine.
The only thing I can compare this to is what is show in the movie Moneyball. A lot of how movies are actually produced is a magical mystery concoction accumulated over the decades. Or, as one producer once famously put it, “Nobody knows nothing,” when it comes to making movies.
So, it could be that because of the techno-capitalist imperative, soon enough, the back end of Hollywood will be done entirely relative to cold, hard metrics. What’s more, the very idea of “mass media” may not longer exist as everyone gets a different very, very specific and very, very personalized movie or TV show each time they sit down to watch something.
There will be no shared reality anymore. No watercooler movies or TV pop moments to share on social media. Professional (human) writers will turn to the live experience to make a living.
From the buzz I continue to monitor coming out of the tech community, it seems clear that Hollywood may be about to be “Moneyballed” in the sense that a basic human element of the industry — writing — may be turned into a technology issue.
And while I totally support the current Hollywood writers’ strike, if it goes on as long as it probably needs to, the risk that studio executives will simply turn to AI to write very formulaic scripts will increase significantly. Given that at the moment you can’t copyright something done by AI, it’s possible that Hollywood bigwigs will begin to lobby Congress to change that particular situation.
All that has to happen is one AI generated script be produced and it be a success for the whole Hollywood creative ecosystem to be upended. Remember, the vast majority of Hollywood entertainment is formulaic, stale and, well, bad. So the first people to feel the pinch of any AI writing revolution would be hacks who have no talent to begin with.
I still think that once this entire process is complete that live theatre may return to a popularity it’s not seen since…the rise of movies. It could be that when 99% of all recorded entertainment is AI generated that audiences will want to return to the comfort of live entertainment that will have a human touch that our new bot overlords will not be able to provide.
It’s at least a possibility, I suppose.
It just seems to me that Hollywood as we currently know it functions on some very antiquated assumptions. Once LLMs are able to generate content that is just good enough to be watchable, then, that’s it, the revolution will be here and the entire Hollywood economy will be disrupted.
I’m all for Hollywood writers getting a better deal from the studios, but to get that is probably going to require some industry-wide pain. The thing I’m worried about is that if the writers’ strike lingers longer than any of us might otherwise expect, there is a possibility that, lulz, AI-generated scripts could fill the gap.
Technology usually advances dramatically in times of crisis, so it’s reasonable to assume that it’s possible that if we find ourselves in month three or four of a strike that the major studios, in desperation, will turn to ChatGPT and other similar LLMs to write scripts.
And, remember, the vast majority of TV and movie scripts…suck. They’re formulaic and horrible and yet because of the economics of the industry they get produced. So, it’s very possible that there will at least be some experimentation in AI generated scripts.
That’s how progress happens in abrupt, unexpected ways, shit like a lingering strike. So, it will be interesting to see how things work out.
I’m of the opinion that given the capitalist imperative that Hollywood as we know it is careening towards an astonishing revolution. It’s just a matter of if it’s within five years or 10 years. The longer the writers’ strike lasts, the more likely that we’ll wake up in late 2024 to most of scripted entertainment being done without the benefit of ANY human writers.
I do think, however, that if such a nightmare happened, that we would see a significant increase in the popularity of live theatre.
I was listening to the most recent The Town podcast and was taken aback at how…bad…Matthew Belloni’s take on late night TV was. He, essentially, proposes that as TV transitions into the streaming era that some basic elements of the formula should be ditched.
The reason — the monologue that typically opens these shows has a very short shelf life and doesn’t work well on streaming. As such, the entire idea of what a late night TV show should be re-imagined.
I find this a very, very bad hot take. If we did as Belloni suggested, it would mark the end of late night TV unto itself. Yes, topical humor is ephemeral but that’s kind of the whole point. The point is there is a cultural potency to topical humor that is essential to people watching late night TV, be it a talk show or SNL.
Belloni’s suggestion does make one wonder if there is any future for Saturday Night Live. It seems possible that if someone as influential as Belloni is talking like this, then it seems reasonable to assume that there may come a point when the fate of SNL is very much up in the air.
There may be a luminial moment between the transition to streaming and the advent of AI generated entertainment when whenever may be everything up in the air. Who knows.
Anyway, it could be that things are going to be very bumpy as TV transitions to streaming. The idea that something as basic as dumping the traditional late night talkshow format simply because it doesn’t play well on streaming is mindblowing.
A lot of different things are happening with Hollywood right now that we make reflect on and say, “Well it was OBVIOUS that…” this or that thing was going to happen. Here are some of the reasons why Hollywood as we know it may be collapse in the next few years:’
Comic Book Movie Overdose It’s possible that comic book movies have, at last, jumped the shark. It’s possible that comic book movies are running on fumes and there will come a point in the near, near future where some a new genre will have its moment in the sun. It could be anything from raunchy 80s-style movies to serious, gritty movies. It definitely seems as though, maybe, we’re on the cusp of a significant vibe shift, however.
AI Generated Entertainment This is something that could pretty much burn traditional Hollywood to the ground. If we wake up in 2026 and ALL media is AI generated, then, whoa. It could be that the only way new stars are generated is on the stage. They go to Broadway, make a name for themselves, get a digital body scan then live off the passive income from that for the rest of their life. Regardless, things are on the cusp of lurching forward big time in Hollywood.
The Writers’ Strike If there is a long-ish WGA writers’ strike then…oh boy. The adoption of AI to write movies and TV will only accelerate. It could be that by the time the strike is over, a sizable portion of all TV and movies are being written by AI and that will dramatically change the dynamic of Hollywood culture going forward.
Franchise Decay All the major movie franchises — expect maybe James Bond — have been so stripmined that they are all but dead. They need to lie fallow for a few years, maybe a decade, then be hard rebooted in ways that appeal to modern audiences. But, alas, Hollywood is so fucky hackined and greedy that they just can’t leave well enough alone.
There is a real question in my mind about the fate of Hollywood and entertainment in general going forward with the rise of AI generated art. And, yet, there is also a possibility that once mass media doesn’t exist anymore that people with, uhhh, taste…will finally get the mass media that they have not really been getting for ages and ages.
So, imagine a situation where there is no mass media anymore. Everyone gets very, very specific TV, music and movies based on a face scan that determines what mood their in at that specific moment. Instead of paying $25 for a combined Netflix and Spotify subscription, you pay something similar for the right to listen to music that is actually good (relative to you) and watch TV and movies that are good (relative to you.)
Everybody wins, right?
Well, sorta.
If that happens — and I think it will, after we sort out the whole autocracy vs. civil war situation in late 2024, early 2025 — then there will no longer be any form of “shared reality.” By definition, “share experience” of watching the same popular TV show and then talking about it on Twitter will be moot and quaint.
Everyone will be enjoying very, very specific entertainment for the specific mood you’re feeling at that particular moment. Some people will continue to enjoy really bad entertainment, while others will get to watch endless new episodes of, say 30 Rock.
A lot of problems that mass media has at the moment will be solved, even it means that the entire greater Hollywood-industrial complex will in no way, continue to exist.
Do I think that will happen?
I just don’t know.
But it will be interesting to see going forward what happens.
I’ve heard some chatter here and about that Phoebe Waller-Bridge might be tapped to write and direct the next James Bond movie. She already did a touch up of the No Time To Die script and she apparently really impressed the James Bond family in the process.
Given the dynamics of Hollywood, it’s at least within the realm of possibility that Waller-Bridge might not only write and direct the next James Bond, but BE James Bond. How they would pull this particular hattrick off, I don’t know, but that’s why they pay them the big bucks.
They did kill James Bond off in the last movie, so anything is possible. Even though Waller-Bridge would do a great job as James Bond, if a woman was James Bond every “anti-woke” crusader worth their talking head status on Fox News would freak the fuck out in a very, very public manner.
And, remember, there were rumors that the producers of the next Indy movie wanted to use time-travel to reboot the franchise so Waller-Bridge would be the next Indy. Apparently, at least according to the dubious YouTube movie grapevine, that idea has been shelved.
Anyway, it will be interesting how things develop going forward. Waller-Bridge definitely is a very talented woman and of all the people I could think of who might bring back the good olde days of campy James Bond updated for modern sensibilities, Waller-Bridge is definitely at the top of the list.
The thing about Hollywood is there’s what REALLY goes on and then what we Poor rubes project onto the dynamics of the industry. Way too many woke people are aghast that there is any nudity or sex in a movie when for some Hollywood starlets a little T&A is thought of as a great way to further their career.
LONDON, ENGLAND – DECEMBER 01: Jennifer Lawrence attends a photocall for “Passengers” at Claridge’s Hotel on December 1, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images)
Not all, but some.
It gets a lot more complicated when you factor in how gross and creepy way too many major players in Hollywood are.
Anyway, this bring us to Jennifer Lawrence. I really like her a lot and I am looking forward to her new movie No Hard Feelings. And, yet, there are some people — especially on Tik-Tok — who think the movie is “cringe.” But it does make you wonder why she’s veered from making high profile “prestige” movies to raunchy 80s style comedies.
It’s very curious.
I say more power to her, but the proof is in the pudding. If she only did the movie because her career is in the dumps, that’s a lot different than if she did it of her own volition. She is — relative to Hollywood standards — getting “older” and she’s a new mom so, I dunno.
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