Kevin Surace argues AI will soon generate entire films—actors, cinematography, design, effects, editing—from a single prompt. He claims budgets could collapse from $100 million to roughly $100 for a full-length feature, eliminating most on-set and post-production jobs.
What happens when everything, including actors, can now be created by AI for 1/1,000,000th the cost? And I've got examples. Cinematographer, director of photography, all the people on camera. What happens if I'm not taking any light into a camera? Like, there are no camera people in Shrek, no camera people in Little Mermaid. Why? Because there were not. It's cartoon. So there's no camera people when AI is generating all this content, right? Production designer. Well, The director may have a view of what he wants the production to be. Maybe they'll have a production designer next to them for a bit of time. But basically, AI is going to go make anything you want as soon as you type it in the computer. Say, no, I want this a little more purple. Boom. I want this a little more this way. An editor— maybe you'll have an editor because maybe you'll want to stitch a lot of scenes together, but there'll be 99% less editing than there's been. How about all those CGI people, those CGI artists, which are often hundreds in a film? Probably don't need to do that kind of work, right? AI is going to generate that. Now the entire set doesn't exist physically. Even the actors don't exist physically. And the big difference is, instead of $100 million for a major film, it costs about $100 to make a major film if you did it from your desk. Okay.
