Just posted to my Forbes column about the wild moment Hollywood finds itself in right now.
Streaming reshaped the entertainment industry over the past decade, but now we’re seeing an even bigger wave of disruption. Massive consolidation is underway, with Paramount and Warner Bros. looking to combine forces, while AI is suddenly capable of generating shockingly realistic video with almost no effort. One viral example, an AI-generated Brad Pitt vs. Tom Cruise fight built with a simple prompt, shows just how quickly the technology is moving.
When I spoke with E! Entertainment Television founder Larry Namer on the TechFirst podcast, he had a very different take from much of Hollywood. Instead of fearing AI, he sees it as a powerful creative accelerator. Tasks that used to take him days now take hours, and he believes that kind of productivity gain could give creators something incredibly valuable back: time.
“I’ve seen so many doomsdays,” Namer told me. “Cable was going to replace TV, pay TV was going to replace movie theaters… and it all just became part of the mix.”