Will AI Make Hollywood a Thing of the Past?

Published: August 13, 2025

artificial intelligence, AI — Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

By Shawn Smith

Should Hollywood be afraid of AI? Some say yes, while others suggest that the entertainment industry can survive if it adapts to what many predict will be an inevitable AI takeover.

For Amit Jain, Chief Executive of AI Luma, it’s not so much AI changing cinema but the technology evolving to a changing audience.

“Movies obviously have their place but people aren’t spending time on them as much. What people want are things that don’t need their attention for 90 minutes,” Jain said. “Things that entertain them and sometimes educate them and sometimes are, you know, thirst traps. The reality of the universe is you can’t change people’s behaviors.”

Jain’s Silicon Valley startup aims to bring a more personalized experience form of entertainment as opposed to replacing the Hollywood blockbuster.

“Today, videos are made for 100 million people at a time — they have to hit the lowest common denominator,” he said. “A video made just for you or me is better than one made for two unrelated people. That’s the problem we’re trying to solve…My intention is to get to a place where two hours of video can be generated for every human every day.”

AI Luma’s generative platform Dream Machine’s latest tool, Modify Video, aims to do just that. Users can generate their own AI-generated videos with one’s own uploaded footage.

Imagine turning a video of a basketball player shooting hoops in the neighborhood court into a clip of a player in front of a stadium of thousands. Or turning a video of you lying on your back into an astronaut floating outer space with just a home video and a prompt, as demonstrated in Modify Video’s ad.

Jain admits that generative content, even the ones his platform creates, is “dumb” compared to where he wants it to be. One limitation is the length of the videos that can be created. With limited computer power the videos have a maximum of 10 seconds, but that is longer than the average movie shot of 8 seconds, according to Jain.

“They are good pixel generators.” he said of the current state of AI.

“Dream Machine…needs a built-in narrative engine that understands how stories work: when to build tension, where to land a joke, how to shape an emotional arc,” LA Time’s Josh Rottenberg wrote of Jain’s goals for AI. “Not a tool but a collaborator.”

AI researchers like Yves Bergquist, who leads the AI in Media Project at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, is helping prepare studios for the AI tsunami wave.

Despite people’s ever growing wariness of AI he remains optimistic that we will “see a rebirth of Hollywood.”

“One theory I really believe in is that as more people gain access to Hollywood-level production tools, the studios will move up the ladder — into multi-platform, immersive, personalized entertainment,” he said. “Imagine spending your life in Star Wars: theatrical releases, television, VR, AR, theme parks. That’s where it’s going.”

We have already seen studios embracing AI with de-aging technology as for Tom Hanks in the movie HERE and Harrison Ford in INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY.

Scott Mann used AI to save over a million in reshoots for his thriller FALL to remove expletives from his movie to bring it down from a R rating to a PG-13 rating.

Cost cutting remains one of the main concerns, and those in the industry fear AI will replace their jobs.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, cofounder of DreamWorks Animation, stated, “In the good old days, when I made an animated movie, it took 500 artists five years to make a world-class animated movie. Literally, I don’t think it will take 10 percent of that three years out from now.”

In the end, there is the human element that can’t be generated with software and a tap of the keyboard.

As actor Ethan Hawke said, “You want to feel breath — you want to feel life. When we see a great painting, we feel a human being’s blood, sweat and tears. That’s what we’re all looking for, that connection with the present moment. And AI can’t do that.”

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