The panel had been arguing about whether AI ends Hollywood or opens a golden age of cheap independent filmmaking, with directors cited on both sides. Schilowitz closes the segment by refusing the framing that technology is arriving from outside the industry. He calls it the central thesis the whole show rests on: the film business was never anything but a technology business wrapped in creativity.
Can I throw something out? I know we got our guests. I just want to make a prediction, Charlie and Ted. There's a moment of hate right now and like hate and use going on. But I think there's going to be a moment where some of these systems transcend being black boxes. And you will like we'll have personalities become characters. And I think we're going to have like creators that are computers, they're machines that take on personalities that you'll identify with in the sense that comic book characters are personalities or you love Disney or Pixar characters. It's not the world written yet, but I believe we'll get there. And then those characters will create movies that people will love like they love Christopher Nolan because it's not a nameless, faceless thing, but it's Woody from Toy Story made a movie. And you love Woody and you're not going to hate Woody. And he would have made a movie about his experiences in the Toy Story universe, you know, with produced by Buzz Lightyear. And, you know, it's like that will happen. And people will not hate that because it's not a borg run by crazy people on the West Coast. It's Woody. And he will actually have some lived in experiences at some point in the Toy Story world. And that's going to be, I think that's coming. It's not coming next year. But I think we're going to go through like a Christopher Nolan of the late 2030s is probably a Woody or a Buzz Lightyear alongside a human, Chris Nolan. That is actually my prediction.
You know, you guys know the premise of my new book, AI, The End of Hollywood and What Comes Next. And the premise is we're about to enter a golden age of independent filmmaking, right? Lots of new voices will be heard. Films will be made for less. I have no doubt that the top filmmakers will be using these tools. It's already been endorsed by George Lucas and James Cameron and Ron Howard. Yes, there are voices like Yamro Del Toro who want to set it on fire. But by and large, I think people are slowly becoming open to it. I do think a lot of the, and so that's number one. Number two is that period is going to be short-lived. Synthetic content, the kind that Roni is talking about, the kind that a machine would make for you personally, the end of the monoculture, just Rony's content. And by the way, it's going to be based on everything it knows about Roni. So Roni is going to love it, right? It's like Sora showing me winning the World Series. I freaking loved it, dudes. That was so much fun.
Here's the button to put on this before we bring our guest in. For the last 150 plus years, what we call the film business has always been the technology business. It has never not been the technology business. And it will continue to be the technology business wrapped in creativity. That is the central core thesis that everything we talk about every week is built on. It's always technology.
Every time we talk about Hollywood tradition, I laugh.
Because theater's
40,000 years old. Okay. Let's talk about tradition. Filmed 100 years old. And by the way, most of our traditions, like the Academy Awards, were marketing stunts.