“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.”
The AI XR Podcast. · August 2026
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.
Transcript
…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.
…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.
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