No longer is it just some dude on the Internet.

Zachary Levi is a Hollywood actor who played the title character in the series Chuck. He was also the main superhero in the film Shazam!.

He is on the train espousing the death of Hollywood. This is a growing list of people who are sounding the alarm for Hollywood. It was something that people thought impossible a couple years ago.

At that time, I was posting how the next wave of disruption, generative AI, was going to crush Hollywood. The response that this was going to be impossible. There was no way AI would ever be creative.

Does anyone still hold that belief?

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Zachary Levi: The Death of Hollywood

The latest buzz in this arena is the introduction of Veo 3 by Google. This is generative AI for video which is producing high quality output.

Here is one of the more recent videos the company released:

This might not be perfect yet it is getting pretty close. It is a production that was done using nothing more than prompts (if the claims are true). This is the future of video production.

To me, this signals a near total wipeout of the industry. Say goodbye to jobs across the entire spectrum. Those people simply will not be required,

It obviously affects more than actors. All the set, costume, and make up people are out of luck. Physical filming will be obsolete. The compute will generate most of the production.

Movie studios are already experimenting with this. However, technological curves means this will be, at some point, in the hands of everyone.

Exponentials Are Crushing

This is not going to be twice as good in a year. Instead, we are dealing with a technology that will be a 10x. Unfortunately, for the workers, that equates to a 100x in 2 years; 1000x in 3 years.

Whatever we are dealing with today is a fraction of what will be possible within 36 months. Of course, this was the curve we watched over the past few years.

It is why the pushback from a couple years ago seems absurd. No contracts or denying what is happening will change the outcome. Nor will tax incentives or going "unwoke" change a thing.

Simply put, Hollywood is dead. At this point, the head was cut off, we are only just waiting for the body to stop thrashing around.

People are going to try and fight against this. It will be futile. Few cares about the video rental employees although, if they did, those people still would have lost their jobs. The industry transformed the way it delivered video content.

Hollywood, thus far, has felt the effects due to the change in distribution. That was an area where it once held a monopoly. The Internet altered that completely.

Next up is a massive shift in video generation. This will be compounded by the ongoing changes in distribution, which will keep spreading as more networks appear.

It is a double hit, something that the industry will not survive. We will see a massive downsizing over the next few years as companies try to adapt.