The past four years in Hollywood have been a wake-up call for an industry that spent the last decade as a peak of creative ambition. With the COVID-19 pandemic, production costs soared, theater attendance plummeted, and the bubble finally burst. Feeling the squeeze, writers and actors went on strike last year, and studios drastically cut costs. The entry of streaming into the film and television economy has dramatically changed the way all parties make money. An agreement was eventually reached, which focused heavily on safeguards around AI.
Speaking to The New York Times in a wide-ranging interview, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos likened the adjustment to working with AI to how his global hit streamer has adapted its business. Managed DVD rental transfers. “During periods of fundamental change in any industry, one of the challenges legacy players typically face is trying to protect their legacy businesses,” he said. When we started mailing DVDs, we got into the business of converting. We knew physical media wasn't going to be the future.
Tip-toeing about the chicken-and-the-egg debate regarding Netflix's influence on physical media, Sarandos said that sometimes you have to kill the ones you love.
“We didn't spend any time just protecting our DVD business,” he said. “As it started to take off, we started investing more and more in streaming. And we did it because we knew that's where the puck was going. At one point, our DVD business was all of the business. was driving profits and a lot of revenue, and we made a conscious decision to stop inviting DVD employees to company meetings. We were so strict about where this thing was going.
Sarandos seems to be taking a bit of a soft approach when it comes to AI, but he's no less invested in the transition than he was at the time.
“I think AI is a natural kind of progression of things that are happening in the creative space today, anyway,” he said. “Volume stages have not displaced location shooting. Writers, directors, editors will use AI as a tool to do their jobs better and to do things more efficiently and effectively.
Asked if AI will eventually replace human creations, Sarendos said, “I believe in humans more than that. I really do. I don't believe that an AI program is a better screenplay than a great writer.” Is going to write, or change a great performance, or that we won't be able to tell the difference. The person who uses AI well is yours Can work.