How Will the “Disruption” of Hollywood Play Out?
A Framework for Thinking Through the Speed and Extent of Disruption Shows Hollywood’s Vulnerability
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Six months ago, I wrote an essay titled Forget Peak TV, Here Comes Infinite TV. It laid out the case for why four technologies, most notably virtual production and AI, are poised to democratize high quality video content creation over the next 5–10 years. The main conclusion was that — just as the past decade in the TV and film business has been defined by the disruption of content distribution — the next decade will be defined by the disruption of content creation.
When I wrote it, I was a little concerned that the concept was so far out that it would be considered too theoretical and irrelevant. But a lot has happened since then: there has been an onslaught of new AI-enabled production tools and features; research breakthroughs that portend future commercial products; a ton of experimental videos posted online; widespread press coverage; and AI moving front and center in ongoing negotiations between the studios and the guilds. The idea that AI will have a significant effect on TV and film production in coming years has gone from fringe idea to consensus, very fast.
The idea that AI will have a significant effect on TV and film production in coming years has gone from fringe idea to consensus, very fast
Even so, when I write that Hollywood may be “disrupted,” what does that actually mean? By disruption, I mean the way Clay Christensen defined it in his theory of disruptive innovation: the process by which new entrants target an overserved market with an inferior, but “good-enough” product, then relentlessly improve the performance of the product and ultimately challenge the incumbents.
While that describes a specific process, it is still imprecise in important ways — namely its extent and speed. Will the disruption be complete or partial? Will it be fast or slow? If you’re an operator or investor, the answers are critically important.
In this essay, I try to be more precise about what I mean by the disruption of content creation and introduce a framework for thinking about how it might play out.
Tl;dr:
- To clarify what I mean by the “disruption of Hollywood:” 1) social video is already disrupting Hollywood, but new production tools promise to throw gas on the fire: 2) the initial experiments with AI video are mostly crappy, but that’s how disruption works; 3) this is about tools that make people more productive, not robots making movies; and 4) these tools may benefit Hollywood, but they will likely hurt more than they help.
- How fast and to what degree will disruption occur?
- Christensen didn’t write much about what factors determine the speed and extent of disruption, but common sense suggests they include: the hurdles for the new entrant to move upmarket; the hurdles to consumer adoption of the new entrant’s product; the degree to which the new entrant changes consumers’ definition of quality; the size and persistence of the high end of the market; and the ease for the incumbent to replicate the new entrant’s business model.
- This framework helps explain why newspapers were destroyed by online aggregators, digital native publishers, social, newsletters and vertical marketplaces; major music labels have proven relatively resilient despite the explosion of independent music; and videogame publishers have retained the profitable high end of the market even as most missed mobile gaming, the chief growth engine over the last decade.
- Applying the framework also shows why Hollywood is highly vulnerable. While it will likely retain the high end of the market, that market isn’t growing. And consumer adoption of independent content could happen literally overnight.
- Hollywood is hardly dead, but it risks retreating into a smaller version of itself.
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