The end of the movie: How AI is changing the future of cinema and advertising

By Pedram Zolgadri — published 2025-12-27

The end of film: How AI is changing the future of cinema and advertising

A monologue about artificial intelligence, film, art and the death of humanity

Imagine waking up tomorrow and Wolverine has Leonardo DiCaprio's face. Or Tom Hardy's. Or Daniel Radcliffe's. 34.000 versions of the same movie, infinitely variable, endlessly consumable through AI video generation. Isn't that great? Isn't that... empty?

Pandora's box has been opened: AI Filmmaking changes everything

This is probably the hardest thing I've ever written. Not because there are no words. But because the words mean that something fundamental is coming to an end.

Cinema has been pronounced dead so many times. The Spanish flu. Two world wars. The television in the 50s. Streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ today. And each time it has come back. Like a phoenix from the ashes.

Because film is more than moving pictures on a screen.

Film is meaning. Film is soul. Film is humanity.

But this time it's different. This time, nothing less than our collective soul is at stake. The future of AI in cinema , in advertising, in entertainment as a whole - it's already here. And it threatens everything artists have ever fought for.

Why do we climb mountains? The human experience as the foundation of art

John F. Kennedy once asked in his famous moon landing speech: "Why do we go to the moon? Not because it's easy, but because it's hard. "

This is the ultimate question of why. Why do people do things? Why do people dedicate decades of their lives to jumping over a bar? Why does an artist continue to paint despite a stroke after losing everything?

Hokusai , the Japanese master, was 70 years old when he created his greatest masterpieces. The great wave that everyone knows today. Only after he was struck by lightning, suffered a stroke, lost his motor skills and had to relearn everything - only then did he create these timeless paintings.

"Everything I did before the age of 70 is not worth mentioning. "

His art has meaning because a whole life is behind it . All the feelings. All the experiences. The pain. The love. The despair. The human soul.

That's what makes art valuable: **The person behind it

No AI-generated image, no text-to-video AI tool, no artificial intelligence can ever replicate it. It can only steal it.

The Lord of the Rings: When real movie production meant sacrifice

j.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892. in 1916, he is drafted into the First World War. The Battle of the Somme - 1 million casualties. He sees evil in its rawest form. Four friends go to war with him. Two die.

He writes while still in the trenches. About four hobbits on a journey. About the intrusion of evil into a peaceful world.

**Without this human experience - without war, friendship, loss - there would be no Lord of the Rings

20 years later, an 18-year-old named Peter Jackson reads these books. He is fascinated. No one can make them into a movie. So he becomes a director and filmmaker himself.

17 years later, he takes the reins. 30,000 people sacrifice almost 10 years of their lives to this trilogy. They build sets. Forge thousands of weapons. Sew elaborate costumes in detailed handwork. Everyone contributes their creative component.

Viggo Mortensen breaks his toe kicking a helmet - and lets out the most perfect, genuine scream cinema has ever heard.

Andy Serkis almost freezes to death in a freezing cold stream while playing Gollum. The actors all get tattoos at the end because this experience has left such a lasting impression on them.

**This is movie. This is real movie production. This is humanity

Today, an AI would generate 1,000 variants of this movie in seconds. Without pain. Without sacrifice. Without a soul.

Ingmar Bergman said: "A movie has to breathe. I don't want the movie to be real. I want it to be alive. "

The heartbeat of a movie is the collective experience of the people who created it. And this heartbeat is dying right now.

And now I tell you with a heavy heart: the future is already here

All of this will disappear.

In a year or two. If it hasn't already disappeared.

Generative Artificial Intelligence will take film, art and humanity. OpenAI Sora, Runway Gen-4, Pika Labs, Midjourney - these AI tools can already generate in seconds what humans need years to do.

And you know what? Tolkien was right. He said that machines are one of the most terrible inventions of mankind.

AI is not a tool - it replaces: The fundamental difference

This must be understood. This is not "just a new tool". It's not like the invention of the camera or the computer.

**Generative AI does not help. It replaces

Technology used to help. The camera helped the director. The computer helped the animator. Editing software helped the editor. The microphone helped the musician.

But generative AI? It makes the director superfluous. The animator. The musician. The actor.

AI does not work out of thin air. It is fed with data - so-called training. With everything that humans have ever created:

Films and scripts

Images and photographs

Music and compositions

Books and articles

**Without consent. Without copyright. Without respect. Without payment

Lionsgate makes its entire repertoire - John Wick, Saw, Tribute of Panem - available to AI companies for training. Without asking a director, actor or author.

That is theft. On an industrial scale.

The nature photographer and the polar bear cub: How AI is destroying real work

A nature photographer lies in the snow for days to photograph a polar bear cub. Years of training. Thousands of euros of equipment. Passion since childhood. Patience. Time. Love.

The result is a rare, beautiful shot of a polar bear.

Today? Google search: "cute polar bear cub".

**80-90% of the results are AI-generated

The nature photographer is irrelevant. Replaced by his own work. His images were stolen by AI companies to train the algorithms that now replace him.

What used to take work, experience, creativity and passion is now done in seconds at the touch of a button.

**No one needs more talent. No one needs skills anymore

Kelly McCurnan: The Stolen Artist

Kelly McCurnan is an artist. She has a specific, unique style. Her paintings have soul.

Then she found out: Midjourney and other AI image generators were trained with her work. Without asking. Without permission. Without payment.

Over 10,000 times users entered their name into prompts to generate "their" art. Free of charge. Soulless. Stolen.

Kelly could no longer survive as a full-time artist. As a single mother, she had to look for a new job. She filed a class action lawsuit - unsuccessfully to date.

"Every one of my paintings - every single one as part of my soul - was stolen. Stripped of its soul, its intention, its experience, its mystery and its humanity. "

"It's not really pleasant to make music" - The philosophy of the AI gods

An AI developer from Suno, an AI music generator, said verbatim:

"It's not really enjoyable to make music. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of practice. You have to be really good at an instrument or good at production software. I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music. "

I've rarely heard anything more inhumane.

Michelangelo said: "If people knew how enormously I worked for my art, it would not seem so beautiful. "

People make art out of love .

Out of passion . Despite setbacks. **Because the path is the goal

Why is it valuable to stand on Mount Everest? Because the ascent was life-threatening.

If I could just teleport to the top - what would be the point? What would be the value?

**These AI developers don't understand art. They don't understand humanity

They only see an opportunity to make money. They don't want to help. They want to replace.

The end of animation: Arcane, Spider-Verse, Studio Ghibli - it's all over

Who loves the animated Spider-Man films? Who loves Studio Ghibli? Who loves series like Arcane?

Then enjoy these works. Because I promise you: **In a year or two at the latest, they will no longer exist

Why?

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse cost approx. 300 million dollars

2 seasons of Arcane cost approx. 250 million dollars

Chihiro's Journey to Magic Land cost 20 million dollars

And why are these productions so expensive? Because it's unimaginably hard work Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people work on them for years.

A quick example: the animators of Arcane need a whole day's work for 0.7 seconds of animation . That's about 4 minutes of series material per week.

**They worked on the first season of Arcane for 6 years

They gave it their all because they wanted it to be perfect. And you can see the dedication in the final product. Arcane is a masterpiece because it meant something to people.

It was so incredibly hard. That's why it's valuable.

Of course, it is correspondingly expensive. But these are people who want to perfect every detail . The human soul should be anchored in every facial expression, every item of clothing, every building and every color.

And however sad that is: We can most likely say goodbye to it

Yes, there will certainly still be series and films that look like animation. But it will be generated by a machine with AI video generation.

**The genre is dead

There are no more brushstrokes. No more artists. Whether on paper or on screen. All replaced by text-to-video AI.

Why are we leaving this to Pedram? Because money rules

You might think: OK, then we simply won't let it happen. We will oppose it. Big companies will oppose it. We're not just going to let art and artists fall by the wayside.

But if we can draw one constant from world history, it's this:

**Money rules

People are always looking for ways to make more money or save money. CEOs of big companies, corporations, studios - they don't care if they destroy the environment. They don't care if they produce art or not.

**It's all about making money

Why did Judas betray Jesus? For 30 pieces of silver.

David Zaslav , CEO of Warner Bros, deletes entire films that thousands of people have worked on - to make them tax-deductible. Imagine da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa and Zaslav simply burning it in the 16th century without anyone seeing it.

Bob Iger , Disney CEO, forbids the last wish of a dying child: To have Spider-Man on his tombstone. Because it "could damage the brand".

Google and Meta** write on their websites: "Clean water is one of the most precious resources on earth" - while their AI data centers will soon consume 6x as much water as the whole of Denmark just to cool the servers, according to studies.

It doesn't matter if people have water. The main thing is that Kendall Jenner can chat virtually with her fans, generated by AI.

**Greed. Power. Wealth ** The indestructible foundations of our society.

The math is simple: AI cuts costs by 99%

And so the math is so simple for Hollywood:

**AI can cut the cost of any project exorbitantly

It replaces 99% of the people who work on a movie. It can actually do everything:

Thousands of people no longer needed for animations

No more hiring artists

No actors on set for months

No CGI artists

No composers

No screenwriters

Yes, people lose their jobs. Yes, art loses its soul.

**But what does Bob Iger care if he gets another zero in front of the decimal point for it?

AI is already here: Coca-Cola, RTL, Disney - the invasion has begun

AI has long since arrived:

Coca-Cola runs a complete AI-generated ad on TV

RTL uses AI-generated inserts

Disney's Secret Invasion has an AI-generated intro

Amazon Prime Video uses AI for "X-Ray Recaps" - personalized recaps

Disney + OpenAI : Starting in 2026, users can use Sora to create videos with over 200 Disney characters

RTL. Disney. Coca-Cola. These are multi-multi-multi-billion dollar companies.

**If anyone has money for designers, animators or artists, it's these companies

But of course they are the first to drop artists like a hot potato. Because it's all about the money.

The Brutalist: When Oscar contenders use AI - the betrayal is complete

And then comes the worst part. What hit me personally.

The Brutalist - an Oscar contender, one of the most hyped films of the year. Adrian Brody plays the lead role. He speaks Romanian in the movie.

Brody could speak Romanian, but they didn't want to invest the time to really master the language. Things actors get paid to do.

What happened? **Brody's voice when he speaks Romanian is partially AI-generated

I don't care what I think of Timothée Chalamet - but he spent 5 years of his life perfecting Bob Dylan's voice for his new movie "A Complete Unknown". He worked with vocal coaches and voice coaches. Hours upon hours upon hours. He learned to play guitar and harmonica.

**So much work to make the performance real. It's human

He insisted on singing live on set. You can tell how important this movie is to Timothée.

Both Adrian Brody and Timothée Chalamet are nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

**In my opinion, Adrian Brody should be disqualified

I don't care how short or unimportant the passage is. It's about the principle. It's about the signal.

The signal is: **It's okay to use generative AI

He has opened a Pandora's box that can never be closed again.

Nicolas Cage said it perfectly:

"I am convinced that we must not allow artificial intelligence to dream for us. Robots cannot reflect human existence for us. It's a dead end. If an actor allows an AI to influence his performance even a little - an inch eventually becomes a kilometer. And all the integrity, purity and truth of art is replaced by pure financial interest. We must not allow that to happen. "

There are no "AI artists" - you are generators, not creators

For those who want to hear it:

**There are no AI artists

Typing words into a chat or image generator is the same as throwing money into a vending machine and getting a ready-made pizza.

**That doesn't make you a chef. You're not an artist. You're a generator

You have created nothing. You haven't made any sacrifices. You're just pretending.

You are a wannabe. You're looking for the easy and simple way.

You think because you've spent a few hours "optimizing prompts" you can compare yourself to true artists.

But deep down, you know full well that it's meaningless. Just like your whole existence. And no likes or attention in the world will fill that void.

**You have no right to call yourself an artist

Harshly put? Yes. But we're talking about the downfall of the arts here. And to a certain extent the downfall of humanity.

The studios have already capitulated: 53,000 films released for AI training

And here's the hard truth:

So many studios have already announced using AI in movie production . Working on AI programs. Gave their consent for 53,000 films, 85,000 TV episodes and thousands of scripts to be used to train AI.

Including every Best Picture Oscar winner.

AI programs can save 80% of the cost of a budget in 1-2 years at the latest

Until they can generate these films independently in 3-4 years.

A 300 million budget becomes a 5 million budget. If at all.

1,000 employees become a team of 5-10 people.

Until at some point everything human has been replaced by computers .

"AI could never do that!" - The dangerous naivety

Anyone who thinks "Oh nonsense, AI could never do that, and especially not in 1-2 years" - is in my opinion incredibly naive about this topic.

**AI is growing faster than any other technology before it

Anyone who has spent any time at all with exponential growth knows what's coming.

The best example: **The Will Smith spaghetti video

2023: Will Smith eats spaghetti - AI-generated, creepy, ridiculous.

2024: Will Smith is almost indistinguishable from the original.

It's just a matter of time.

The end of CGI and VFX: When Interstellar's black hole becomes worthless

One of my favorite CGI shots is the black hole in Interstellar .

So many people worked on it. Designed it. Involved scientists. Yes, it was complex, expensive and took time.

**But people made it

People spend years making effects look real. To breathe a soul into them. That is their art. A collaboration.

People work together on a project - for other people. They sacrifice their heart and soul in the hope that people will go to the movies and appreciate it.

**That's where the value lies. The value is the people themselves

Spoiler: **There will be no more CGI artists

Take a look at this AI-generated video: A complete city with characters, people, camera movements - generated from nothing by AI video tools.

Almost unimaginable.

An AI generates an entire city. With AI virtual production. We no longer have to build sets. No more designing. No more traveling to real countries or locations.

**No more need for people to animate fire. Transformers. Dinosaurs. Space

You don't need any more authors. People like Tolkien. People like Hokusai.

You need an actor standing in front of a green screen. And in the end, you don't even need that anymore.

For what? The soul will be lost

Of course:

The soul will be lost

Creativity

We lose what makes us human

**But that doesn't interest David Zaslav. Bob Iger doesn't care. Sam Altman doesn't care about that

Because a person is not as green as a dollar bill.

It's a matter of time before AI can generate entire movies with text-to-video technology .

Actors are probably the last to go - because emotions are the hardest to replace.

But even actors will be gone at some point. They will sell their face, their voice, their body for millions of dollars.

**And that has already begun

Whether actors like Tom Hanks (here with deepfake technology), Snoop Dogg or Kendall Jenner with her AI avatar.

Why do I have to put The Rock in front of the camera for months on end when he still collects his millions - and sells the rights to his existence to Disney?

**A movie with him as an AI-generated character is automatically created

We are facing a soulless dystopia: AI streaming, AI cinema, AI everything

We are facing a soulless dystopia.

And I wish I was wrong.

But broken down: **Using AI is exorbitantly cheaper. And that's reason enough

It will never be art - just soulless content. But it will make money.

There are hundreds of AI companies racing to sell their AI to Hollywood. Like greedy mosquitoes, they want to suck out the money.

And the big studios will welcome them with open arms.

**They don't give a damn

Whether they steal

Take away people's livelihoods

Infringe copyright

The human magic is lost

When the real dies out: Tom Cruise, Nosferatu, Star Wars - over

And we will come to a point where the real thing simply dies out .

Robert Eggers uses 3,000 rats for his movie Nosferatu - to create the perfect atmosphere

In Star Wars , 10,000 figures were designed and made by hand in great detail

Tom Cruise throws himself off cliffs and hangs from flying airplanes - to make it real

Leonardo DiCaprio spends months at the end of the world for The Revenant and says: "It was the most difficult experience of my life because I had to fight against nature, against the cold every day"

The knowledge that they really did all this - that's what makes it worth it

When that's gone, something will always be missing. The human component.

James Cameron rebuilds the Titanic himself and lets it sink. People fall into the cold water.

Viggo Mortensen stands in a beautiful landscape, carrying a real sword, and hundreds of fully equipped horsemen gallop towards him. **Then the spectacle is automatically real and special

The lie of "democratization": AI replaces, it does not help

There are actually people out there who think that's totally cool. Who talk about the "democratization of art " .

**But they haven't understood it

AI is not a tool. It replaces Pedram.

Inventions like the iPhone, the internet, YouTube - these were democratizing technologies .

In the last 20 years, equality of opportunity has never been better:

You have the world's knowledge at your fingertips on the internet

You no longer need expensive teachers

No degrees

No expensive software

You want to cook well? Here's a masterclass from Gordon Ramsay. Free of charge on YouTube.

Want to eat right? Learn a language? Learn filmmaking? **Here are hundreds of videos. All for free

**That was democratizing

Right now, everyone has the opportunity to become something:

A musician

A director

A sportsman

An artist

**You want it? Then prove it. Invest the time

Maybe you won't become Mozart. But you make art that reflects you. That has your personality. No matter how bad others may think it is.

But not everyone takes the chance. **Because it takes sacrifice. Blood, sweat and tears

That's the beauty of it: everything that is simple and easy disappears just as quickly.

**But AI takes away the need to become something - because it can be everything for us

Now everyone is an artist. And therefore no one is an artist anymore.

Now everyone is a musician. Now everyone is an artist. Now everyone is a photographer or director.

**When everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful anymore

There are Twitter accounts of "AI artists" with 80,000 followers. Elon Musk retweets their quota-unquote "art" and describes it as "cool".

This coming from the guy who has to lie about his video game successes.

**This is not art. That's demonic. That's anti-human

The tide is coming: When the market is drowned with AI content

Today, if you want to watch a movie, you open Prime or Netflix. Suddenly you have the option of watching 10,000 movies .

All vying for our attention.

On the one hand, that's critical - it's already very difficult to filter real art from pure content.

But yes, we also have more choice. More films available that we would otherwise never have heard of.

**The important thing is that behind all these projects were people who invested a lot of time and effort

Now imagine: **It takes no more effort

No passion. No experience. No knowledge. You don't have to be on fire for anything.

Nope. **I wake up and make an album, a book or a movie with AI tools within a day

So the market is flooded with thousands and thousands of mediocre movies, music and art through AI content generation .

**It will be a huge blob of the same mediocrity over and over again

It will be impossible to discover actual art. It will be like finding a needle in a haystack - as big as Mount Everest.

Spotify is dead. YouTube is dead. The internet is dead.

**Spotify is already almost dead

Why? Because people have AI-generated music created for them. Which they then upload en masse to Spotify.

The Spotify AI creates playlists. It has no idea what was generated by an artificial intelligence and what was not.

Playlists with an infinite number of AI songs.

Not only do we listen to absolute garbage music - no, it's also virtually impossible to actually discover new human music on the platform.

Likewise, YouTube is flooded with AI content :

AI documentaries

AI voice-overs

AI audiobooks

AI trailers

And people click on it millions of times. These channels earn millions from it.

One channel has 500,000 subscribers. With completely AI-generated fake trailers.

**It's a mystery to me how people can get any value out of this

And honestly: Why is it legal?

Why are they allowed to use Nicolas Cage's identity when he's obviously totally against it?

"I made €1,000,000 with AI!" - The parasites celebrate themselves

"I only made €1,000,000 with AI with my completely AI-generated content!"

If I were to really say what I think should happen to people like this - I would probably be locked up.

Even internet memes: people have drawn or photoshopped something badly. And that's what made them so funny and charming.

How funny that sounds - but that's where the human soul is.

Even the stupidest shit. Gangnam Style. However stupid and useless it is - it's still worth infinitely more than anything AI-generated

The Dead Internet Theory: We're already in the middle of it

Most people are familiar with the Dead Internet Theory .

And somehow we're on the verge of it.

**There are already more bots on the Internet than people

And at some point, there will simply be AIs that create content - to which other AIs will then react.

But at least we now have AI-generated Kaufland advertising .

Maybe it's just easy to find the real cute polar bear in Google search. The real music. The real movies.

**But it's going to get harder every month

And in 2-3 years it will be impossible to find anything real.

**The internet will be dead because we will drown in a tsunami of AI-generated content

The algorithm already has us: Netflix, TikTok, Instagram - we are prisoners

Social media is used by 5.1 billion people per month. That's more than half of the world's population.

People in Africa may not have bread - but they do have a cell phone to receive content.

And everyone is afraid of the utopian scenario in which algorithms control our opinions, thoughts and actions .

But we don't realize that we are already right in the middle of it

Algorithms determine the lives of almost everyone:

They decide what ads we see

What we think

What we choose

What we consume

What movies we watch

You go to Netflix, Prime or Disney+. **Movies are suggested to you that the algorithm selects

Algorithms push what they think you want to see.

Do you like Friends? Then you'll probably also like How I Met Your Mother.

The algorithm suggests it to you:

What looks familia…

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