Last Friday saw the birth of the ChatGPT browser, which already promises to visualize your data, coach your workouts, and trade your stocks; we must now contend with Velvet Sundown; and before the summer’s out, we expect the quantum leap of ChatGPT-5. It felt like a good time for In Development to offer some optimism to anyone worried AI might soon take over all that’s good in Hollywood. (For those of you ready to embrace our new AI overlords, that’s a future column.)
I’m certain AI is transforming the entertainment industry for better and worse. I have zero faith in Hollywood’s ability (or inclination) to “control” it, if that were possible. AI can radically increase output and reduce costs (and: jobs), and of course, the industry will follow that path until it hits a wall.
So where’s the optimism? I think I found a wall.
The insight isn’t solely mine. Credit goes to Ethan Helvering at audience intelligence firm Pulsar and Milo Chao at 100% Human, with a shoutout to Diana Williams of Kinetic Energy Entertainment for pointing me their way. The essential idea: Our connection to creativity is rooted in humanity. Without a backstory, stories fall flat. And AI has no backstory game.
Don’t believe me? Studios spend billions to make sure you know everything there is to know about what went into making their movies and TV shows. Marketing costs often match production budgets, even when they run to the hundreds of millions. Directors, stars, producers, writers, crew — they give thousands of interviews across every possible platform around the world.
Sometimes they’re thoughtful and reflective; sometimes they’re playing with puppies. (Sometimes, they’re talking about What No One Tells You.) But ultimately, every panel, article, video, and TV spot is in service of a single, powerful message: “This is who I am and why I made this, and that is why you should see it.”
Can you mount an Oscar or an Emmy campaign without a backstory? (My husband still teases me about our coverage of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning “The Revenant”: “You know, I read that it was a really hard movie to make.”) Creation stories are the engine of awards campaigns, so vital that strategists launch counter-narratives: That’s not the way I heard it.
That doesn’t even get into the backstories of the backstories. Creative differences! Reshoots! Rewrites! The stars are in love! They won’t speak to each other! Studios rarely want to amplify those stories (at least not overtly), but there’s no better magnet for human attention than “What really happened?”
OK. Now let’s assume there’s no if, only when: The first feature-length film is made entirely by AI, from script to final frame. The production scale is massive; the budget is not.
Now imagine being the studio that must sell it. Better yet, imagine being the studio that must sell the second AI film — the one without first-mover advantage.
Film and TV publicists have hard jobs even in the best circumstances with the crisis control, travel logistics, and the hand-holding that comes with endless junkets and press appearances. But if all of that disappears, how do you promote a film that only has a creator and a team of software engineers behind it?
Technology exists to reduce friction, whether it’s renting a house, calling a car, buying a washer, or creating a blockbuster’s explosion. AI promises to smooth everything that’s messy about filmmaking: costs, egos, creative clashes.
Awesome — only without conflict, there is no story.
Reduce the turbulence and you also lose the frustrating, expensive, and chaotic collaboration. And without that, you lose the one thing AI can’t do: create the story worth telling about the story.
Yet. I haven’t seen ChatGPT-5.
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dana@indiewire.com; (323) 435-7690.
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