Apocalypse Now for the Movie Industry | Opinion

When the enormously impactful and celebrated movieApocalypse Now was produced in 1979, its budget was about $31.5 million. In today's money, that's about $140 million. While certainly not cheap, production budgets for major theatrical releases today often run in the $200-300 million range, and some production budgets are even higher. What happens to an industry when the cost of producing motion pictures gets reduced to something approaching zero?

You might think that is a ridiculously hypothetical proposition-how could everything it takes to produce a motion picture end up being produced for close to no expense at all? Or, you may have heard about AI video tools that are capable of creating very cheap short-form video-but the thought of an actual full-length, high-quality motion picture being produced with AI tools that offer fare comparable to today’s best theatrical product might sound possible, though you are probably thinking the reality of that is still several years out.

Whenever that AI‑driven movie‑production world arrives, it will be seen by many as an apocalypse for the film industry. This column argues that, for those who see it that way, the apocalypse is now. Such films will be upon us very, very soon. However, there is a positive side to this development both for audiences and for filmmakers alike.

First, let’s examine the big-ticket items that comprise the production of a movie. What audiences are most familiar with are the talent fees-what it costs for signing the lead actors, the director, and the writers. On films with major stars, salaries can run into tens of millions of dollars. Often there are development rights involving a script purchase, story rights or option payments for an underlying property.

Of course there is the production crew that can run into dozens, possibly the hundreds, who deal with the actual filming and sound elements, often involving union-dictated costs. Add to these costs electricians and grips, as well as an array of transportation costs. Then on top of that equipment are infrastructure expenses that range from camera rigs and lighting before you get into the potential need for specialized technology like drones.

Beyond all of that there is the logistics of building sets, renting locations, getting permits, and housing for the cast and crew. Then of course costumes and makeup artists, not to mention the need to manufacture all kinds of props.

Once the movie is filmed there is the postproduction costs of editing and mixing sound, as well as the cost of either an original score or licensing of music rights. If it is a movie that has all kinds of visual special effects, those costs can really balloon. And that’s not all. There are many miscellaneous expenses that run from production insurance and liability coverage to food catering.

As you can easily see, producing a movie is a major enterprise involving big money-the notion that a film with AI tools can be produced at close to no cost sounds like a dramatic, comical statement. While there are many policy issues presented by AI-from the amazing scientific benefits that might come from much faster discovery of new drugs to the scary implications of what a malicious AI agent could do to jeopardize human safety-the one thing we can be quite certain of is that it will have major implications for employment. In fact, the major film and TV production unions and guilds have been hyperfocused on creating guardrails against the use of AI in a way that would undermine the livelihoods of their members.

But just like the internet created the opportunity for any individual to become a digital publisher-think Substack-AI video tools that exist today in the expert hands of someone truly knowledgeable in the use and manipulation of those tools, allow for a full-length movie to be created without incurring any of the costs set forth above. That means, with a page or two of prompts ingested by a combination of cutting-edge AI video models, unbelievably professional looking long-form video without using a single human actor, director, or writer can be created.

Some will say the implications for this are highly negative for Hollywood-and that is a truly understandable perspective for those who derive their income from the industry structure of today. But I do believe that talented writers and directors will still very much be sought after for their creative inputs to AI-generated films.

However, it is also quite an enormous leap in human achievement that what takes two to three years or more for a movie to come to fruition, the AI process I am describing will be capable of churning out a full-length movie in a couple of months.

A search of the internet suggests a full-length motion picture has already been created and released in theaters, but upon research these just appear to be produced trailers and short-form elements accompanied by hyped-up press releases. OpenAI is supposedly releasing a full-length movie at the Cannes Film Festival in May, but this is an animated film which is very different from the leap I am describing.

What will this mean for audiences? It means the many independent filmmakers and documentarians-who even for the smaller-budget films they want to make can’t get access to the $2 million to $5 million in financing they need-will no longer have to deal with the barriers and impediments to the movies they want to create and the stories they want to tell.

Some will scoff at this notion and suggest that all AI production will just look like longer-form, so-called "AI slop," and, of course, many AI-generated movies will not be met with the highest of acclaim, as is true with most movies. But they will certainly indicate the creative potential that can be unleashed and derived from a world of AI production.

I spend a lot of time analyzing and commenting on the media landscape, especially focused on some of the biggest behemoths of the media industry, such as Netflix and Disney. I have been saying for some time now those companies, and the big-budget financing role they play, need to put a lot more thought into this emerging landscape, as opposed to the enormous energy they put into the traditional worlds of movie and television production and licensing, which they dominate.

I can say with great certainty in the very near future they will come to understand just how real this apocalypse now is for them, and how liberating it will be for a universe of aspiring filmmakers and the audiences those players will have the potential to delight.

Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Claigrid, Inc. (the cloud AI grid company), the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, and is currently senior adviser to Versant, the company which owns CNBC and MSNOW. He is also the former CEO of TiVo.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

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This story was originally published April 30, 2026 at 2:00 AM.