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We are already seeing AI-written scripts (often terrible) and AI-generated background art. Deepfake technology allows for bringing dead actors back to life (see Peter Cushing in Rogue One) or de-aging stars. The legal and ethical battles over "likeness rights" will define the decade. Will we watch a "new" James Dean movie? Almost certainly. Will we want to?
For decades, video games were considered a sub-stratum of entertainment, distinct from film and television. That distinction is now obsolete. Gaming is the highest-grossing sector of the entertainment industry, and its influence has bled entirely into popular media. The visual language of games (the "POV shot," the level-up aesthetic, the CGI cutscene) now dominates blockbuster cinema. More importantly, franchises are no longer linear. hunt4k+24+06+16+era+queen+joy+ride+xxx+720p+av1+fixed
Consider The Last of Us (HBO) or Arcane (Netflix). These are not "video game adaptations" in the old sense (cheap cash-ins). They are prestige dramas that utilize the deep lore of gaming to attract an audience that consumes content across every platform. Entertainment content is now transmedia. A Marvel fan watches the movie, plays the Spider-Man video game, buys the Lego set, and watches the reaction video on YouTube. Popular media is the glue that holds this franchise economy together. We are already seeing AI-written scripts (often terrible)
For the better part of a century, popular media operated on scarcity. There were three network channels, a handful of radio frequencies, and a limited number of movie screens. Audiences gathered at specific times to consume specific content. That era is definitively over. The pivot to digital streaming (Netflix, Disney+, Max, and Amazon Prime Video) has trained a generation to expect total autonomy. We binge entire seasons in a weekend; we skip opening credits; we watch on 1.5x speed. The watercooler moment—that shared experience of watching a show the night before—has fragmented into thousands of niche conversations happening across Discord servers, Reddit threads, and Twitter (X) spaces. Will we watch a "new" James Dean movie
Yet, paradoxically, while distribution is decentralized, a new form of centralization has emerged. The "content slop" phenomenon—the endless scroll of low-effort, AI-generated or recycled media—competes directly with high-budget prestige television. Entertainment content is no longer just about art; it is about volume. Netflix famously stated that its competitor is sleep. In this arms race for eyeballs, popular media has shifted from a curator model (what the critics recommend) to a retention model (what the algorithm predicts will keep you seated).