James Cameron: AI Could Help Cut VFX Costs in Half, Saving Blockbuster Cinema (variety.com)
- Reference: 0177001653
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/04/11/154250/james-cameron-ai-could-help-cut-vfx-costs-in-half-saving-blockbuster-cinema
- Source link: https://variety.com/2025/film/news/james-cameron-blockbuster-movies-ai-cut-costs-1236365081/
"If we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I've always loved and that I like to make -- 'Dune,' 'Dune: Part Two,' or one of my films or big effects-heavy, CG-heavy films -- we've got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half," Cameron said.
Rather than staff reductions, Cameron envisions AI accelerating VFX workflows: "That's about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things."
[1] https://variety.com/2025/film/news/james-cameron-blockbuster-movies-ai-cut-costs-1236365081/
There are a number of mistakes here (Score:2)
Firstly, speeding up the blockbuster process by a factor of two means reducing the paychecks by a factor of two which functions as staff reductions on a take-home-pay basis. Whether the process goes faster or takes the same time with less people is immaterial.
Secondly, it is far, far cheaper to make good films than blockbusters. The blockbuster system is a horribly broken one -- you can make a good film people will love if they bother to watch it for $5m dollars, or make the same film with higher producti
Re: (Score:3)
> The blockbuster system is a horribly broken one -- you can make a good film people will love if they bother to watch it for $5m dollars, or make the same film with higher production values so you can get a larger watching audience (lots of people will turn off a film with low production values) for $30m.
> Most modern films cost way more than that.
Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Studios (while bragging about 30 years without a single hit movie) explained Hollywood's obsession with big blockbusters very simply:
"You can't embezzle $10 million out of $5 million budget."
Re: (Score:2)
The counterpoint is that blockbusters tend to be more efficient. Yes, you can make a good movie for under $50M, but there are fixed costs involved in distribution, publicity, etc. They may be lower for movies you only want to make 2X{under $50M} vs 2x{over $200M} but there's a floor to them too. You're not showing them in 10% of the cinemas you'd normally show them in. And even with the move towards comfort in modern cinemas, there's still a point at which showing an unpopular movie to a barely populated sc
The blue smurf guy? (Score:2)
He was a pioneer who realized you could deploy a battlefield with exoskeletons. But hiring disgruntled broken down veterans to remote control those exoskeletons, well when faced with the ethics of war they tend to desert or worse switch sides and join the enemy.
Much better to just develop a robot army. No human salaries to pay. AI has no conscience or morals when it comes to plundering foreign worlds and murdering or enslaving their indigenous populations.
^^^ (spoilers) The Avatar franchise in a nutshell.
It's not a production value problem (Score:2)
I don't think it's a budget or a production value problem. Movies are suffering because of bad writing. The culture in the industry focuses on fourth wall breaking, post-modern ideals, and deconstructing narratives. That's fine for an art festival, but general audiences are tired of it. They just want straightforward storytelling that makes you feel good when you come out of the theatre. Furthermore, audiences are tired of the gimmicks. They don't want the same old story with a race or gender-swapped
nice (Score:1)
You thought CGI slop was bad, wait till you see AI slop
Cutting Costs = Heads. (Score:3)
> ”..and artists get to move on and do other cool things."
(Translation) ”Our AI workflows have been optimized for our pockets. Your services are no longer needed here. You are now free to move on and do other cool things.”
Not sure what he means by budget-heavy these days. Take note as to just how much is being churned out these days starring less than half a dozen actors filming inside a single building for most/all of the movie. It’s quite surreal once you notice it. You can probably have a hell of an FX budget when you don’t physically go anywhere to make a film.
Saving cinema? Look who's talking (Score:2)
James Cameron ushered in 3D in cinema with Avatar. I know it wasn't technically the first with the new technology, but it was the one that make it break through.
Then every movie studio had to make only 3D movies. Ticket prices increased. Screens were replaced with less bright screens that were compatible with the polarised-light technology used for 3D. The picture was dim. A large portion of the audience couldn't see the 3D, or only got headaches from it.
It was the beginning of the end. People stopped going
That's what the money is for (Score:2)
What does he think the money is for? Does he think that studios will keep the same amount f artists who all just happen to work faster? They'll cut staff to where they can still meet the same deadlines. Not keep all the same staff and meet deadlines earlier.
Know what else might save it? (Score:2)
Here's a few ideas: stop lecturing me about your politics, stop relying on VFX to sell an otherwise boring movie, start writing decent characters that I actually give a shit about.
In short, make movies worth going to.
A truly tragic outcome (Score:2)
Hollywood will now make its shitty movies for half the cost, which means that the douche bags that run Hollywood will make more money and will have less incentive to make anything worthwhile. Hell, instead of taking the savings and paying good writers for good plots, they may have AI write the scripts, too.
What could be vs what will be (Score:3)
In theory, if you built an AI that could create whatever movie you told it to, you'd have an explosion of creativity as everyone currently on a movie set started making their own entire movies from start to finish, solo (with AI).
In reality, we still live in a world with an economy that requires people to work, and they have limited money and free time to spend on the output of other workers. What I expect will happen is the VFX will get less expensive and the savings will go into the pockets of the financers while a lot of VFX artists end up out of work.
It will also mean that the direct-to-streaming movies will look a little prettier, but they're still going to be pretty bad.
Re: (Score:2)
Quantity makes quality harder. Who would risk a massive capital investment on major projects if the chance of return was low and the risk factor high? How many people would put their heart and soul into something if there was a high risk it would just be one of many. It's like the quality of TV shows went down after cable TV. Sure we had more choices, and every niche of TV show type .. but at the expense of truly great TV shows and maybe even social cohesion. You know why we were stuck with incandescent li
Re: (Score:3)
The greater effect will be that the money people will have more and more creative control over the end product. That's the people with the least amount of actual talent. They'll rely on the marketing people (who have even less talent) to tell them what the movie should be, and we'll go from the current big blockbuster mass market pap that sucks to big blockbuster mass market pap that sucks even more.
Which is the say, the same trend that Hollywood has been on for the last 100 years.
Re: (Score:2)
> In theory, if you built an AI that could create whatever movie you told it to, you'd have an explosion of creativity as everyone currently on a movie set started making their own entire movies from start to finish, solo (with AI).
If you read the summary, Cameron is not advocating for AI to generate the entire film. He is advocating for AI to help speed up the workflow of VFX. VFX artists will still be needed. For example, currently AI can generate code if requested. The code most of the time does not work if the request is too broad. Specific and narrow requests are far easier to do with AI. Not "Generate a new game . . ." but "Generate a function to find a pattern in a linked list".
> In reality, we still live in a world with an economy that requires people to work, and they have limited money and free time to spend on the output of other workers. What I expect will happen is the VFX will get less expensive and the savings will go into the pockets of the financers while a lot of VFX artists end up out of work.
The number reason I see that VFX are terrible is t