Writers and actors, two clear creators of imagination, wonder and awe are on strike. Is it about just residuals, survival or both? Of course, given the nature of the internet, and unless I update this post, you may be reading this content long after the strike is over and the dust has settled. But let’s put some thoughts in writing now and see how things pan out in the short-term and the long-term.
What a mess! The strikes, both by writers and actors, is a fundamental plea for recognition for the value created through creativity and imagination. Content is created by writers and then imagined and portrayed by actors. Certainly all but the most leading edge ideas have some linkage to past works and foundational thoughts, but creativity is needed to do something new versus something simply recycled into a newer wrapper. This is, of course, an oversimplification which neglects all the other supporting and reinforcing roles required to produce and distribute the created content, but certainly writers and actors are central to the process.
Now overlay all the other changing dynamics which have brought the creative industry to this point. There are changing distribution models, changing technologies from inception to delivery, changing consumption demands from consumers, changing economic environments and so on.
How do you create and manage a contract that governs a financial relationship during a time of constant and unpredictable change?
Incremental changes won’t cut it here. Everything needs to be reimagined, and how can that be done given all of the various interested or committed parties with sometimes diverging desires. The overall media based entertainment model is broken and requires a step change, not an incremental change.
What if the overall division of labor model is the biggest barrier to achieving a breakthrough in the media delivery industry? Negotiating and structuring “deals” with writers, separately from cinematographers, seperately from actors and separately from directors won’t work into the future when most if not all the work done in this space can eventually be done in an AI-assisted and integrated way?
The future of entertainment media creation and delivery will be a continuous, integrated process enabled through AI technology and managed through individuals with roles that have not yet been defined.
Why should movies take 2 to 3 years to envision and then deliver and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make them happen? Why can’t blockbusters be delivered in 3 months at significantly less cost? And if that can happen, doesn’t the entire definition of what a blockbuster is change? I think everyone sees the writing on the wall and is trying to stake out as enduring a future piece of the disappearing pie as possible before an AI-native industry startup destroys the previous paradigm and delivers a real wakeup call to everyone involved.
I’ll explore a few other thoughts in several posts coming up, including the concept of an AI-native company. Until then, roll the credits.
