AI is the only way for small countries to compete with Hollywood. I'm sick and tired of all those glorified stage plays that my country produces simply because we have no access to Hollywood money.
Meanwhile Hollywood has so much money that they don't know what to do with it - they give it to directors like Michael Bay to create all those pointless cgi-fests.
When you say "to compete with Hollywood" you either mean one of two things: on quality or on box office.
The latter is nothing to do with CGI or production budget: it's about marketing budget, in which AI has less to offer.
The former, in my view, will not be aided by AI. The "glorified stage plays" are (not always but on aggregate) of significantly higher quality than quite a lot of Hollywood output. AI won't change that in any positive way.
Say you want to create a historical drama that doesn't look like crap. You have two options. Either create massive physical sets or (as is increasingly popular in Hollywood) CGI ones. Both cost an enormous amount of money. It isn't just tedious popcorn movies about superheroes or aliens that require massive budgets for effects.
This sounds a bit like District 9 (albeit having Peter Jackson as producer might exclude it) - the director then "graduated" to Hollywood, resulting in a decline in critical reception (though I've heard Gran Turismo is pretty good by video game movie standards).
If it comes to pass that AI dramatically reduces the cost of making a movie that works for Hollywood as well as small countries and probably doesn't result in the small countries being able to compete as a result?
In the same sense that the revolution that occurred in the digital distribution of games and general improvements in the accessibility of tooling meant the market for games expanded into more niches rather than producing more AAA games from smaller developers.
If a local director could make a movie with comparable quality to Hollywood movies - I would watch his movie. Hollywood only dominates, because their movies have way higher production quality.
There is only so much you can do with shoestring budgets that our directors have.
My question to you is: why do people spend money on those glorified stage plays and not just spend all their money on Hollywood movies? It's likely that Hollywood movies just don't align perfectly with the local culture due to limits/costs on localization. Now imagine if Hollywood movies had perfect dubbing (including changing scenes and lip movements), local references and jokes, removed cultural mismatches, etc. Would that make people less or more likely to spend their money on them?
We watch mostly Hollywood movies. Local output has a pretty low market share. Both due to low budgets and the fact that Hollywood can make a lot more movies per year.
Meanwhile Hollywood has so much money that they don't know what to do with it - they give it to directors like Michael Bay to create all those pointless cgi-fests.