Oct 1, 2023 · 2h 15m · a16z
What is the Future of Hollywood?
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this comprehensive discussion hosted by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of a16z, the pair explores the radical transformation of Hollywood and entertainment driven by artificial intelligence, streaming economics, decentralized production tools, and blockchain IP architectures.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 3.0 Guest disagreement 1.4 The host pushing back 1.4
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:48:40 Rejection of Media Framing in Misquote Incident
Marc and Ben forcefully criticize media reporting standards, highlighting a Washington Post journalist who misattributed a controversial phrase to Marc and then offered a dismissive defense.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 20:49 Pushing the Autonomous Driving Analogy to AI ContentMarc directly challenges Ben by contrasting Waymo's requirement for absolute perfection against Tesla's threshold of merely exceeding human driver safety as a model for evaluating AI content.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:48 Debunking the Music Catalog MythBen educates Marc on streaming music consumption realities, revealing data that over 98% of streamed tracks were released within the previous 18 months, refuting traditional catalog valuation assumptions.
The host holds their own ▶ 1:26:00 Steel-Manning the Blacksmith Disruption CounterargumentMarc demonstrates strong economic and historical expertise by steel-manning the impact of technological disruption through the classic transition from blacksmiths to automotive manufacturing.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question 1: Hollywood's Business Model Disruption – Streaming vs. AI | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Ben opens by framing the current strike and asking how AI disrupts Hollywood's business model. Marc breaks down how streaming had already converted the industry into a flat-fee, cost-plus model before AI hit, and Ben draws a parallel to the post-scarcity shift in the music industry. | |
| Concept of Fungibility in Content and Streaming Platforms | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Marc introduces economic fungibility, contrasting Spotify's full catalog requirement with Netflix's 'always something to watch' promise. Ben offers industry insider knowledge showing that catalog value is largely a myth since most streaming comes from recent releases. | |
| Applying AI to Fungible vs. Non-Fungible Content and Component Creation | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Marc asks whether AI will dominate generic fungible content while struggling with non-fungible masterpieces like The Godfather. Ben notes that AI will first penetrate filler components and offers the insight that humans remain uniquely obsessed with watching other humans. | |
| Benchmarking AI: Self-Driving Cars, Procedural TV, and the Creative Turing Test | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Marc pushes Ben on benchmarking AI content by comparing Tesla and Waymo self-driving standards to procedural TV scripts. Ben acknowledges that formulaic comfort food TV could easily be AI-generated without audience resistance. | |
| Historical Resistance to Tech Disruption: The VCR Lesson and AI Desktop Superpowers | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Marc recounts the historical panic over the VCR, quoting Jack Valenti's infamous testimony, to illustrate how technology ultimately expands market size. Both speakers agree AI will act as a superpower enabling writers to render complete films on laptops. | |
| Pure Human Creation as a Premium Luxury Good | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Marc explores the paradoxical outcome where pure human creation becomes a high-priced luxury good like bespoke handmade shoes or practical-effects filmmaking. Ben backs this up by highlighting how live concert touring economics dwarf streaming revenues. | |
| Question 2: The Dystopian Scenario – AI and Neurochemical Manipulation | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Ben poses a listener question regarding dystopian AI scenarios. Marc outlines a dark future where AI directly optimizes for human neurochemical response, creating hyper-engineered 'Cheetos' entertainment stripped of higher artistic aspirations. | |
| Formulas in Narrative, Emotional Engineering, and AI Script Generation | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Marc details narrative structural formulas like Save the Cat and the hero's journey, explaining how LLMs can already output full beat sheets. Ben shares examples ranging from Pharrell's 'Happy' to Oliver Stone's visceral anti-war reaction to Top Gun. | |
| Part Two: The Utopian Vision – AI as a Superpower for Top Creators | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Resuming after the strike resolution, Marc presents the utopian case where AI grants unprecedented speed and scale to top directors like Spielberg and Scorsese. The discussion focuses on technological tools historically unlocking new artistic mediums. | |
| Deep World-Building, Lore, and Franchise Continuity in the AI Era | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Ben notes AI's potential in maintaining deep world lore, while Marc shares trivia about continuity retcons in Star Wars. Ben adds an insider detail about George Lucas maintaining vast written bibles for every background character. | |
| Using AI for Creative Brainstorming and Subverting Plot Tropes | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Marc explains how AI can assist writers by generating obvious clichés to be immediately discarded, citing Matt Weiner's Mad Men writers room discipline. Ben agrees that LLMs excel at drafting predictable tropes that creators can then subvert. | |
| Democratization of Creative Tools from Music Orchestration to Screenplays | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Ben draws an analogy to musical orchestration tools allowing solo artists to synthesize full compositions. Marc describes YouTube's 'epic music' genre created entirely on laptops and Ben recalls Frank Sinatra praising Quincy Jones' manual sheet music mastery. | |
| Hollywood as an Export of American Values and Culture | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Ben answers a prompt on 'saving Hollywood' by framing it as America's greatest cultural export vehicle. He illustrates this with a moving personal story of a Romanian friend inspired to escape communism after seeing Rain Man. | |
| Entertainment as the Modern Court Jester Subverting Cultural Norms | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Marc frames artists and comedians as modern court jesters who subvert repressive cultural norms. He points to the physical sense of relief in audiences attending Dave Chappelle stand-up performances. | |
| AI Job Losses, Industry Expansion, and the Lump of Labor Fallacy | 7 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Marc dismantles the lump of labor fallacy using 300 years of economic history, demonstrating how technology lowers prices and induces demand. He steelmans the opposite side by noting that legacy trades like blacksmiths do get displaced even as net jobs grow. | |
| AI and Blockchain for Transparent IP Royalties | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Ben addresses IP royalty management, explaining how music licensing suffers from paper contracts stuck in drawers. He advocates for public blockchain smart contracts to automate instant, audit-free payouts to all creators. | |
| Case Study: Grimes, Voice AI Licensing, and Artist Independence | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Ben highlights Grimes' open 50/50 voice licensing model using blockchain as a forward-looking strategy for artist independence. Marc praises her genius and humorously envisions future archaeologists finding millions of synthetic Grimes tracks. | |
| Desktop Cinema and the Revival of Shoestring Indie Filmmaking | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Marc discusses how desktop tools enable shoestring indie masterpieces, citing the $2M film Monsters of Men and classic low-budget breakthroughs like Reservoir Dogs. He adds how South Park deliberately 3D-modeled cardboard textures to preserve its aesthetic. | |
| Decentralized Tools as a Safeguard for Free Speech and Open Society | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Ben discusses how open creation tools protect free speech, contrasting censorious societies with the American Founding Fathers who countered bad ideas by launching their own newspapers. | |
| Content Provenance, Deepfakes, and Blockchain Verification | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Marc discusses deepfakes and provenance verification in upcoming elections. Ben recounts a journalist misquoting Marc due to confusing him with Ben, and both argue cryptographic blockchain verification is necessary to prove origin. | |
| The Future of Copyright Protection in AI-Generated Media | 7 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Marc introduces Paul Skallas's 'stuck culture' theory, arguing that mainstream media stopped evolving around 2005 due to corporate risk aversion. He points out that AI tools can reduce production costs enough to make original storytelling economically viable again. | |
| The Shift from American Hegemony to Global Cultural Export | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Ben outlines the shift away from American cultural hegemony as global creators leverage digital distribution in music and television. Marc reinterprets Marshall McLuhan's 'global village' as a site of intense small-town conformity and social pressure. | |
| Regional Creative Hubs and Nuanced Storytelling in Fauda | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Marc discusses regional creative hubs in Israel, Korea, and the UK, noting that shows like Fauda offer authentic nuances that risk-averse American studios could never produce internally. | |
| Filipino Cinema Recommendation and Cultural Connection through Media | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Marc recommends the low-budget Filipino action film BuyBust as proof that global indie cinema can deliver immersive, high-impact experiences. Ben closes with a lighthearted Adele concert anecdote about dialect and cultural nuance. |
Statements from this episode (51)
Andreessen: Hollywood strikes would have occurred without AI
“There would have been a strike just on the basis of the changes to the streaming thing.”
Andreessen: Streaming shifted Hollywood content creation to a cost-plus model
“Today, if you make a movie or TV show for streaming, you get paid a flat fee to make that movie or TV show. And then there's never any upside after that. And it, right. And in fact, a lot of the production of what's happened in Hollywood has gone over to what …”
Horowitz: Over 70% of top music streamers are independent
“Over 70% of the artists that are the top streamers are independent. They're like outside of what you would call Hollywood in the music industry.”
Horowitz: Over 98% of streamed music was released in past 18 months
“I remember speaking to one of the big streaming CEOs on the music side, and I believe over 98% of what's streamed has been released in the last 18 months.”
Horowitz: AI will serve as creation components before generating full content
“I think that it'll probably show up as a component first. There's a kind of certain kind of genre of rap music where like okay there's a class of beats that are all very fungible like you know rap over the beat and then the thing that is kind of non-fungible i…”
Horowitz: AI backing tracks with human lyrics are already mainstream in China
“My understanding is, you know, in China, it's actually, like, a pretty big phenomenon is, like, AI will be the track, but it won't be the lyrics.”
Horowitz: Audiences will always prefer human creators over superior AI
“Humans are obsessed with humans. Absolutely fucking, like, totally obsessed with humans. So, like, a cheetah's been able to run faster than a human forever, but we only watch humans run against humans. We never watch cheetahs run. The AI can destroy humans in …”
Horowitz: Technology's job creation is much harder to predict than job destruction
“It's always easy to see how it shrinks employment. It's very hard to, you know, predict how it's going to grow employment.”
Andreessen: The introduction of the VCR doubled the size of Hollywood
“Like the VCR expanded VCR, I think double the size of Hollywood, right?”
Andreessen: AI desktop software will generate full movies directly from screenplays
“Within some number of years here, short, I think relatively short number of years, you're gonna have a tool on your laptop, right, that basically is, is like, you work with it, you basically write your script, you know, kind of with AI, and then as you're writ…”
Horowitz: AI will shift Hollywood economic power from studios to creatives
“The most likely is it's going to shift the economic power from the distributors and the kind of the studios to the creatives in a really major way that probably hasn't happened, you know, since the kind of rise of CAA and the kind of the bargaining power that …”
Horowitz: Taylor Swift generated $1.5 million per show in tour merchandise
“I'm trying to remember the number, but just in merchandise, she was doing like a million and a half dollars a show.”
Andreessen: Entertainment is physiologically a neurochemical rollercoaster ride
“What any entertainment experience is physiologically is it's basically taking the brain and the nervous system on a rollercoaster ride.”
Andreessen: AI will program human neurochemistry with hyper-optimized media
“You could imagine AI algorithms for creating screenplays and songs that basically are essentially programming human neurochemical biology. And then the dystopian version of this is in the optimal possible state, right? So like basically the AI gets so good at …”
Horowitz: Vinod Khosla tweeted that AI will replace human musicians
“Our friend Vinod Khosla, I think, had a tweet that got him in a lot of trouble where he said, like, you know, there won't be any more human musicians because the AI would just program whatever feeling, however you want to feel, they just program it for you.”
Andreessen: GPT-4 can write screenplays using the Save the Cat framework
“One of the things you can do with like GPT-IV, you know, with like ChatGPT or with whatever, you know, Bing, Bing Chat or whatever you can actually use it will write you screenplays today, and what you can do, you can just tell it, write me a screenplay about,…”
Andreessen: AI will exponentially boost creative quality and output
“So the utopian scenario is that basically AI is an enabling technology for a level of creativity and also a level of output. So I would say both quality and quantity but a level of creativity and output from, you know, entertainment professionals, creative pro…”
Andreessen: Every past tech wave in Hollywood paid off creatively and economically
“Each new wave of technology has been greeted by lots of anxiety and then sometimes, sometimes anger or rage. But you know, it's all paid off. And not just economically, but it's paid off in terms of its creative potential.”
Andreessen: Returning screenwriters are almost certainly using AI chatbots
“If you're going back to work as a writer and you're writing a screenplay right now, like you're almost certainly going to be in a, in an iterative loop with a, you know, with The chatbot you know, as you know, for, as you work on your screenplay, you know, if …”
Andreessen: AI will enable storytellers to build vastly richer fictional worlds
“You give a world builder a set of tools that let them track all this, and elaborate on all this, and brainstorm on all this, and exactly to your point, you know, the worlds that they should be able to build should be like light years beyond what's been possibl…”
Andreessen: Mad Men's writer room systematically discarded its first five plot ideas
“He said the rule in the Mad Men writing room was whenever the question was what happens next what they would do is they would write down the five The first five ideas for the next thing in the plot on a board, and then they would cross them all off. And then t…”
Horowitz: Writers should discard any plot idea ChatGPT easily generates
“If chat GPT can write it, you know, without you prompting it not to write something obvious, then you shouldn't use it.”
Andreessen: AI will allow actors to scan themselves into 3D environments
“These systems and all the variations that are coming up you know, the capabilities are going to become available over the next few years, including, you know, rendering video, you know, we're going to get to the point now where like, for example, an actor is g…”
Andreessen: Actors will use AI to render full movies starring digital scans of themselves
“The capabilities are going to become available over the next few years, including, you know, rendering video, you know, we're going to get to the point now where like, for example, an actor is going to be able to do a scan of their face and body, and they're g…”
Andreessen: Directors will pre-render complete movies on laptops before pitching studios
“Directors are going to be able to, you know, composite, you know, movie, you're going to be able to pre-render an entire movie ahead of time on your laptop so that by the time you show up and you're pitching the studio and trying to raise the money to film the…”
Andreessen: Laptop software can now synthetically render a full orchestra and choir
“And it's like literally a person on a laptop, but the, to your point, the music tools are so good already that you can do a full orchestra and a full choir. Right. Completely synthetically in a way that sounds, you know, absolutely spectacular.”
Andreessen: Generative AI will allow every screenplay to be rendered as video
“Most, look, oh, look, most people who write a Hollywood screenplay never see it produced. They never see it on screen. Right. And now all of a sudden, like all of those screenplays could be produced. Right. And turned into, you know, maybe not a movie that's c…”
Horowitz: Hollywood is a vital strategic asset for exporting American culture
“I would say it's one of the great assets of the United States. So if you love America you should probably love Hollywood in the sense that You know, it's been the vehicle that we've had for exporting our culture, our values, our way of life. And if you like th…”
Andreessen: Cultural norms are subverted through entertainment
“Subversion of cultural norms, you know, basically happens through entertainment.”
Andreessen: Highly automated industries grow faster than less-automated ones
“The industries that have higher levels of automation also, also grow faster.”
Andreessen: AI will expand entertainment and tech industry jobs and output
“On the other side of this kind of change, typically what happens is a much larger industry with like way more employment, way more output. And I, I'm a hundred percent convinced that's what's going to happen for sure in the tech industry and for sure in, in, i…”
Horowitz: High costs and legal hurdles artificially limit great movies
“You know, there aren't, there should be more great movies. There definitely should, you know, given the talent of humanity, but the bar to make a movie is so high and requires, you know, so much money and so much coordination and lawyers that, that is quite di…”
Andreessen: Cars created far more jobs than they displaced from blacksmiths
“The car created far more jobs, right, than it displaced, and so, for example, the number of car mechanics was orders of magnitude beyond the number of blacksmiths, right and then, you know, and then the downstream effect of the car was, like, very profound, an…”
Andreessen: Slowing technology to save incumbent jobs makes society worse off
“From a societal standpoint, the last thing on earth you would have wanted to do is to slow down the progression of the introduction of the car to protect the blacksmith jobs. Like that would have made everybody worse off, right? To protect a very small, what u…”
Horowitz: Music royalty audits retrieved withheld money 100% of the time
“My brother is in the music industry has done You know, literally hundreds of audits on behalf of his artists and never has he not retrieved money that was being like held kind of whatever intentionally or unintentionally, you know, against the actual agreement…”
Horowitz: Blockchain smart contracts can automate IP royalties without intermediaries
“So what a blockchain would do in particular, I think for the royalties is you could just have these contracts be open. Published on the blockchain. Have the money come into a smart contract and then get sent out to all the participants automatically. No third …”
Horowitz: Grimes offers a 50/50 profit split for AI voice licensing
“She is basically licensing, so if you want to do AI Grimes which is you know, basically train an AI on Grimes' voice, and then make your own Grimes song, she'll auto license that to you and she'll do that, you know, using blockchain, and then She will basicall…”
Horowitz: AI increases the financial value of artist independence
“AI Causes you as an artist to really rethink and say, okay, my independence now is far more valuable. Because what I create can then be remixed, and in order for me to get an interest in that remix, and that recreate, and that, you know, further use, I actuall…”
Andreessen: Producing full-length movies on laptops will be viable within five years
“It ought to be possible here within a couple years you know, to make entire full-length movies, you know, basically on your laptop, completely produced, you know, with, like, whatever actors superimposed into the thing, like, a couple years I don't know, I'd s…”
Andreessen: Indie film 'Monsters of Man' delivered 2,000 VFX shots for $2M
“He shot the entire thing. It has 2000 shots, and I think the total budget of the entire movie was two million dollars.”
Horowitz: Deepfakes will be perfected for the 2024 presidential election
“It's gonna be a huge thing going into the presidential election of twenty-twenty-four, for sure, because by October, they're gonna be working perfectly.”
Andreessen: Future society will run on content provenance systems
“I think the answer to that, I think, is, you know, yes, absolutely, a hundred percent. Like, systems for establishing provenance are going to be extraordinarily important. Like, the, you know, future society is going to basically run on them.”
Horowitz: Blockchain is the uncorruptible technology for content provenance
“And luckily we have a perfect technology for establishing and tracking provenance in a way that is unbiased and can't be corrupted, which is the blockchain crypto technology.”
Andreessen: Copyright laws will drastically change due to AI remixing tools
“Like, I think it's going, like I, it's going to continue to be obviously very important, but it's going to change a lot because people are going to want to deploy creative assets and likenesses and voices and personalities and so forth. And content and do remi…”
Andreessen: Oppenheimer will top $1 billion and sweep the Oscars
“Look, Oppenheimer, I think is going to top a billion dollars in the box office and is like, you know, a fantastic success and is going to sweep the Oscars and so forth.”
Andreessen: Lowering creative production costs eliminates studio risk aversion
“I think if you bring down the price of originality, the cost of originality, like if you make it possible for people to exercise creative originality at a fraction of the price, I think that has a potential to take a creative medium that maybe is, is in this k…”
Horowitz: UK rap has surpassed American rap in quality
“I would say in like hip hop, like UK rap is now kind of probably gone past American rap at least currently, you know, in terms of quality.”
Horowitz: U.S. distribution monopolies gave American creatives a massive global advantage
“The cultural distribution monopolies have historically been U.S., you know, based. And that's given our creatives a massive advantage over, you know, kind of the global creatives.”
Andreessen: Global culture will become extremely self-referential and risk averse
“And so, and this, and again, this is kind of consistent with the Paul Scales' Stuck Culture thing. It's, everything's just gonna become extremely self-referential and risk averse.”