Variety: Hollywood Is Embracing AI Despite Doomsday Fears

Variety's feature "Open to AI" argued that three-quarters of the way into 2026, AI was "no longer Hollywood's ultimate bad word." It opened on Stage 21 at Manhattan Beach Studios, home of Jon Erwin's Innovative Dreams, where LED volumes and a team of AI artists work generative imagery into productions, and compared the shift to the way 1960s and '70s filmmakers embraced the once-taboo.

The evidence had piled up through the year: an AI-generated docudrama at Tribeca, Reese Witherspoon declaring that "the AI revolution has begun," Martin Scorsese urging filmmakers to be open to how film can evolve, and George Lucas saying "there's nothing you can do about it." Producer Ryan Kavanaugh said AI had cut Doug Liman's Bitcoin from a $200 million budget to $70 million, with below-the-line costs falling from $130 million to $35 million, and Kathleen Kennedy had helped organize a group to set out how the industry should talk about the technology. The feature also noted that public opinion was moving the other way, with polls showing Americans increasingly wary of AI. Arriving the week after Ben Affleck's comments on Animals and Runway's turn on 60 Minutes, it read as a marker of how far the conversation had moved.