Goteborg’s Nostradamus Report Predicts Wholesale Industry Restructure Within 5 Years Due To AI Integration — Cannes

Zac Ntim
·3 min read

Artificial Intelligence will be fully integrated into the production process within five years, offering new creative opportunities while endangering the future of creative jobs, according to the latest edition of the Goteborg Film Festival’s Nostradamus report.

The tenth annual report, traditionally released at the Swedish festival in January, launched for the second time today in Cannes. The report charts the near future of the audiovisual industry through interviews with experts and analysis by author Johanna Koljonen. This year’s report is titled Nostradamus Report: Everything Changing All At Once.

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The headline finding presented in the report is the speed with which experts expect AI to be fully integrated into the film and TV production process. The report predicts that full integration will occur within 3-5 years and will: “unlock resources and creative capacity.” However, for the industry as a whole, “jobs will start disappearing, and most of them will change.”

The report also delves into the evolving nature of TV as a streaming platform and examines the industry’s challenges in remaining attractive to young audiences.

“Cutting content investment targeted at Gen Z is a very short-sighted strategy for financial as well as ethical reasons, and because a disinterest among young people for their local scripted drama is a threat to the talent pipeline,” the report reads.

“Our lack of diversity and abysmal work environment makes us unattractive, and the traditional allure of working adjacent to glamour is fading.”

Key findings from the report include:

  • Within the next 3–5 years, AI support will be integrated into all fully or partially digital workflows, supercharging Virtual Production in particular. For individuals and productions, the technologies unlock resources and creative capacity. For the industry as a whole it means jobs will start disappearing and most of them will change.

  • In the next 3–5 years, the economy will place a damper on the film and TV sectors. At the same time, new production technologies are taking off, bringing a new sense of excitement and dramatic efficiency gains to the sector. The wider context is one of conflict, famine, extreme weather, fundamentally transformed economies, and existential threats.

  • Streamers are correcting away from debt-funded growth to more normal expectations of profitability, forcing changes on drama content, formats, and budgets. The number of productions will decrease. Financial pressures have created an atmosphere of caution that drives series content towards the middle of the road.

  • The creator economy increasingly overlaps with the film & TV industry. Content that would once have existed only on television is expanding organically onto a range of video platforms. Existing in these environments is a necessity, both because of the business opportunities inherent in the audience, and because we must learn from their professional creators

  • The business of movie-making will be conceptually separated from the business of cinemas. Most production companies that survive five years hence will have truly diverse output—not platform agnostic, but platform harmonic. A range of formats, business models, and distribution paths will flourish with audiences, and therefore relevance, at the centre.

The experts interviewed this year include Sened Dhab, VP Young Adult Drama, France Télévisions; Rikke Ennis, CEO REinvent Studios; Max Malka, Head of Scripted, EndemolShine Finland; Neil Peplow, Director, London Film School; Alex Pumfrey, CEO, Film and TV Charity; Sten-Kristian Saluveer, Founder and CEO at Storytek Innovation and Venture Studio; Danna Stern, Managing Director, In Transit Production, and Will Richmond, Editor, and Publisher, VideoNuze.

The report presentation at Cannes was followed by a panel feature Ennis, Peplow, and Saluveer.

The 2024 Goteborg runs January 26 — February 4, 2024.

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