An AI Wave Will Sweep Through Hollywood’s VFX Systems in 2025

Hollywood is in the early stages of an artificial intelligence overhaul that will change the entire moviemaking process. In 2025, that wave could begin to sweep through a sector that is vital to the blockbusters that keep the film industry going: visual effects.

Experts and AI developers tell TheWrap that generative AI programs could be just months away from advancing to a level that would enable studios to apply them throughout their visual effects production systems. And that could have stark implications for the VFX labor pool, both in Los Angeles and around the world.

Runway, the New York-based company that has become one of the early top names in developing AI software for film/TV production and struck a partnership with Lionsgate, can currently produce key frames at a resolution of 720p, far lower than the 4K resolution of modern cinemas and TVs, Erik Weaver, director of virtual and adaptive production at the USC Entertainment Technology Center, told TheWrap.

But AI is advancing at such a rapid clip that Weaver predicts that the software could be capable of producing 2K resolution images by the end of 2025, making Runway’s suite of AI packages even more enticing to producers and filmmakers that are already using it in their post-production processes. 

“I had about 80 shots in my last short, ‘Europa,’ and about 12 of them we looked at for AI, and instead of needing a team of two or three people working three or four months I could get it done in a couple hours,” Weaver said.

With the wave of new AI platforms introduced in 2024, Hollywood is bracing for the transformation of a range of production processes that impact the overall economics of film and TV production. While Hollywood studios are still determining how the technology will best fit into their production pipelines, experts tell TheWrap that once it is capable of automating enough tasks, the list of VFX workers — which can sometimes exceed 1,000 in the credits of a major film or TV series like “House of the Dragon” — could be cut by 80% or more. 

And that has made AI a highly sensitive subject in a section of the film industry that is still trying to unionize even as VFX artists race to adapt to what they expect will be a rapidly shrinking job market.

“I’ve been in visual effects since the early ’90s, and I’ve never seen anything grow this fast and be utilized so quickly,” one veteran VFX coordinator told TheWrap, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And the hard thing is, this AI thing is happening no matter what, so for the people who want to keep the human artistry at the center of whatever new normal this technology creates, it’s difficult to determine how exactly this rapidly evolving tech is going to be changing the way we make films. All we know is that some form of massive change is going to happen.”

AI is automating post-production processes

In its current form, AI’s big selling point to producers is that it can automate repetitive post-production processes, saving projects time and money. One example is rotoscoping, a process in which artists trace an actor or an object from live-action footage using software to use as the base for CGI work later in the process. 

Rotoscoping goes back to the earliest days of animation and has changed over the decades with the advancement of technology, but it still requires hours or even days of manual VFX work. With AI, that work can be done in a fraction of the time.

Even before AI became Hollywood’s hottest-button topic, some high-profile films had already taken advantage of that sort of automation. The team behind Best Picture Oscar winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once” used Runway AI to help rotoscope a climactic scene in which Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu’s characters find themselves in an alternate universe where they are turned into rocks. 

Crew members with poles and a pulley system moved the rocks, and editors during post-production quickly removed the crew and pulley ropes with the help of AI rotoscoping. The  VFX team for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” consisted of just seven artists on a film with a reported production budget of $25 million. 

But rotoscoping is just one process. It is a bigger leap for generative AI to fully produce the sort of CGI environments and characters that VFX teams have been creating for more than 30 years at a professional blockbuster-quality level. And the software struggles to do those things without using copyrighted data.

“Disney, or any other studio, isn’t going to touch any of this technology if the data isn’t clean,” Weaver said. “It’s too much of a liability.”

That is why training models to operate using “clean data” — source material that is legally cleared for use — is a top priority for AI companies, Weaver said. 

Studios build their own AI production machinery

While that process is developed, studios are building their potential AI usage around models that scrape exclusively from films, TV shows and other material they own. 

Lionsgate fired the first shot in September when it announced a partnership with Runway to create a customized generative AI model based on the studio’s film and TV portfolio that could be used by filmmakers as part of the production process. Since it will pull its data exclusively from Lionsgate-owned material, the system will run on clean data and not run afoul of other studios’ copyrights, the company has said.

A week before Lionsgate’s announcement, Disney jumped into the AI fray when it created a business unit, led by James Voris, its film studio’s chief technology officer, to examine how it can integrate AI and augmented reality technology across the company’s various divisions, including in film and TV production. 

How exactly Disney, Lionsgate and other studios will adopt the technology into their bespoke production pipelines remains murkier. A studio like Lionsgate that produces many films at budgets below $20 million won’t have the same needs as Disney, which devotes nearly all its film slate to top-dollar productions from studios under its umbrella like Lucasfilm and Marvel. 

Concerns persist over AI leading to jobs cuts in visual effects

And that makes it hard to predict exactly which jobs in the VFX sector will be the first to be rendered obsolete by AI — and when that will happen. AI’s explosion comes as IATSE has expanded its campaign to unionize VFX workers. The guild made a big public splash last year with its successful effort to unionize VFX coordinators at Marvel Studios. 

Coordinators are only a fraction of the hundreds of VFX artists that can work on a big MCU blockbuster, with many coming from vendors like Framestore and Method Studios. 

AI’s advancements have created concern among IATSE members across below-the-line positions that the technology will significantly reduce the number of crew members needed for any given project, reducing costs for studios but stifling the amount of employment available to Hollywood’s working class. 

That queasy mix of certainty of major change mixed with deep uncertainty as to how it will unfold has made the issue of AI a sensitive one. Four VFX artists declined to speak on-the-record to TheWrap for this story, with some saying they were unsure how to talk about the oncoming AI wave. Others said they are quietly trying to learn the ropes of Runway, Midjourney and other AI software to adapt to a changing industry, even if they resent the technology and fear it will make earning a living in VFX less sustainable. 

“Most artists are very wary about talking about this,” the VFX coordinator who spoke anonymously said. “Nobody wants to talk about AI is going to help anything, because it has or is going to put their friends out of work. And nobody wants to say it’s going to hurt workers because they are afraid it’s going to cost them a job as well.” 

But three experts consulted by TheWrap said the job casualties could be massive. On Marvel Studios’ most recent film, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” 231 digital artists from Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic were credited in the film’s VFX section, which also included hundreds more artists and staffers from Framestore, Barnstorm, Weta FX, Base FX, Raynault FX, Lola and Rising Sun Pictures.  

“As more processes get automated more efficiently by software, expect those long credits to get shorter and shorter,” one AI expert who asked to remain anonymous said. 

Could more ethical AI be an indie darling?

As automation consumes the old system of VFX, some industry veterans believe there is potential for a grassroots alternative to form. Just as AI enabled the bare bones VFX team of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to complete a critical scene in a fraction of the time expected, these optimists believe the tech could make it more accessible for independent productions to create the sort of production value in their VFX work that once required thousands of artists across multiple vendors. 

Documentary producer/director Bryn Mooser said he founded AI production company Asteria with the vision of making an AI studio that keeps human creativity at its center. So far, he has hired more than 50 animators and VFX artists whose resumes include Hanna-Barbera and Pixar, and he plans to hire more VFX veterans in the future. 

Last month, Asteria also partnered with the research company Moonvalley to launch Marey, a new AI model that the studio says is the first built entirely on clean data. It is part of the company’s vision of enabling filmmakers to use AI in an ethical way. 

“Think about how YouTube democratized distribution and how smartphones made it possible to have film-quality video in your pocket,” Mooser said. “We could reach a paradigm shift where independent film teams can make the sort of animation and VFX-heavy projects that right now can only be done with a budget that only studios can afford.” 

The approach is similar to how voiceover production studios are offering actors control and compensation for use of their voice as a foundation for AI-generated dubbing. 

“AI is only as useful to productions — no matter what the budget — as far as it helps the filmmaker’s vision,” Mooser said. “You’re always going to need experienced VFX artists and coordinators working constantly with the software and with the director to make sure that they are getting the desired result. This isn’t going to be a future where they fire all the VFX people and the next ‘Star Wars’ is done by a couple guys in a basement.”

Still, even if AI enables a new wave of independent filmmaking that offers new opportunities to VFX artists automated out of the old system they were trained in, it could take years for such a movement to develop. 

In the meantime, a largely non-unionized industry faces the question of how to adapt to the rapid changes that are about to unfold in post-production at a time when production outsourcing, rising living costs in Los Angeles, lingering financial strain from the strikes and a decrease in greenlit productions by frugal studios are already limiting options.

“My strategy is just to adapt, learn everything I can about Sora and Midjourney and all the other kinds of software,” the anonymous VFX coordinator said. “Until the studios start announcing their moves, it’s the best I can do at this point.”

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