Is Netflix Playing 4D Chess With Hollywood?

... still wondering if robots have celluloid dreams.

Dec 08, 2025

The conversation that matters is happening here. Machine Cinema is home to the creators, builders, and business insiders defining the future of media and entertainment.

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Edited by Elizabeth Kealoha. Pod + Images by Ant Neely.

Last Week Inside Machine Cinema…

Hollywood panics over Netflix + Warner Bros, Runway’s latest model fails the vibe check, AI avatars get legal protection, and the UN forgets artists (again). Also inside: AI slop for kids, LA’s new AI gallery, Oscar Sharp returns, and India’s first AI film fest goes global.

Machine Cinema Channels

Overheard in Basecamp + L.A. Channel

Netflix Buys Warner Bros: The A-to-J Case Against It (And Why Some See Hope)

Netflix’s $5 billion all-cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery dominated both community channels this week, with the LA crew compiling a brutal A-to-J list of concerns while Basecamp dug into the structural economics. The verdict across 100+ messages: this is bad for creators, but maybe not for the reasons you’d expect. Beyond the obvious “death of theatrical” fears, members highlighted how the shift from DVD-era First Sale Doctrine to streaming licensing mathematically killed the 150,000-title library dream. Now we’re stuck with rotating 6k-title catalogs—and owning WB won’t magically fix that. The lone optimist? One member suggested Netflix’s AI embrace could finally bring “personalized cinema” closer to reality.

“If Stranger Things and Squid Game define our culture … dear lord. Dear fucking lord.”

THR LINK | THB: When a full service studio met Netflix link

The Freeze Theory: Is Netflix Playing 4D Chess With a $5.8B Breakup Fee?

A darker theory emerged from industry analysts and caught fire in the LA chat: what if Netflix doesn’t actually want to buy WB? The theory goes that Netflix’s bid freezes their competitor for 1.5-2 years during regulatory review, turning WBD into lame ducks who can’t make moves. The $5.8B breakup fee? Possibly worth it just to neutralize HBO. Some analysis circulated, with members calling it “collective scorched earth tactics.” If true, Zaslav may have walked right into it.

“Ankler is always ahead of the curve. Great theory and if true Zaslav continues to be the biggest clown of all time”

Evan Shapiro on Netflix buying WBD | The Ankler

Runway Gen 4.5 Drops — But What Does “Better” Actually Mean?

Runway launched Gen 4.5 with the usual comparison graphs claiming 2x improvement over Veo3. The community wasn’t buying it. Members pushed back hard on smartphone-optimized demos, arguing the real benchmark is how footage looks on a 52-inch reference monitor, how it handles YouTube compression, and how it behaves in professional i2v workflows with upscaling and color grading. Even the promo videos still show morphing and artifacts. One member’s take: “t2v is just rolling a dice aka burning money” — i2v remains the professional standard at 90% usage.

“There are many technical factors that define a true benchmark, not just how good something looks on a phone or in the promo video.”

Introducing new frontier video model from Runway

South Korea Rules: Yes, You Can Defame an AI Avatar

A South Korean court established legal precedent that AI avatars can be defamed — the first recognition that digital personas equal real identity. A lawyer in the community provided context: this isn’t surprising, since it’s really the human behind the avatar being protected. But the implications for AI filmmakers are significant: virtual actors may have legal standing, mocap performers can claim defamation for avatar harassment, and AI voice actors have recourse for targeting. The complexity? Where’s the line between criticizing a character and defaming its operator?

“It’s not the virtual avatar being defamed. It’s the real person linked to it.”

Plave Defamation Verdict Analysis

UN Climate Assembly: Where Are the Artists?

A member leading the Arts and Culture ImPACT Coalition called attention to the UN Environmental Assembly in Nairobi this week — where artists and creatives are once again absent from AI governance and environmental policy discussions. The coalition drafted a stakeholders statement called “We, the Artists” making the case for creative economy representation. With AI filmmakers at the intersection of both technology and climate impact, the community was asked to weigh in before the statement goes to UN delegates.

“With how powerful the creative economy is globally, it’s time we - especially AI filmmakers - had a voice in environmental policy spaces.”

We, The Artists WIP

AI “Slop” for Kids: A Children’s Programming Vet Sounds the Alarm

A Bloomberg article about fake educational AI videos for kids hit a nerve with a community member who spent 10+ years in children’s programming. Their concern: dopamine dependency from an early age has been proven to shrink the brain’s frontal cortex, directly linked to the anxiety and depression epidemic in young people. The counter-argument from others: this isn’t an AI issue per se — low-quality, uncurated content existed before AI. But with PBS and Head Start under attack, the guardrails are disappearing. Maybe AI can be part of the solution too.

“The thought of starting the stimuli and dopamine dependency at an early age has been proven to lead to the shrinkage of the brain’s frontal cortex. That is directly related to increased anxiety and depression.”

Bloomberg article: YouTube Creators Find a New Consumer for AI Slop: Babies

For our L.A. Folks: AI Gallery Opens in Iconic Eastern Columbia Building

A new AI gallery is launching inside the Eastern Columbia Building in Downtown LA — one of the city’s most recognizable Art Deco landmarks. The gallery is seeking collaborators, ideas, and AI projects to feature, with a second location planned for next month. If you’re in LA and want to showcase work in a space that screams “we’ve arrived,” this might be your moment.

“Launching an AI gallery inside the iconic Eastern Columbia Building in Downtown LA. Looking for collaborators, ideas, and more AI projects to feature.”

Eastern Gallery

Question of the Week…

If streaming-era economics broke Hollywood, could AI-era “personalized cinema” rebuild it?

“GenTalks!”- December 3, 2025

Each week we invite artists, builders, and thought leaders to share their knowledge, their works in progress and their ideas in this emergent space of generative media.

GUESTS: AI filmmaking pioneer Oscar Sharp joined us for a deep dive into the origins of machine-generated cinema, how early systems like Benjamin shaped culture, and why the next frontier requires creatives to think about feedback loops, power, and responsibility.

We then welcomed Hardeep Gambhir and Chandan Perla, the 20-something founders of Localhost and organizers of India’s first AI Film Festival — a project that went viral across Twitter/X, attracted A-list Bollywood talent, and demonstrated how fast democratized storytelling is spreading.

Watch recording on YouTube, like and subscribe: GenTalks

This week’s session delivered one of the most philosophical and wide-ranging GenTalks yet.

Highlights & Key Themes

Oscar Sharp: The First Wave of Machine Cinema

Oscar revisited Sunspring (2016), the first known film scripted entirely by AI — produced with Ross Goodwin using early LSTM RNNs before transformers existed, walked through the strange, fragile early days of machine-generated screenwriting and how actors found real emotional truth in surreal machine-written monologues.

His later films (e.g., It’s No Game and deepfake-driven iterations) explored how AI remixes cultural defaults — sometimes beautiful, sometimes disturbing.

Oscar emphasized that AI storytelling is a feedback loop, not a neutral tool. He warned about future “autopoietic video algorithms” — systems capable of reshaping themselves in real time to maximize emotional capture:

Oscar’s Core Ideas

Hyperstition: stories that shape reality, not just reflect it.
Resolution vs. Revolution:

“Revolutions replace one tyrant with another. I’m a resolutionary: how do we resolve problems, not create new conflicts?”

Bollywood’s First AI Film Festival

Hardeep Gambhir – SF-based founder, ex-startup builder, community/accelerator background + Chandan Perla – founder of Podcast Circle, ex–Blue Learn (raised $4M in college)

The Origin Story

They staged an AI film festival in Mumbai’s 120-year-old Royal Opera House, entirely organized in public via Twitter/X. Raised $150K in under a month. Attracted Bollywood’s elite — directors, actors, industry execs. Had humanoid robots, a Rolls Royce, and a full red carpet for every attendee — designed for maximum cultural signal.

15 AI films were created in five days by 50 selected filmmakers.

Why They Did It

To demonstrate democratized storytelling at scale.

To bridge the gap between:
- grassroots AI filmmakers
- legacy Bollywood production machinery
And to force a conversation about the future of Indian cinema.

Backlash & Hypocrisy

They received:

death threats
public criticism from major Bollywood critics and directors
private DMs from the same people requesting intros to AI filmmakers

“The same people who dismiss AI in public ask for intros in private.”

The Films

They screened Astatwa, the Best Overall winner — a moody, elegiac sci-fi piece about emotion in synthetic beings.

Generational divide:

30s+ tended to love Astatwa (classic vibe, older cinematography language).
20s preferred other more experimental entries.

Aftershocks

Participants received offers from Netflix, Google, and Bollywood studios.
Localhost is now exploring:
- 2–3 more AI film festivals globally (LA, Europe, India)
- a Palace of Versailles “demo day” honoring “the best of this generation”
- a funding arm to give $10–20K grants for AI filmmakers
- potential software tools for AI-native editing workflows

Where This Is All Going

Key open questions from the group

How do new economies for AI filmmakers actually work?

If we don’t solve economics, creator “democratization” still gets captured by old power.

Can Bollywood leapfrog Hollywood?
Localhost thinks yes — India’s interest is exploding faster and with less institutional defensiveness.
What does a “peer-to-peer film festival” look like?
Oscar’s provocation: remove the gatekeepers entirely and let emergent clusters form.
What problems should this community resolve rather than simply disrupt?
A potential mission statement for Machine Cinema in 2026.

Real Creative “Pick of the Week”

Each week the Machine Cinema members + the Real Creative team obsess over social feeds in search of the world’s best AI creative video, gaming, and music projects.

You can find this and over 300 AI filmmakers and their projects over at realcreative.ai which features some familiar faces from the Machine Cinema community.

This week’s pick of the week is “Spongebob Squarepants Old School Theme Song” from King Willonius, who dropped a soulful version of the kids classic theme song. The video features speedboats, machine guns, giant turtles and more, and to create it he combined tools from Midjourney, Veo 3, Adobe Firefly and Nano Banana. Willonius rose to prominence with his song BBL Drizzy, and he is a comedian, author and innovator who has been recognized by TIME and the Ebony Power 100.

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