Demand for video content has never been higher, with the average US adult spending nearly seven hours per day watching video across platforms.1 Yet premium TV and film budgets are flat, production timelines are long, and competition for consumers’ increasingly fragmented attention continues to intensify. In the United States, TV and film make up only 50 percent of total video viewership, down from 61 percent in 2019, as social content gains share of time.2
The emergence of gen AI has the potential to radically alter this landscape, rewiring how stories are developed and produced. Gen AI and the set of new tools and technologies it powers could be the most transformative force in the entertainment industry since the shift to streaming—reinventing every stage of the creative process from script to screen.
Early next year, McKinsey will examine these developments in an in-depth article based on dozens of interviews with entertainment industry executives, creative talent, technologists, investors, and academics. The publication will explore how gen AI will shape the future of the $181 billion global content-creation value chain—from previsualization to postproduction.3
Where the transformation begins
Film and television have always been shaped by technology, from practical effects and cable to CGI and streaming. But AI could represent a shift in not only how content is made but also who gets to make it. AI product experts are hopeful that technological advances will further democratize storytelling. According to one AI expert, “There are a lot of gatekeepers right now to getting anything greenlit or distributed. The more that AI is high-quality and responsible, the more great stories get told.”
That democratization could unlock new voices and formats. Directors who once spent years developing their backlog of projects might now have agentic solutions capable of producing detailed storyboards. Indie producers with limited budgets could do their work without having to raise as much financial backing. Beyond premium long-form content, digital-native creators could build new content types, such as Sam Finn’s project “The Unfinished Film,” which put fans in the director’s seat to produce their own ending.4
At the same time, major studios are likely to see gains in both productivity and precision. “If pre-vis doesn’t yield a clear shot list, it creates more difficulty later,” an AI product leader explained. “With AI, you can A/B-test shots before you shoot them, saving time on set and enabling more creativity once cameras roll.”
Signals from the frontier
Initial research suggests that the greatest near-term value will emerge in pre- and postproduction, which contribute about half of total production spending and are areas in which gen AI can enhance rather than replace creative judgment.
- Preproduction acceleration. AI-assisted storyboarding, 3D modeling for sets, and camera path planning can front-load work in preproduction and shorten the length of physical production, including costly reshoots. Adobe’s Firefly Foundry approach5—commercial safe, IP-protected models trained for specific IP owners—hints at what’s next: “You don’t need a model that works for everyone,” a leader at Adobe said. “You just need one trained for that use case.”
- Postproduction efficiency. AI is already automating cosmetic improvements, de-aging, and dialogue replacement. As a former studio executive observed, “Vanity fixes are a significant share of visual effects [VFX], and that’s now pretty easy to do with AI. These tasks used to be incredibly manually intensive.”
- Marketing and engagement. From automated trailer editing to AI-assisted audience testing, “Marketing asset creation is an obvious and lower-stakes use case,” one studio executive noted.
These use cases are not speculative. Studios are already deploying gen AI tools in Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, and other professional workflows to extend shots, remove booms, or realign visuals to the soundtrack—the kind of microtasks that once absorbed hundreds of staff hours. Studio executives expect as much as 80 to 90 percent efficiency gains in VFX and 3D asset creation.
What won’t change—and what’s next
Even as technology reshapes the production process, experts emphasize continuity in one area: storytelling itself. “Great stories and great storytelling will always matter,” said a gen AI product leader. “AI can speed the workflow, but creativity still defines the outcome.” Another studio executive echoed that sentiment from the production side: “Historically, if you reduce the cost of VFX, the movie doesn’t get cheaper—it looks better because we reinvest savings into quality.”
Several entertainment and tech executives agreed that cost structures will shift. The Hollywood adage of “fix it in post” is giving way to “fix it in pre”—shifting quality control earlier in the process. Over time, this could reallocate value pools across production houses, VFX providers, and distributors, changing where and how investment flows.
Still, many in the industry remain uneasy about the potential impact of gen AI on the already declining number of entertainment jobs. Guilds and unions—including the WGA (Writers Guild of America), the DGA (Directors Guild of America), SAG-AFTRA (the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), and IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees)—have taken clear stances that gen AI should be used to augment roles, not replace them. Several studios have challenged relationships with foundational models and publicly available text-to-video tools that they claim were illegally trained on the studios’ IP.
These concerns underscore the importance of clear regulatory and ethical frameworks regarding creativity, content rights, and gen AI. One product leader noted, “Entertainment executives should be asking what models are used in their ecosystem. They need to start thinking about the ‘nutrition label.’”
Looking ahead
The full McKinsey article—to be released in early 2026 ahead of the Sundance Film Festival—will explore several plausible scenarios for how gen AI could reshape the entertainment industry:
- incremental productivity gains across current workflows
- entirely new production processes enabled by new tools
- a restructured industry model in which creative boundaries are redrawn and value pools are redistributed across production and distribution
- a fundamental reset of the entire video production landscape that changes the economic model of video, including for user-generated content
In each scenario, the article will assess the economic implications across the content production value chain for studios, creators, and platforms. It will also examine the crucial human dimension—trust, authorship, and ethics—and outline a practical playbook for leaders navigating this shift. The goal is to help legacy media companies, new tech entrants, and investors separate hype from reality and identify where AI can drive creative and commercial value in the next era of storytelling.
Marc Brodherson is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New York office, Alec Wrubel is a consultant in the Southern California office, and Jamie Vickers is an associate partner in the London office.
1 Ethan Cramer-Flood, “US time spent with media 2025,” EMARKETER, February 27, 2025.
2 EMARKETER; PQ Media.
3 McKinsey analysis; Luminate; Omdia.
4 Adobe Blog, “The Unfinished Film: Where your imagination leads and AI follows,” blog entry by Stacy Martinet, July 31, 2025.
5 “Adobe Firefly Foundry delivers proprietary and on-brand generative AI models for businesses,” Adobe, October 28, 2025.