Co-production More Important Than Ever In AI Era, Say Filmart Panelists: “Those Days Of The Blockbusters Are Gone”

International collaboration, as a means of raising finance and expanding markets, has become more important than ever in an age of tech disruption and uncertain box office, said speakers on a co-production panel at Filmart today.

With AI the hot topic at Filmart, but nobody really sure how it’s going to impact the industry, leading Hong Kong producer-director Peter Ho-sun Chan said he could envisage a world in which mainstream cinema is dominated by technology rather than humans – pushing directors like himself into arthouse filmmaking.

“Those days of the blockbusters are gone,” said Chan, one of the first Hong Kong filmmakers to experiment with pan-Asian co-productions, as well as work in Hollywood back in the ‘90s. “I think this is a time where really nobody knows anything, with the fragmentation of the market, vertical short dramas, AI and everything. I think we’re at the worst time for cinema.