The “speed of thought” era in TV and film production

Traditional television and film production, once a stately, months-to-years-long process, is undergoing a revolutionary transformation. Driven by the confluence of technological advancement and shifting audience demands, a new paradigm is emerging: entertainment at the speed of thought.

This isn’t just about accelerating workflows; it’s about fundamentally reimagining how entertainment is conceived, created, and consumed.

Right now, the entertainment industry is at a critical inflection point. Traditional media business models are crumbling under the weight of declining broadcaster viewership, the dominance of YouTube and other digital networks, and the relentless demand for fresh, engaging, hyper-relevant content. Streaming wars have intensified competition, forcing content providers to churn out more, faster, and often at the expense of IP ownership.

Audiences, accustomed to instant gratification through binging and personalised experiences, are demanding more from their favourite franchises.

This pressure creates a fertile ground for disruption. The global microdrama industry, which boasts 150 million monthly active users, according to Omdia, is appearing as a potential lifeboat for actors, writers and producers. Yet, even within this rapid-fire genre, the challenges of consistent quality and compelling narrative remain. There are, after all, only so many “Board-Rom” series set in marble mansions that the market can support.

This is precisely where AI has stepped in. Production companies and content creators now have access to a pipeline for creating scripts, series and video outputs at previously impossible speeds and budgets.

Now screenwriters can create first draft scripts in minutes, with full character backstories, story worlds, cliffhangers and series continuity. They also have the ability to edit and regenerate at every stage of the process, this AI-native approach allows writers to test and change their ideas at speed, arriving at the vision they want through a dynamic, creative collaboration with a platform.

At Mipcom last month, I presented a refreshed production model which reduced reliance on diminishing commissioning budgets by using creative AI systems to create and trial episodes before taking a series to market. This allows production companies to test out viewer appetite, own audiences and build IP value at high speed and low cost.

Empowering producers and creators to adapt to new consumer demands on digital platforms is the immediate benefit for creative AI. However, it is also about expanding the art of storytelling beyond mainstream channels and producers. If we can dramatically reduce production costs, creators with only small budgets will have the opportunity to visualise and share their own stories, however ambitious, bringing previously marginalised projects to life. Traditional creation and distribution models, often characterised by gatekeepers and opaque revenue sharing, are failing creators.

I believe AI is the foundational platform for the future of media and entertainment. Its relevance starts at the ideation phase and runs throughout the entire production process and beyond into distribution and monetisation. The era of “speed of thought” entertainment is no longer a distant dream: it is our present reality. Where previously there existed a wide, often painful gap between a story idea and its realisation on screen, we can now make a near seamless connection between the creative mind and screen visualisation.

This spans genres and formats, enabling IP to grow simultaneously into multiplatform versions like comic books, games and interactive TV. Before, content production and distribution were limited by factors like time, budget and logistics; the only limit now is imagination.

In essence, AI tools are making high-quality content creation accessible, affordable, and incredibly fast. This may be seen as disruptive to some, but the truth is that the disruption to the media industry happened long before AI appeared. AI is regarded by some as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but from what we can see, it’s more of a knight in shining armour.

Guy Gadney is co-founder and CEO of Charismatic.ai