For years, audiences have been screaming for something new. Something that doesn’t fit within a classic franchise or overworked genre. In 2025, the studios finally started to listen.
When the rallying cry is “unique and original,” is it any surprise that movies like Sinners,
Weapons, and
One Battle After Another have taken off? This is exactly what audiences have been asking for. Fresh visions that feel alive. These are movies with exciting stories to tell and the result of an experimental mindset that will only become more commonplace in 2026.
Last year, I said that
Everything Everywhere All At Once was an
inflection point, a signal that ambitious, relatable storytelling is coming back, emboldened with new technologies that will help teams create amazing things, at a fraction of the cost. In 2026, we’ll start to see those technologies become more practical and purpose-built for filmmakers.
Christopher Nichols, Director of Special Projects at Chaos Innovation Lab
This will be especially true for AI. Artists are ready to move beyond a “prompt and pray” phase that might yield a good version 1, but won’t let you build on it in a predictable way. Tools that win massive adoption will not only take care of the grunt work no one wants to do, but open up more iterations in a way that feels tied to how our tools have historically worked. New takes on node-based interfaces may come out of this process as workflows develop, but at their core, these tools are going to be catalysts for creativity. Places where we can experiment and then turn concepts into more realized shots/stories without having to hope that the system understands how notes should be reflected in successive versions. This isn’t to say everything happens in the machine — it never has — just that trained teams will have a bigger, smarter playground to throw their ideas at.
Getting to film-ready is going to take a lot of new data, though. Right now, most AI tools are being trained on highly compressed MPEG-4s or H.264s, when our industry needs high bit depth, high-resolution training sources. And lots of them. This problem won’t be solvable on a micro front either. You won’t see VFX studios successfully training standard-level systems on their in-house data, for instance, it’s just not enough. What’s more likely is big deals involving AI tools and movie studios who’ll license their data for higher purposes.
OpenAI’s recent agreement with Disney is a sign that things are already changing. Something like this would have been unthinkable in 2024. Now, it’s a signal of what’s to come.
Will this lead to a new golden age of cinema? We’ll see. There’s going to be a lot of experimentation for a while. Some of it will be good and some of it bad. And while it’s clear audiences want something new, even they don’t know exactly what they want. The crystal ball has been broken for some time, which necessitates some new swings. What is going to serve everyone, though, is the fact that virtual production and AI are going to bring the costs of production way down. Which is good for everyone, because experiments become a lot less risky when you can turn in a $60M movie for 30 cents on the dollar.
Smart studios and filmmakers are going to throw themselves into this new world and they’ll be rewarded for it. They’ll try new tools, follow some crazy threads, and then sort the good from the bad. And over time, new standards will emerge. But in 2026, the focus will be on finding the right ingredients. Discovering the right combinations will be key for filmmakers who want to take full advantage of this moment. As trite as it sounds, industry downturns are usually where the rules get rewritten. Just look at the 70s. When something isn’t working, the boundary lines come down, which means more people get to take their shot at making the next big hit, seeding the next big tool or even creating the next big studio.
What happens this year will have ripple effects for years to come. We just have to give it everything we’ve got.