Who has time to watch?

The real winner at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival was not a film – it was AI.

Because the real  prize at Cannes is not a tin award but global attention. Fully generative AI movies were banned from competing for the top Palme d'Or prize, but they were still the talk of the town.

AI in film is not a revolution - it is the tail end of another revolution that started 30 years ago. Moving pictures went from insanely expensive and cumbersome 35mm affairs to iPhone movies filmed with ambient light.

In a sense, AI is no more "fake" than background projection, matte painting and green screen – it is just a much bigger enabler.

The real question is how far we want to devaluate the medium. Film must now uncomfortably share the mental bandwidth of its audience members with social media, podcast, the web and other attention-economy drivers.

Film has gone from emperor to mayor of a small local village: still important – but only to some people. Making films is now so cheap that everyone is doing it. The problem is: nobody's watching.

Here are some thought-provoking glimpses of a technology-empowered (and not just AI) future:

Students in film school will be legally required to learn a trade before they are allowed to graduate.

The Oscars become a weekly sponsored event on iPhone only.

A global 5 trillion dollar fund will be established to deal with the lawsuits of people who are suing for being generated without consent.

Millionaires become film makers. Viewings and events like the Aioscars become a velvet-rope affair for other millionaires only.

We all go back to reading books. Who's got time to watch exploding zombie dinosaurs?

Let me hear YOUR predictions!