VFX Veteran Sees Coexistence for AI Studios, Legacy Giants

Speaking at the Busan festival, VFX producer-director Hong Jae Cheol argued that lean AI-driven studios can carve out space for original IP without displacing traditional studios' hold on franchises and infrastructure.

At a panel in Busan, veteran visual effects producer-director Hong Jae Cheol laid out a vision of the film industry where small, automation-driven studios and established Hollywood players occupy separate but coexisting lanes rather than competing head-to-head. According to Hong, compact teams built around AI-powered production pipelines are well positioned to generate their own original intellectual property, since they can move quickly and operate without the overhead of a legacy studio system. Hong, who got his start at Industrial Light & Magic and has credits on major productions including entries in the "Iron Man" franchise, now works as a producer-director at Viscode. His comments, reported by Variety, suggest that even as AI tools lower the barrier to entry for small teams chasing new creative concepts, the biggest studios aren't about to lose their grip on the business. That's because, in Hong's framing, traditional studios still hold assets that no amount of automation can easily replicate: decades-deep franchise libraries, physical and technical production infrastructure, deep benches of specialized talent, and entrenched distribution networks that get films in front of global audiences. Those advantages mean the rise of AI-native production isn't necessarily a zero-sum threat to legacy studios, but rather the emergence of a parallel track for original storytelling. The remarks add to an ongoing conversation at film festivals and industry gatherings about how generative AI tools are reshaping who gets to make movies and on what budget, without yet resolving whether these smaller AI-driven outfits can scale into lasting competitors or will remain a complementary niche alongside the major studios.