- Renowned Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur predicts AI will drastically reduce filmmaking costs, potentially to the level of a "coffee and a croissant," democratizing the industry for new creators.
- He emphasizes AI's role as a collaborative "co-pilot," not a replacement, that can handle technical tasks, freeing artists to focus on core creative and emotional storytelling.
- The vision includes a future where AI enables hyper-personalized films, adapting narratives and characters in real-time to individual viewer preferences and cultural contexts.
Right now, making a movie costs a fortune. Hollywood spends like it's going out of style, and for everyone else, just funding a short film can be a nightmare. But Shekhar Kapur, the director behind Elizabeth, says that's all about to change. He thinks artificial intelligence will make the cost of a film so low it's almost a joke. We're talking about the price of a coffee and a pastry.
Filmmaking for the Price of a Snack
Shekhar Kapur has a simple, radical idea. AI is going to tear down the financial walls around cinema. This isn't about shaving a few percent off a budget. It's about taking the things that cost millions, crew, visual effects, location permits, and handing them off to a machine. The gatekeepers with the checkbooks lose power. The people with the good ideas get it back.
Goodbye, $200 Million Budgets
Here's the quote that changes everything. Kapur asks, "Why does a film have to cost $200 million? I'm saying it could cost you the price of a coffee and a croissant." Let's be clear, he's not pitching a future of ugly, cheap-looking films. He's saying the technical heavy lifting, the stuff that eats money, gets automated. You need a crowd of 10,000 in a stadium? Or a dragon destroying a city? Instead of a team of 50 VFX artists working for months, you describe it to an AI. You iterate. You refine. The capital needed to just *visualize* your story collapses. That's the shift.
A Boom for Stories Outside Hollywood
So what happens when money stops being the main obstacle? You get more movies from more places. Think about India, with its huge film industries in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Bengali. Right now, a director with a massive sci-fi idea might be stuck without Bollywood-level backing. With AI tools, that changes. Even smaller, hyper-local stories set in a single village, told in a specific dialect, become possible to make with a level of polish that was once unthinkable. This isn't just about lowering costs. It's about who gets to be heard.
Your New Creative Partner
Everyone's scared AI will replace artists. Kapur says that's missing the point. In his view, AI isn't the pilot. It's the co-pilot. You're still flying the plane, deciding where it goes. The AI just handles the navigation systems and the radio traffic, the tedious stuff that keeps you from looking at the horizon.
The Artist as Emotional Curator
Kapur is firm on this. "The artist has to be in charge of the machine." The artist's job becomes curating emotion. You don't spend a week editing a scene together. You tell an AI, "Give me five cuts of this sequence that feel lonely, but with a sense of anticipation." You get options. Then you, the human, pick the one that feels right. You tweak it. You add the soul. The AI did the assembly. You provided the feeling. That's the new workflow.
Freeing You From the Grind
This changes a filmmaker's daily life. Color grading? Sound design? The painstaking work of rotoscoping? AI can start that, or even finish it. A cinematographer could describe a lighting setup as "the golden hour, but with more haze, like a memory," and have an AI mock it up from every camera angle. That saves hours, maybe days. You spend that time instead working with your actors, digging deeper into the story, or just thinking. The boring, technical execution gets outsourced to your digital assistant.
The Truly Weird Future: Movies That Change
Now we get to Kapur's wildest idea. He sees AI doing more than just making films cheaper. He thinks it could make them personal. We're talking about movies that aren't fixed, but adapt as you watch them. This challenges what a film even is.
A Film Made Just For You
Imagine this. You're watching a movie. An AI in the background knows you're from Mumbai, not Minneapolis. It knows you love certain kinds of jokes. So it subtly tweaks a character's dialogue or swaps out a background reference to something you'd get. The plot stays the same, but the texture shifts to fit you. That's Kapur's vision. The film isn't a locked recording anymore. It's a story engine, and your viewing is a unique performance.
Interactive Stories Without the Limits
We've seen choose-your-own-adventure stuff, like on Netflix. But those are limited. They only have the branches that were filmed. Now imagine an AI generating new scenes on the fly to follow your choices. The creator builds the world and the rules. The AI, with you, writes the specific path through it. You get a one-of-a-kind story every time, without needing to film a million different versions. That's the scale AI makes possible.
What This Means for India
India has a massive advantage here. It's got deep storytelling roots and a young population that's good with tech. But to actually lead this change, a few things need to happen.
Power to the Regional Industries
India's film world is many worlds. AI tools that work well in Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Marathi could level the playing field. A filmmaker in Kerala could use AI to generate professional-grade visual effects for a local myth, or to dub a film into five other Indian languages cleanly and cheaply. The catch? These AI models need to be trained on Indian data, on our languages, our clothes, our landscapes. If they're only trained on Hollywood backlots, they're useless for telling our stories.
We Need Rules, And We Need Our Own Tools
This opportunity comes with big risks. India can't just rent AI from overseas companies and call it a day. We need to build our own ecosystem, or we'll just be users, not shapers. And we desperately need clear rules. How do you protect an actor's likeness? Who owns the copyright when an AI modifies a film? If we don't figure this out, the chaos will hurt artists more than it helps them. Our policy decisions now will decide if India's film industry leads this revolution or just gets steamrolled by it.
The Human Fear Is Real
Let's not sugarcoat this. Kapur knows there's "huge fear" in the creative community. People are right to be anxious. Is this the end of jobs for editors, sound designers, and concept artists?
Jobs Will Change, Not Just Vanish
The transition will be messy. Some jobs, especially repetitive technical ones, will get automated. That's going to hurt. But Kapur's co-pilot idea points to evolution. The demand might shift from someone who can operate editing software for eight hours to someone who can brilliantly guide an AI to edit. We'll need "AI whisperers," creative pros who can direct these systems with taste and vision. The toolkit changes. The need for human judgment and creativity doesn't. It becomes the entire point.
Can You Feel the Difference?
Here's the final, gnawing question. If an AI can generate a scene that's technically flawless and even emotionally stirring, what's the value of the human struggle behind it? Does the artist's intention matter if you can't see it? Kapur bets it matters more than ever. Audiences will be the judge. We might end up with a split: a sea of competent, AI-generated content, and a smaller tier of art that's prized specifically because a human hand guided every part of it. The test won't be in the specs. It'll be in the gut. Can you feel when something was made by a person?
Frequently Asked Questions
Will AI put filmmakers in India out of work?
It's more likely to change their jobs than erase them. Technical roles may evolve towards guiding and managing AI tools, while the core creative roles of director, writer, and performer focused on human emotion will become even more distinct and valuable.
Are there AI filmmaking tools available in India today?
Yes, but access is fragmented. Global cloud-based AI tools for image and video generation (like Runway ML or Pika Labs) are accessible, but their cost, internet dependency, and lack of Indian language/cultural training can be barriers. Widespread, affordable, and localized tools are still emerging.
How would personalized, AI-altered films handle copyright?
This is an unresolved legal frontier. It would require new licensing frameworks where the original creator licenses their "story universe" for AI-augmented personalization, with clear rules on derivative works and revenue sharing, a complex challenge for global and Indian law.
So Here's the Takeaway
Kapur's vision isn't a minor tech update. It's a threat to the entire economic structure of filmmaking. The potential is insane, more voices, weirder stories, art from places we never hear from. But that future isn't automatic. We have to build the tools on our own terms. We have to write rules that protect people. And as viewers, we'll have to learn what we really value. Do we want endless, cheap, perfect content? Or do we want stories that only a person, with all their flaws and fears, could actually tell? That choice is coming. The AI is ready. Are we?
Sources
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