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This implies that Hollywood (and academia) will be the last to flip because no one else* is going to make $200 million movies regularly. It's just not viable.
You basically have to wait until an AI-driven paradigm shift can let weird nerds like Lucas make non-horror blockbusters for ~$60 million that look world class again.
* Well, maybe barring the Chinese.
I've seen a few YouTube folks commenting that the required budget to make a "real quality" film these days is surprisingly small. Technology has shrunk lots of things -- good cameras are affordable, decent CG and editing is doable on commodity machines, LED lighting is lighter and doesn't require huge generators and added cooling. Good screenwriting can't have changed in difficulty, can it?
But at the same time, it doesn't feel like we're in the promised golden age of DIY cinematic content. And there are plenty of folks making other sorts of videos, even really well produced ones. So I'm not quite sure what's missing.
I would think the answer is fairly simple - someone who could pull such a solo operation off would need almost polymath-levels of knowledge and skill - be capable of writing and directing and sound management and storyboarding AND managing CGI and and and-
That isn't to say it doesn't happen - Astartes comes to mind as the Ur example of the crazy stuff a single person can pull off nowadays - but even then it takes places in a well-established sandbox of a creative universe.
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There are cases of people making movies with iPhones , so anything is possible. TV has gotten more ambitious and it may have made smaller movies cheaper to make. But VFX-heavy tentpoles seem to be another thing.
There's a ton of talent in this field, including some that are known for being very clear with their vision and so not prone to ballooning budgets. But even for people like Villeneuve who have shown they can work lean or allegedly modestly budgeted MCU flicks we end up ~180-200m. Given inflation that may be a cut but not as large as you'd need.
If anything, the big companies might be able to bully more work out of their contractors than a newcomer would. Victoria Alonso, who was recently booted from Marvel potentially as a scapegoat, was apparently notorious for wringing every bit of labour she could from VFX artists so she could get endless changes before she made a final decision
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This is basically what happened with anime, right? Loads of people have switched from American stuff to Japanese stuff. But for various reasons that hasn't been interpreted as competition or a cultural signal.
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