M.G. Siegler • #ai • Feb 16, 2026

DeepSeek 2: The Movie

The Seedance "End of Hollywood" likely points to the paths forward...

As the world awaits the actual second DeepSeek situation, with the company's 'V4' model on the verge of launching seemingly any day now, we may have gotten a second such "watershed" moment from a different Chinese player: ByteDance. No, this isn't about TikTok – well, at least not directly – but clearly their new 'Seedance' video model is causing chaos. Certainly in Hollywood, but there are far larger tech ramifications as well.

Perhaps most interesting is that while 'Seedance 1.0' launched without much fanfare – only just about 8 months ago – it's this new 2.0 version, which is exploding.¹ And it's easy to see why, quite literally. With the shortest of prompts, the model can create scenes that look like they're from Hollywood movies. Often, at least amongst the ones being shared, because they are from Hollywood movies, but with elements tweaked a bit. Or a lot! The whole Brad Pitt vs. Tom Cruise martial arts fight is getting all the press at the moment. But just judging from my own social feeds, there are hundreds and undoubtedly thousands of such scenes.

And well, you have to sort of see them to believe them. I'm sure those actually in the industry look at them with some level of disdain – "come on, that type of punch would never be thrown" – but I'm also sure that many in the industry are currently shitting their pants. Why? Because they won't shut up about it.

"I hate to say it. It’s likely over for us," as Rhett Reese, a writer of the Deadpool movies, wrote on Xitter.

This is yet another end-of-Hollywood moment, which sounds suspiciously like another reason for various unions to go on strike again soon, but I digress. It's a big deal. But also probably not as big of a deal as Hollywood would have you believe.

Yes, Mr. Pour Cold Water strikes again!

Look, first and foremost, there are obviously multiple levels of infringement going on here. I'm no lawyer, but I imagine you can't just take a scene from Attack of the Clones, enhance the dialog and anatomy and be okay. Sure, there are parody precedents and rights, but not of the actual footage? This becomes even more gray if you believe the models in question were trained on the footage in question, ingesting it alongside myriad other copyrighted work. Maybe the model-makers never admit to this, or maybe it should be "fair use" to some degree, but come on.

That stuff is all fairly straightforward and should be sorted out relatively quickly. Lawsuits will do that. Disney. Paramount. Etc.ByteDance is already saying that they're complying with take-down requests. China may not be the US when it comes to such laws, but it's all just too blatant for it to be tenable. Just as it was with Sora, early on. OpenAI moved fast to lock things down and... the app clearly got far less popular and was far less viral as a result. Funny that.

And it points to a secondary issue here. People love this content when it features Hollywood talent they know and love. When it doesn't? It's going to be decidedly less viral. Honestly, it won't be viral at all. You can create stunning, amazing visual scenes with AI and maybe aside from some technical folks being impressed, the masses will not care. That's just reality.

Hollywood, for all its bullshit, works. It's a great marketing engine and flywheel for great talent. But if that talent pool suddenly broadens – exponentially...

Without question, these videos are technically impressive and do point to a world in which Hollywood itself can create such scenes on the cheap. Let's be clear: that's the real fear here. That Hollywood will start using such tech to cut out many currently needed in the film production chain. And it's a legitimate concern! Probably not this year or next, but eventually, costs have a way of trying to be cut. Especially when conglomerates control the means of production. This is the way, sadly.

Said another way: Hollywood shouldn't be concerned about a kid in their basement using AI to make a rogue version of Star Wars, they should be worried about Disney using AI to make a version of Star Wars without much of the headcount currently needed to make a Star Wars. This is the real disruption here.

And yet they are currently worried about the kid in the basement making the viral Star Wars clip. Because, hey, they can't do that! And yes, as discussed, they technically can't. Well, technically they technically can, but they legally can't.

But can they, if, say, they make it for their own purposes using their own, locally-run models? Again, I'll leave that for the lawyers, but the edges start to get grayer still. I'm reminded here more of the OpenAI/Studio Ghibli debates last year. What if you're an excellent artist and can draw your own art that looks exactly like Studio Ghibli work for your own amusement? Is that illegal? No? So why would it be to use AI in such a way for your own purposes? Because you're technically not drawing it? Why is a prompt not a type of art? Because of how the AI was trained? Because of something else?

Video is more divisive because it's more visceral. But also, when real actors are involved, new lines are drawn. You can't just put Tom Cruise into your video, right? But what if you put the guy who looks a lot like Tom Cruise into that video? Actually, let's cut to the extreme: What if, say, Tom Cruise had a twin brother, Dom Cruise, who obviously wasn't Tom Cruise but looked exactly like Tom Cruise? Can you not create footage with Dom because he looks exactly like Tom?

Obviously not without Dom's permission, but what if you had it? Could you make a Mission: Impossible-like scene with Dom Cruise? This is, of course, theoretical. But also perhaps instructive for future legal fights. If Tom Cruise never filmed any of the scenes in your AI usage, was it still Tom Cruise in them? Where does his likeness end? Again, perhaps back to the training, but what if the model just trained on that guy who looked a lot like Tom Cruise? Not even his hypothetical twin?

Further, what if an actor allows for their likeness to be used this way? Here I'm thinking about people like Bruce Willis, who made seemingly endless B-level direct-to-DVD movies before anyone realized his horrible health ailments that were slowly making it impossible for him to work anymore. What if such a situation led an actor to sign over their rights to be reproduced, as it were? Obviously, there would be boundaries to that, but what if they signed them over to an AI player, such as Disney did with some (decidedly non human) rights with OpenAI?

That's probably the best case scenario for all of this because it draws more firm guardrails around such usage. And that's undoubtedly why we're seeing actors like Matthew McConaughey cut deals for their AI usage. We're clearly going to see more and more of this for all types of likeness rights.

But that's going to obviously take a while to work out. And one suspects there will be dozens or hundreds or even thousands of legal battles between now and then. But at the end of the day, it seems unlikely that the technology gets put back into the proverbial box, so it's a question of the way Hollywood figures out how to leverage it. And if that's simply the (unfortunate) situation of fewer people working on movies. Or if it allows more movies to be made and that scale leading to more (but different) jobs...

And if – as I've long been harping on – all of this doesn't lead to a world in which human-made creations aren't more highly valued than those created by AI? Because we recognize that it's the input – time – that matters, and not just the output. The reality is probably somewhere in between, because a lot of movies will use AI to some degree. But those that are more "human-first" may end up doing better as a result. Not necessarily because the end result is better, but simply because humans tend to like and appreciate work made by other humans.

With all that in mind, I'm not sure how much of a 'Sputnik Moment' this will also be. (I mean, can there even be multiple "Sputnik Moments" — "Sputnii Moments"?) I do appreciate that while we were busy worrying about Sora, another Chinese company walks into the bar full-on "hold my beer" style. But I also suspect that a half dozen other models with similar video capabilities will launch shortly. That's just how this tends to work. So the bigger question remains...

Is it "likely over" for Hollywood? No, not likely. But it’s yet another wake up call. The gates are being thrown open and gatekeepers tend not to like that… But they should, because it may be the key to all of this working in the end.

I will just quote Rhett Reese again:

"In next to no time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases. True, if that person is no good, it will suck. But if that person possesses Christopher Nolan’s talent and taste (and someone like that will rapidly come along), it will be tremendous."

I, for one, can't help but wonder if we're focused on the wrong things here...

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Previously, on Spyglass...