How SHAZAM! Star Thinks AI Will Alter Hollywood

Published: January 2, 2025

Movieguide® interviews Zachary Levi for THE STAR. Movieguide® photo.

How SHAZAM! Star Thinks AI Will Alter Hollywood

Movieguide® Contributor

SHAZAM! star Zachary Levi is opening up about how artificial intelligence will shape the entertainment landscape.

“As far as I can tell, we are very close, within two years two to five years of the entire face of this planet being unrecognizable when it comes to how it’s going to infiltrate every single industry and workforce,” the HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON actor told media personality Glenn Beck last month. “Like, I don’t think people realize that we’re on the precipice of massive layoffs.”

“People have no idea that by 2030 there could be 10 people that are actually gathering all of the wealth making all of the decisions,” Beck said, “run by and guarded by AI where you don’t move. Now that’s a horrible thing to think of —”

“But we have to,” Levi jumped in.

Levi expressed that no one should be shielding themselves from AI or avoid thinking about it because they need to prepare.

Beck picked up a phone and said, “This is a miracle but it is also destroying humanity. It’s destroying our children. We just did the biggest human experiment ever. Just like, here, buy one of these. Have your kids on it.”

“We know now that’s not good, and we’re about to get something a trillion times more powerful than this could ever be, and we’re all going to interact with it, and we’re not going to talk about it?”

Levi thinks especially that the entertainment industry will be negatively affected by AI.

“Anything that we’re recording — audio, video — anything that all goes through a computer and Nvidia Graphics are now photo-realistic. So I think in just a few years you know, you’ll be able to go to whatever Disney+, and for $10 more per month or whatever it is, you get to go to their creator section, and you get to literally type in any of their assets, any characters from any movies of anything that Disney owns. So it’s like ‘ I want Captain America and Indiana Jones and Flynn Ryder from Tangled or whatever it is, and I want them on a you know, a treasure hunt on Mars that feels like it was directed by Steven Spielberg. Enter.”

“And then…you’ll get a one of one movie that nobody’s ever seen and then you can share that with your friends, and they’ll be making movies and they’ll share them with you and all of these things,” Levi explained. “Well, then who goes to movie theaters anymore? Who goes and rents…a human-made movie? You don’t need to. You won’t have to.”

And Disney would be the primary profiter.

“I would hope there’s still some royalties that go to whoever created any of that particular IP, but who knows what that will ultimately look like, right? And again, that’s just one example.”

Levi tweeted on Nov. 7, “People who think AI is massively limited misunderstand the EXPONENTIAL growth of technology and that what is possible now will pale in comparison to what’s available a year, or two, or five from now. ?”

At FanExpo last year, Levi told his audience it’s important for them to be aware of how AI can impact the field they work in.

“Look at where technology is going,” he said, “because eventually it will come for us all, so we have to support each other.”