Much like making music, filming technology is already commoditized at the entry level... it's distribution costs that remain high (hard to reach a large audience without massive ad $$, known actors, and an established publisher). Netflix would seriously disrupt that, boosting "indie" film making in the same way that Spotify / youtube / myspace / etc seriously boosted non-mainstream music. We still have A-list musicians but the long tail is seeing far more success than before.

But Indie music is better in the personal preference category and usually no worse in production values. And on the other hand what we see in regular tv: we see increasing abundance of content , and most people flocking more and more to the highly rated content which usually has high production values and often some measure of high brand.

That's probably because they don't want to risk an hour of their time. On the other hand , listening to a new song ? who cares if it's bad - it's only a minute to switch to something else , and it's a social custom too.

I think some of the low to medium budget movies will make the transition to simultaneous streaming releases where it may be easier to recoup money early on. This may or may not force a similar thing to happen with big budget films, but too many lifestyles would be affected for this to happen in any short to medium term.

Pretty much what happened to authors of novels.

I know authors usually use publishers for review / editing / publication, but I'm not aware of a time where the relationship was not "publisher gets X% cut of revenue". When was it "author gets X million dollars"?

The same applies to music. Pretty much every creative industry outside film is paying the performers or creators a percentage of sales. Its just harder for that to scale to endeavors that take thousands of people like modern blockbusters.

For performers, actors in plays, members of an orchestra, backup dancers behind a pop star... most are getting paid per performance or per period of time, not royalties. Royalties are more common for people who can take a majority responsibility for the end product, e.g. a solo artist or an author.

(Royalties aren't rare either, but a lump sum agreement isn't eyebrow raising in the least)

Hard to imagine how that would be possible...

Young Harrison Ford in the late 1970s might have been willing to trade away the use of his likeness in future Star Wars films for a relatively small consideration.

In the future, if a studio can find a relatively unknown actor who wants the work, it's possible they could do with a digitally-produced likeness, in case the original actor doesn't want the job. (Sort of an augmented version of the SNL contract)