We're a long, long way from this. Stringing words/images together into a coherent sequence is arguably the easy bit of creating novels/films, and computers still lag a long way behind humans in this regard.
Structuring a narrative is a harder, subtler step. Our most advanced ML solutions are improving rapidly, but often struggle with coherence over a single paragraph; they're not going to be doing satisfying foreshadowing and emotional beats for a while.
I'm pretty sure the Marvel franchise is shat out by an algorithm.
We've come ludicrously far since then. That progress doesn't guarantee that innovation in the space will continue at its current pace, but it sure does feel like it's possible.
A big reason all the major studios are moving to big franchises is that the real money is in licensing the merch. The movies and TV shows are really just there to sell more merch. Maybe this will work when we all have high quality 3d printers at our desks and we can just print the merch they sell us.
The other big barrier is social. A lot of what people watch, they watch because it was recommended to them by friends or colleagues, and they want to talk about what other people are talking about. I'm sure that there will be many people who will get really into watching custom movies and discussing those movies with chatbots, but I bet most people will still want to socialize and discuss the movies they watch with other humans. FOMO is an underestimated driver of media consumption.
We’re probably 18 months away from this. We’re probably less than 5 years away from being able to do this on local hardware. AI/ML is advancing faster than most people realise.
You can say that about many movies/series made entirely by humans today. :)
Google's got you!
"Black mirror" was good but it's not nearly enough.
I do not look forward to the day when that story becomes an optimistic view of the future.