Generative-AI Cost Compression: Post & VFX Workflow Impact (2026-2030)

The film and television industry is entering a structural shift, not just new tools, but new economics. The way content is financed, produced, and scaled globally is changing fast, and the next few years will reshape how teams plan, crew, and deliver work across the pipeline.

Sohonet’s ebook 6 Forces Reshaping Hollywood 2026–2030 breaks down the major forces driving this change - from streaming capital flows to global production migration.

Here we’re focusing on the first force from the ebook: Generative-AI Cost Compression and what it means for editorial workflows and VFX workflows as iteration speeds up and review pressure climbs.

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What is Generative-AI Cost Compression?

Put simply, it’s a structural decline in the unit cost of production - especially the cost-per-shot.

As AI tools mature, smaller teams can move faster across tasks like assembly edits, rotoscoping, layout, and iteration. That drives down the time and labour required to deliver shots at scale and it also increases the need for scalable review cycles through tools like  ClearView Flex.

But the biggest implication isn’t simply “AI lowers costs.” It’s that cheaper shots change behaviour: when the marginal cost of experimenting drops, teams naturally explore more creative options, run more iterations, and expand the volume of deliverables, without needing the same budget increases as before.

In our work with post-production teams, we’ve seen faster creation cycles quickly translate into heavier review and coordination demands as more versions are generated in tighter timeframes.

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Proof this is already happening 

There are already clear signs that cost compression is delivering measurable impact. A 2024 pilot at DNEG reported -28% roto/layout labour on a Disney+ series. Separately, a first-pass edit at Amazon Originals was reportedly completed 40% faster, enabled by AI-supported assembly editing. These aren’t marginal gains, they’re real productivity shifts that can compound across entire production pipelines.

The pace is only accelerating. Investment across the AI sector surged to $202.3 billion in 2025 -  up 75% year over year - helping move more tools from “promising” to production-ready across creative workflows.

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Lower costs don’t mean less work, they mean more versions

When cost-per-shot drops, teams don’t just do the same work cheaper,  they usually create more work. More shots, more options, more versions,  all of which need more reviews in less time. That quickly puts pressure on review and approval across all workflows from editorial, and audio to VFX, colour and finishing. 

This is where the real scaling challenge shows up. Faster creation leads to more versions. More versions create heavier review cycles. And heavier review cycles increase operational and coordination complexity.

In other words, AI doesn’t remove friction, it often relocates it from “creation” to collaboration.

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The next bottleneck: review, approvals, and distributed production

As iteration speeds up, keeping everyone aligned becomes the hard part. A production that can generate five versions in the time it used to generate two still needs those versions reviewed, approved, and secured,  often across multiple locations and stakeholders.

And more iterations don’t just mean more creativity,  they mean more operational complexity. Studios need production infrastructure that can flex and scale with that reality.

That’s why modern review and collaboration workflows are becoming essential,  not as an add-on, but as the foundation that lets teams actually capture the benefits of AI cost compression. 

We’ve seen the same pattern again and again: the real constraint isn’t how fast content can be created, it’s how efficiently teams can review, align, and move assets through increasingly distributed pipelines.

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Post and VFX are at the centre of this shift

Cost compression shows up across the whole pipeline, but post and VFX feel it first, because that’s where iteration, versioning, and approvals stack up fast.

As post/VFX automation ramps up, vendors are being pushed toward cloud and AI-ready pipelines so they can scale, collaborate, and keep pace with faster turnarounds. At the same time, talent needs shift too: fewer purely junior manual tasks, and more demand for people who can manage AI-enabled pipelines, tools, and outputs.

Bottom line: the teams that win won’t just adopt AI tools -  they’ll build workflows that make those tools usable at scale.

To explore the full set of forces shaping the industry through 2030, download Sohonet’s ebook 6 Forces Reshaping Hollywood 2026-2030. To learn more about modern collaboration across production pipelines, explore Sohonet workflows and solutions.

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