Sora 2: The Sequel Hollywood Didn’t Want
Talent agencies, unions, and tech giants collide over the future of creation.
Hollywood’s been through disruption before, but nothing’s moved this fast.
The week belonged to Sora 2, OpenAI’s new video app that went from zero to a million downloads in three days . Timelines turned into TV screens overnight as users dropped themselves into your favorite shows on a whim.
The Guardian called it a “granular control” rollout, The New York Times called it a “post-production world,” and CAA called it a legal emergency.
In short: the public got their new toy, and Hollywood found its new villain.
Elsewhere, the BFI London Film Festival rolled out its biggest lineup in years, Tron: Ares lit up the box office, and Dwayne Johnson’s latest went down swinging. Disney bought yet another fantasy IP, Paramount and Warner keep circling each other, and a Nigerian venture fund dropped ₦20 billion on Nollywood’s next wave.
Meanwhile, Spike Jonze used AI for Gucci, Instagram handed out “Rings” to creators, and MrBeast warned that synthetic video is coming for everyone…even him.
But make no mistake, Sora 2 was the main event.
Headlines at a Glance
Disney’s Tron: Ares dominates Oct 10 box office, earning ~$14.3 million on opening day, leading the weekend slate.
Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine posts career-worst opening with ~$5.9 million, triggering talk of risk and recalibration for big name driven biopics.
Kantara: Chapter 1 surges past ₹300 crore domestically, and crosses ₹590 crore globally, a breakout international success from India.
Crypto Film Beats Apple at the Emmys White Rabbit from Shibuya Film, co-created by Emily “pplpleasr” Yang, won Outstanding Innovation in Media Programming, edging out Apple’s nominees.
A Theater Just for Shorts Brooklyn filmmaker Karma Masselli is building a physical movie theater dedicated entirely to short films.
BFI London Film Festival Highlights: Knives Out 3 opens with Daniel Craig; Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet and Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love dominate buzz; Yorgos Lanthimos, Park Chan-wook, and Noah Baumbach headline a stacked auteur lineup alongside the biopic Giant and art-world drama Moss & Freud.
Camera Intelligence unveils “Caira,” a new AI-native Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera, pushing computational photography at the hardware level.
YouTube Adds AI-Powered Alternate Endings A new Shorts feature lets users generate AI-created continuations or alternate endings to existing videos.
Sora 2 Soars post launch
OpenAI’s Sora 2 only launched on 30th of September but within three days it already surpassed one million downloads on Apple’s App Store.
You may have noticed your feed filling up with your friends inserted into shows like Breaking Bad and Stranger Things but according to The Guardian, the wave of AI-generated clips: from Marvel scenes to Disney princess parodies forced OpenAI to introduce “more granular control” for rights holders.
The company said creators and studios would soon be able to opt out of having their work or likeness appear in Sora-generated content, and that visible watermarks and metadata tags would become standard.
As The New York Times put it, this is the first glimpse of a “post-production world,” where direction, editing, and animation merge into a single act of typing. The implications go far, far beyond copyright.
We’re not there yet but when creators can render a full scene in seconds that’s indistinguishable to what would have taken several months and cash to make, where does that leave us?
History offers a clue.
When photography appeared, painters feared extinction until they responded with impressionism, cubism, dadaism, and surrealism. Movements that explored what the camera couldn’t capture.
Filmmakers now find themselves in a similar position, searching for forms that resist automation.
Despite its sophistication, Sora 2 still struggles with duration and continuity as visual time remains AI’s weakest link. You really have to consider just how resource intensive very single second AI video generation is:
AI video generators struggle with time because every single new frame has to match every single frame that came before it. The longer the clip, the more relationships it has to maintain.
Think of it like connecting boxes with lines. With 24 boxes (roughly one second of video at 24 fps) you get 276 connections.
Double it to 48 boxes, and you now have 1,128 connections. The number of relationships doesn’t double, it quadruples.
And that’s only for one more second of video.
That’s why adding a few seconds of footage isn’t a small increase in work for AI; it’s an exponential jump in complexity.
The Agency Awakens: CAA vs. OpenAI
Enter CAA.
They broke the agency silence with a statement that tore OpenAI a new one:
Statement in full:
CAA is unwavering in our commitment to protect our clients and the integrity of their creations. The misuse of new technologies carries consequences that reach far beyond entertainment and media, posing serious and harmful risks to individuals, businesses, and societies globally.
It is clear that OpenAI/Sora exposes our clients and their intellectual property to significant risk. The question is, does OpenAI and its partner companies believe that humans, writers, artists, actors, directors, producers, musicians, and athletes deserve to be compensated and credited for the work they create?
Or does Open AI believe they can just steal it, disregarding global copyright principles and blatantly dismissing creators’ rights, as well as the many people and companies who fund the production, creation, and publication of these humans’ work?
TL;DR: Cool tech. Also, please stop using our clients to beta-test your plaything.
The Hollywood Reporter called it the most aggressive stance any agency has taken on generative video to date. But underneath the legal language sits something older than copyright: control.
For decades, agencies like CAA, WME, and UTA have been the brokers of image. They decide who gets paid, how likeness is licensed, and where visibility turns into value.
Now, they’re watching a model that can conjure those same images on demand, and it’s not asking for 10%.
Sure, the outrage is about protecting artists but it’s also about protecting the business model that defines Hollywood’s hierarchy. If likeness can be synthesized, then representation becomes optional.
CAA is laying the groundwork for the next negotiation. One that won’t be about box office bonuses or backend points, but who owns the rights to the digital double.
If Baudrillard were alive today, he’d be having an absolute field day with our timeline.
Money Moves
Warner Bros rejects early offer from Paramount Skydance WBD pushed back on a ~$20/share bid, but talks remain active as Paramount considers a higher counteroffer.
Chris Aronson exits Paramount as part of post-merger reshuffle The longtime distribution head leaves amid David Ellison’s effort to consolidate control at Paramount Skydance.
Row K Entertainment launches as a new indie distributor / financier Backed by Media Capital Technologies, Row K is planning to distribute and finance up to 10 films a year under ex-Paramount marketing leadership.
Disney Acquires Impossible Creatures IP for Film Franchise Disney secured theatrical and ancillary rights to Katherine Rundell’s fantasy book series, with plans to adapt the first two installments into films.
Utica Capital Launches ₦20 Billion Film Venture Fund in Nigeria A major new fund has been approved by the SEC to accelerate Nollywood growth through production investment.
Cut of the Week: Sora 2 x Southpark
A single Sora-generated South Park clip just exposed what our near future might actually look like.
In the video, a Sora 2 user recreated a mini-South Park episode without writers, animators, or actors. It’s clumsy but as technologist X user @signulll put it: “Seasons of TV, generated on demand by users and AI is the future staring us down.”
He’s right.
And the reality is, if you saw the clip on your feed without the Sora watermark, would you really think it wasn’t an actual clip from a South Park episode?
Animation was always destined to be one of the first frontiers for AI especially with a style as deliberately crude and easy to mimic as South Park’s.
What isn’t easy to mimic is Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s satire but we’re heading toward a future where we won’t need to.
AI :
Grok to get AI video detection tools Musk says xAI will build in capabilities to analyze bitstreams for AI signatures and trace video origins, aiming to combat deepfake proliferation.
Scores of Bollywood AI videos vanish from YouTube after Reuters expose Over 250 AI-manipulated videos depicting Bollywood stars were removed, following public and legal pressure.
MrBeast warns AI threatens creator livelihoods The YouTube creator posted concerns that AI-generated video saturation could devalue human creators’ work.
Instagram Launches “Rings” Creator Awards Meta’s new program will reward top Instagram creators with cash bonuses and exclusive platform perks. Spike Lee, KAWS and Instagram head Adam Mosseri lead jury.
Spike Jonze’s AI Gucci Film Gets Surreal.. and Real
The director’s latest short for Gucci pushes further into generative imagery, blurring the line between auteur vision and algorithmic design.Taylor Swift Fans Unite Against AI Swifties accuse Taylor of using AI for promo videos.
‘F* My Son’ Director Embraces Generative AI in Filmmaking Director Todd Rohal says AI helped design shots and storyboards for his new film.
Google confirmed that Veo 3.1, its next-gen video model The update adds support for longer, more continuous clips, directly addressing one of Sora 2’s biggest limitations.
Retail Therapy
Caira “Nano Banana” Brings AI to Mirrorless Cameras: Price TBC
“The camera of the future” A new AI-native Micro Four Thirds camera with no rear screen, MagSafe iPhone connectivity, and an onboard AI chip for real-time scene recognition and shot suggestions. Designed for minimalism, the Caira Nano Banana merges smartphone intelligence with mirrorless performance. Launches via Kickstarter on October 30th.
Nikon x Unistellar ENVISION Smart Binoculars: Price $1200
AR-powered binoculars that overlay real-time data on your view, identifying stars, constellations, landmarks, and terrain. Co-designed with Nikon, the ENVISION connects via smartphone to deliver augmented navigation, celestial tracking, and free feature updates through the companion app.
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