作者：Christopher Palmeri派拉蒙天空之舞传媒公司（Paramount Skydance Corp.）对华纳兄弟探索公司（Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.）的拟议收购，以及好莱坞对人工智能的拥抱，成为了本周在洛杉矶举行的彭博“Screentime”大会的焦点。行业重量级人物就这两者对就业和电影制作的影响展开了辩论。
By Christopher Palmeri Paramount Skydance Corp.’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. and Hollywood’s embrace of artificial intelligence took center stage at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference in Los Angeles this week, as industry heavyweights debated the impact of both on jobs and film production.
卢卡斯影业前总裁、史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格的长期制片合作伙伴凯瑟琳·肯尼迪表示，这项新技术和对华纳兄弟的收购都对好莱坞的经济构成了威胁。
Kathleen Kennedy, the former president of Lucasfilm and a longtime producing partner of Steven Spielberg, said the new technology and the purchase of Warner Bros. both pose threats to Hollywood’s economy.
“如果一家制片厂消失，电影产量就会减少，内容产出也会减少，”她在周三晚上的“Screentime”活动上说道。这是彭博为媒体、科技和娱乐界名流举办的年度盛会。“制片厂是否有能力扩大我们许多人所做的工作规模，我认为这是最大的担忧。”
“To have a studio disappear and fewer movies get made, fewer content gets made,” she said Wednesday night at the Screentime event, Bloomberg’s annual confab for luminaries in the worlds of media, technology and entertainment. “The ability for the studios to be able to scale the work that many of us do. I think that’s the biggest worry.”Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director of the Screen Actors Guild, said part of the backlash against AI lies in the fear that Big Tech companies are taking over our lives. Recent comments about the technology from the co-founder of Microsoft Corp. are concerning, he said.
美国演员工会执行董事邓肯·克拉布特里-爱尔兰表示，针对人工智能的抵制情绪，部分源于人们担心大型科技公司正在接管我们的生活。他说，微软公司联合创始人最近关于该技术的言论令人担忧。
“When Bill Gates is telling you this technology is an existential threat to our world, that is not an environment that engenders trust,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “How can you not have distrust about that?”Actor and director Ben Affleck said his initial take on artificial intelligence was that it would put him out of a job. He clearly set side those fears to create an AI company that would automate some of the chores that come after a film is shot, such as adjusting colors, applying visual effects and reframing shots.
“当比尔·盖茨告诉你这项技术对我们的世界构成生存威胁时，这种环境是无法建立信任的，”克拉布特里-爱尔兰说。“你怎么可能不对它产生不信任感呢？”
In March, he sold that company, InterPositive, to Netflix Inc. for $587 million in cash.
演员兼导演本·阿弗莱克表示，他最初对人工智能的看法是它会让他失业。但他显然抛开了这些担忧，创办了一家人工智能公司，旨在自动化电影拍摄后的一些琐事，例如调整色彩、应用视觉特效和重新构图。
“More people are being employed,” Affleck said. “We’re trying to make what we’re doing better. We’re not just trying to slash costs.”Gerry Cardinale, the founder of the investment firm RedBird Capital Partners and one of the architects of Paramount’s Warner acquisition, acknowledged that while there will be job cuts, but that’s not the reason behind the big merger. “It’s just the opposite,” he said.
今年3月，他以5.87亿美元现金将这家名为InterPositive的公司出售给了奈飞公司（Netflix Inc.）。
“I think you’ll be surprised,” Cardinale said. “I think we’re going to show a trajectory of real meaningful growth.”Nithya Raman, a Los Angeles Councilmember running for mayor of America’s second-largest city, said she doesn’t want to re-litigate the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger because the “deal is essentially done.”But she called on Paramount Chief Executive Officer David Ellison to spend more on productions, not just in the US but in Los Angeles specifically.
“越来越多的人得到了就业机会，”阿弗莱克说道，“我们正在努力提升自己的业务质量，而不仅仅是为了削减成本。”RedBird Capital Partners投资公司的创始人、Paramount收购Warner Bros.这一重大交易的幕后推手之一杰里·卡迪纳尔（Gerry Cardinale）承认，虽然确实会有一些裁员，但这并非此次合并的真正目的。“恰恰相反，”他说。
Raman said she will do everything in her power to make sure that LA benefits from production commitments Paramount made to settle litigation filed by California and 11 other states and the Writers Guild union seeking to block the merger.
“我相信你们会感到惊讶的，”卡迪纳尔补充道，“我们会展现出真正的、有意义的增长势头。”作为美国第二大城市洛杉矶的市议员，尼蒂娅·拉曼（Nithya Raman）表示她并不想重新讨论Paramount与Skydance/Warner Bros.的合并事宜，因为这笔交易已经基本完成。但她呼吁Paramount的首席执行官大卫·埃里森（David Ellison）在电影制作上增加投资，不仅在美国，尤其是在洛杉矶。
“There’s a lot more that the mayor of Los Angeles should be doing, and if I’m mayor, I plan to do it,” Raman said Thursday at the conference. “Reversing that decline would be the most important metric.”Walt Disney Co., which implemented its own big acquisition of Fox in 2019, has still been letting employees go seven years later.
拉曼表示，她会尽一切努力确保洛杉矶能够从Paramount为解决加州及其他11个州以及编剧工会提起的诉讼而作出的相关承诺中受益。“洛杉矶市长应该做的事情还有很多；如果我当选市长，我一定会去做这些事情，”她在会议上说道，“扭转这种下滑趋势才是最重要的目标。”2019年完成对Fox收购的华特迪士尼公司（Walt Disney Co.）至今仍在裁员；迪士尼总裁达娜·沃尔登（Dana Walden）在会上回应关于近年来裁员情况的问题时说：“我们并不会每隔六个月就解雇员工一次。”
“We’re not firing people every six months,” Disney President Dana Walden said at the event, answering a question about the thousands of employees who’ve been laid off in recent years, including hundreds of cuts this week.
“就像我们所有处境相似的竞争对手，尤其是科技行业的所有竞争对手一样，我们需要不断评估自身的组织架构。”尽管好莱坞面临着更广泛的挑战，HBO负责人凯西·布洛伊斯（Casey Bloys）对未来仍持乐观态度。作为《最后生还者》和《白莲花度假村》等热门剧集背后的高管，他预计将领导合并后的派拉蒙-华纳兄弟的流媒体业务。
“Like all of our similarly situated competitors, and certainly all of our competitors in the tech industry, there is a need to constantly evaluate how you’re structured.”Despite the broader challenges facing Hollywood, HBO chief Casey Bloys, struck an optimistic tone about the future. The executive behind hit shows like and is expected to lead streaming at the combined Paramount-Warner Bros.
“就像任何受到颠覆的行业一样，这里会有合并，也会有新玩家加入，”他说。“也许我们会找到一些确定性，一些平静。但你知道，如果你从长远的角度来看待娱乐业，这就是必然会发生的事情。当你身处其中时，确实很难受。”他补充道：“感觉就像身处风暴中心。”
“Like any industry that gets disrupted, there’s mergers, there’s new players coming in,” he said. “Maybe we will find some certainty, some calmness. But you know, if you take the long view of entertainment, this is what happens. It’s hard when you’re in the middle of it.”“It feels like you’re in the eye of the storm,” he added.