After all, what happened when the printing press replaced the monks copying books by hand, letter by letter, in ink?
At least there'll be no more complaints about "not following the book!"
However, perhaps instead of trying to make movies from books, they should make miniseries (3-10 hour-long episodes).
I think Book --> Movie Script is probably going to arrive before generated actors.
The reasons franchises, especially superheroes, have been thriving in the last two decades is because of the excessive choice of movies. The general public struggles to pick which one to watch, so they pick franchises with expected plots. This market trend is partly why Disney's Bob Iger bet on franchises, acquiring Marvel and Lucasfilms.
The paradox of choice is best illustrated in Sheena Iyengar's "The Art of Choosing." An experiment showed that when supermarket shoppers were presented with more choices for a category (e.g. jam), they stuck to the choices they were already familiar with.
I don’t think this is true. Consolidation of film properties was largely caused by the death of the tape/dvd market, which represented a significant revenue stream for movies, so the studios focused on properties that would have huge box office numbers. Matt Damon talked about this in an interview recently, saying that so many of his movies, like Good Will Hunting, would not be made today because they tended to have long tail VHS sales.
I've read a fair bit of fantasy fiction (think Lord of the Rings derivatives), and after roughly 25-30 books, it just becomes a slog to read through, there are very few original ideas.
We'll still see mainstream franchises though, because IMHO it serves as a form of social glue, i.e. gives people common things to talk about and experiences to share.
Probably, but quality movies aren't the gumption behind cost cutting at Hollywood studios. If indie movie producers want to use new technologies, they should go for it, but they won't have access to background actors who are tied up behind large studio contracts, unless they just open source themselves – which seems slightly dystopian.