Huatai Securities: AI film and television is showing structural divergence

On November 5, Huatai Securities hosted the "Restructuring Growth New ParadigmInternet and AI" sub-forum at its 2027 Annual Investment Summit. Guest speakers noted that AI is reshaping four major areasfilm and television, consumer-grade applications, corporate organization, and interactive film-gamingreconfiguring the industry landscape across four dimensions: content production, traffic distribution, organizational efficiency, and interactive entertainment. Maturity varies markedly across these tracks; short-term cost reduction has been gradually validated, while long-term moats remain to be explored. Key highlights include structural divergence in AI film and television. According to the guests, traditional long-form dramas and theatrical releases continue to contract, while AI film and television is being deployed in tiers by maturity, with mid-length dramas and web films the first to achieve viable models, whereas long-form dramas and theatrical releases remain constrained by scripts, character emotional expression, and visual consistency. Benchmark cases confirm that "the larger the screen, the lower the tolerance for error": *Post-Journey to the West* achieved a closed-loop small-screen model through simultaneous broadcast on TV and online platforms and gained considerable popularity. The cost structure is shifting from on-set production to labor and computing power, revenue-sharing models are becoming mainstream, and monetization is being expanded through cultural tourism IP and AI going global. Current core pain points lie in insufficient screenwriting capability, models iterating every six months necessitating rework, and a scarcity of interdisciplinary talent. Looking ahead, the guests are bullish on mid-length dramas and web films leading the way, live-action + AI remaining the mainstream over the long term, and local culture and authentic emotion building differentiation. In the future, production relations will tilt toward content creators, and one-source-multiple-uses will become a standard path for IP development, but technology is essentially an enabling tool, and narrative quality remains the core variable determining content value.