In June 2025 when ByteDance released Seedance, it shook the film industry across the globe. Writers, directors and studios suddenly found themselves staring at tools capable of creating high-quality cinematic videos in seconds at a minimal cost. Cut to 2026, and ByteDance has introduced Seedance 2.0, a more advanced and a far more powerful AI model. The result? Chaos, curiosity, and a fair bit of panic around the existence of traditional filmmaking. So much so that Indian filmmaker Ram Gopal Verma is now calling it “the murderer of film industry.”
In other words, RGV is saying that AI is not coming for the film industry, and all the jobs it provides, but it is already here. Seedance 2.0, a Chinese video AI model, is so good that it is already over for Bollywood and Hollywood.
In a post on X, RGV penned a long note on how AI is shaking up the film industry, framing it as not just a technological shift but as an existential threat to the way cinema has functioned for decades.
“Real democracy is taking the tools out of the hands of the elite and putting them in the hands of the people. Seedance just did that to cinema,” he wrote on Wednesday.
In his note RGV drew comparison between clips created by Seedance 2.0 at a cost of a few dollars with those crafted by blockbuster filmmakers like S S Rajamouli using huge budgets. He said the lower cost meant the days of gatekeeping within the film industry were over.
“Seedance 2.0 just kicked that gate down and set it on fire. This can take (from users) descriptive prompts and create cinematic, multi-shot, sound-designed, devastatingly impactful scenes that look like they cost hundreds of crores and took months or years to make,” he wrote. “Suddenly, a creative guy in Gorakhpur or Coimbatore or Satara or wherever, doing a mundane job to feed his family, who can’t even afford to come to Mumbai, can just write a scene and the likes of Seedance make it for him—and that is true democracy in motion.”
While RGV finds Seedance 2.0 an exciting development, he also questions what it means for the film industry at large. He calls AI tools a potential threat to filmmaking’s collaborative ecosystem, actors, cinematographers, editors, production designers, VFX teams, musicians, light technicians and spot boys, all of whom could face extinction if AI evolves to generate full-length, theatrical-quality films independently.
“No more star issues. No more producers panicking over budgets. No more ‘we’ll fix it in post.’ No more 300 people standing around waiting for one shot, Just one person, he wrote. “The dinosaurs had their 100-year reign. Now the asteroid has arrived.”
In recent days a number of clips created with Seedance 2.0 have gone viral. For example:
Seedance 2.0 public launch delayed after Hollywood protest?
While RGV is hailing Seedance 2.0, not everyone is similarly receptive. In fact, Hollywood has reacted to the AI model bitterly and angrily. Major studios including The Walt Disney Company, Netflix, and Warner Bros have reportedly sent legal notices to ByteDance, which likely has caused an indefinite delay in the global rollout of Seedance 2.0. The AI tool, which is still in controlled access, was expected to launch publicly on February 24.
As clips created with Seedance 2.0 went viral in the last few weeks, Motion Picture Association has sent cease-and-desist letters to Bytedance, allegedly branding its AI tool a “systemic infringement machine”.
Hollywood Studios have also accused ByteDance of training the model on what they described as a “pirate library” of copyrighted films and characters. As a result, ByteDance has reportedly paused the wider release to introduce stricter content filters and legal safeguards.
