That is a far more reasonable prediction but I don’t even see this future. This kind of “film making” will at best be something generated for the amusement of the creator (think, give me a specific episode of Star Trek where Picard ...) or as prototypes or concepts of yet to be filmed with actual actors. And it certainly won’t be in theaters, not in 5 years, or ever.

Generative AI will not be able to approach the artistry of your average actor (not even a bad actor), it won’t be able match the lighting or the score to the mood (unless you carefully craft that in your prompt). It won‘t get creative with the camera angles (again unless you specifically prompt for a specific angle) or the cuts. And it probably won’t stay consistent with any of these, or otherwise break the consistency at the right moments, like an artist could.

If you manage to prompt the generative AI to create a full feature film with excellent acting, the correct lighting given the mood, a consistent tone with editing to match, etc. you have probably spent much more time and money into crafting the prompt than would otherwise have gone into simply hiring the crew to create your movie. The AI movie will certainly contain slop and be visibly so bad it guaranteed will not be in theaters.

Now if you hired that crew to make the movie instead, that crew might use AI as a tool to enhance their artistry, but you still need your specialized artists to use that tool correctly. That movie might make it to the theaters.