Filmart 2026: Asia Accelerates on AI as Hollywood Hits the Brakes

In Hong Kong, they are not waiting for anyone. At Filmart 2026, Asia’s leading audiovisual market, artificial intelligence is no longer a promise, but an already operational reality. While Hollywood gets tangled up in self-celebration, strikes, lawsuits and union negotiations over the use of AI, Asia is making a simpler choice: moving forward.

The event, which also celebrates its 30th anniversary, marks a historic turning point. Founded in 1997 as a regional hub to facilitate exchanges between Asian and international film industries, Filmart has now become a global meeting point. More than anything, it has become a thermometer: it measures, in real time, where the industry is heading.

And in 2026, the direction is only one.

The result is clear: 28 panels dedicated to artificial intelligence against just one discussion on copyright-related risks. Translation: this is not the time for doubts. It is the time for adoption.

Filmart 2026: cinema from industry to global hub

The paradigm shift is also visible in the players involved. Until just a few years ago, Filmart was a meeting ground between Hollywood and China, with executives ready to shake hands over traditional co-productions. Today, those executives have disappeared.

In their place are Google, Alibaba, Midjourney and a whole battery of Chinese AI startups. The conversation is no longer only about films: it is about automated workflows, generated screenplays, AI animation and accelerated pre-visualization.

The message is clear: cinema is no longer only an art form, it is a technological infrastructure. And while Hollywood debates whether AI should be regulated, in Asia it is already being integrated into production processes. Without too much drama. Without too much nostalgia.

The symbolic case is Kling AI, a platform launched in 2024 that now counts tens of millions of creators and hundreds of millions of generated videos. Not theory. Practice.

In a Chinese series, AI reduced a complex sequence from two months to two weeks. This is the point: not “creativity versus technology,” but efficiency versus slowness.

And industry, as we know, always follows efficiency.

No unions, no brakes: Asia’s real advantage

Even in Asia, beneath the surface of technological enthusiasm, the same fear that runs through Hollywood is spreading: the fear of becoming useless. The great Korean director Park Chan-wook, in his latest film No Other Choice (2025), does not mince words: he imagines a future in which AI does not help human labor, but empties it out. Makes it accessory. Replaceable. Superfluous.

The difference, however, lies here: while in Hollywood these fears end up at the negotiating table, with unions, strikes and contracts, in Asia they do not even reach the table. Because there is no table. There are no strong unions in the audiovisual sector, no one to negotiate limits, no one to slow the process down.

The result: the market and the companies — not the workers — will decide how AI will transform cinema. And while someone imagines the future, someone else is already building it. If Hollywood is trying to understand how to defend itself, Asia has already decided to attack.

And in the history of technology, those who attack rarely wait.