The global tokenization market size reached approximately $1.24 trillion in 2025, a significant increase from $865.54 billion in 2024, with projections for multi-trillion-dollar growth by the end of the decade. This growth was primarily driven by regulatory clarity in key jurisdictions. This is Part Three, which evaluates key tokenization and AI technology developments in Hollywood during 2025. Part One: 2025 was the year of tokenization. Part Two focuses on energy requirements to support the growth in AI-driven tokenization, necessitating orbital cloud data centers. Part Four of a four-part series where I evaluate how tokenized edge cloud streaming and AI are transforming sports and prediction markets betting, which is a rapidly developing immersive experience.
Summary
- Tokenization, AI, and edge cloud are reshaping Hollywood’s power structure: Streaming-first distribution, AI-driven production, and tokenized infrastructure are shifting control from studios to platforms and cloud providers.
- New monetization models are emerging: Watch-to-earn streaming, tokenized royalties, and blockchain-based distribution create alternative revenue streams for creators and viewers, while challenging legacy cinema economics.
- The industry is entering a regulated, tokenized future: As NFTs, tokens, and AI become embedded in media workflows, taxation, compliance, and capital efficiency — not hype — will determine who wins in the next era of entertainment.
Tokenized edge cloud streaming and AI are transforming Hollywood
The U.S. media and entertainment industry is the world’s largest. Major Hollywood studios have historically held a first-mover advantage in industrializing and distributing films and TV programs with broad international appeal. In the U.S. and global markets, the major film studios, often known as the Big Five studios — Universal Pictures (Comcast Parent), Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Studios, and Sony Pictures — have been commonly regarded as the five diversified media conglomerates whose various film and TV production and distribution subsidiaries collectively command approximately 80 to 85% of the U.S. box office revenue.
In 2025, Hollywood experienced a significant power shift driven by major consolidation in the entertainment and media industry, highlighted by a bidding war for the Big Five Studio Warner Bros. Discovery by one of the largest streaming companies. Netflix has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal announced on December 5, 2025, for approximately $82.7 billion, which is currently pending regulatory and shareholder approval, a hostile counterbid of $108 billion from another Big Five Studio, Paramount, along with Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners. And a class action lawsuit.
Actor Matt Damon has said that streaming negatively impacts cinema, primarily by eliminating the backend revenue (residuals) that used to come from home video sales (DVDs, etc.). Streaming makes it harder for mid-budget, non-franchise adult dramas to be financially viable because streaming viewership doesn’t offer the same kind of profit participation or bonus structures as traditional box office and home video sales, so artists get less compensation for successful projects. As an example, Matt points out his movie Air, which was streamed worldwide by Amazon Prime, which barely covered its $90 million budget at the box office.
In recent period, streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Apple TV, Warner Bros spent significantly more on international productions than domestic ones with France, Italy, Mexico, Columbia, Canada, Japan, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Czech Republic benefiting from Hollywood’s filming moving overseas, through a combination of generous financial incentives, diverse locations, and a robust local film industry infrastructure. Actor Matt Damon’s lifelong friend and business partner Ben Affleck, who directed and acted in the film Air, which was filmed extensively in the Los Angeles area, pointed out that California’s lack of tax credits makes it cheaper to fly crews to places like Ireland or Hungary than to film locally in CA.
US President Donald Trump, who campaigned using lines from the film Air, has been concerned about Hollywood’s TV and film production and distribution, being ‘stolen’ away by other countries.
This prompted him to propose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films first during May and again in September, framing it as a national security issue to bring film and TV production back to the U.S., citing overseas tax incentives luring away U.S. jobs and studios. Trump also recently stated he will be involved in the regulatory review of potential deals for Warner Bros. Discovery and signaled that the deal could face antitrust scrutiny.
The shift to streaming technology developed by US companies like Netflix, Hulu (Walt Disney Parent), Warner Bros. Discovery (Max), along with major tech companies such as Amazon (Prime Video), Apple (Apple TV+), and Google (YouTube), has fundamentally transformed film and TV distribution by disrupting traditional models, changing how content is consumed. The consolidation of power among a few major U.S. media and tech companies has created significant concerns regarding control over information, reduced diversity of voices, potential for biased content, and anti-competitive practices. These companies control a vast portion of the streaming platforms, AI produced content, and the underlying edge cloud streaming technology infrastructure that are revolutionizing Hollywood by changing content creation (AI for scripts, visuals), streamlining production (AI automation, edge cloud), enhancing distribution (faster delivery via edge cloud), personalizing audience experience (AI algorithms), and reshaping business models (blockchain for royalties, ownership, earn-to-watch model), leading to democratized tools, new revenue streams, but also profound industry shifts that gives rise to age old debates over creativity vs. automation and lawsuits of whether AI is infringing on copyrighted TV and film content.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order that blocks states from enforcing their own regulations around artificial intelligence, aiming to create a “single national framework” for AI.
