Animations

With increasing technology, it is possible to make images in photoshop that look almost real. If you don't believe me, just have a look at this http://www.bertmonroy.com/fineart/text/fineart_damen.htm.

Idea : Imagine animated movies that look as real as normal movies. And normal movies putting in a lot of special effects looking as unreal as animated ones. Soon the two will be indistinguishable. And you can see all your favorite actors again - imagine seeing movies of Kishore Kumar or Charlie Chaplin using mobile phones and computers. Since normal filmaking is a costly project involving a lot of people management, the industry will gradually move to animations until finally all you see will be animations stuffed with all your favorite actors looking as real.

Challenges : The pace at which technology in film industry moves seems to be really slow. Increasing realism in animations is a very difficult task. Also the best animations available like Final Fantasy and Animatrix (first story) are actually far from real. Atleast 10 years till they start looking real and another 5 till industry actually accepts this as a cheaper form of production - maybe more.

Some more di : 3 LOTR movies incurred a production cost of $300 million. Compare with a huge company having 2000 animation engineers @ $10000 per month for an year (a rather overpaid and hence dedicated team; salary of $240m), 100 managers @ $15000 pm ($18m), hi-fi computers @10000 for each employee and 500 extra machines ($25m, not considering the fact that most computer parts do not become outdated in an year) plus overheads(marketing etc) of as much as $25m, totalling to $300m, can produce a superb movie, atleast 10 yrs down the line if not earlier (figures ignore the inflation rate).

Update in Apr 2009: Looks like this one is coming true. For one, the number of animated movies has increased tenfold in just 4-5 years. Further, digitally engineered characters are no longer a fantasy. The movie "X-men Origins: Wolverine" shows a young Charles Xavier, a digitally modified Jean-Luc Picard. Also an all digital Arnold Schwarzenegger appears in Terminator Salvation.