AI Technology Reshapes Actor Industry: High Salaries Will Disappear, Extras and Stunt Doubles May Be Fully Replaced

At the 2026 China TV Drama Production Industry Conference, Wang Ran of Yikai Capital stated that high actor salaries will no longer exist. Leading actors' advance salaries will be greatly reduced, while backend income from image authorization and IP binding will break the income ceiling. Middle and lower-tier actors will be squeezed, and extras and stunt doubles may be fully replaced by AI. Newcomers need to become small IPs first to be noticed.

Many actors have expressed concerns about AI actors: Wang Jinsong said AI-generated videos are hard to distinguish from real ones, worrying about portrait infringement; Matthew McConaughey warned AI might replace human practitioners, Nicolas Cage argued robots can't reflect real human conditions, and SAG-AFTRA opposed synthetic actors.