A Thai producer says AI could cut crew demand 40-50%. His company is planning the half-budget film

On the morning of Thursday 15 October, in the Screening Room of Building C4 at Bangkok University, Sirisak Koshpasharin stood up in front of a hall of film students to give the keynote at a seminar called "AI-Powered Entertainment Industry 2026." The university's own account of the day has him telling them that fear was natural, "but the first thing we should not do is turn our backs on AI," and that resistance achieves nothing.

Eighteen days later the Bangkok Post put a number on what he was warning them about. In a Business section story by Suchit Leesa-nguansuk, published on Monday 2 November, Sirisak is reported as saying that demand for camera operators, lighting technicians and post-production specialists in Thailand could fall by 40 to 50% within three to five years. The same article reports that his company, Draconic Co, is planning a Thai-Chinese AI-hybrid feature for cinemas in 2027 at half the usual budget. That combination is the story. The man forecasting the shrinking crew is also building the film that would show how small a crew can get.

One forecast, printed once

Read closely, the crew figure is thinner than its headline. It belongs to one speaker, not to "producers" or "executives" as a group, and it appears in the Post as reported speech rather than a quote. The paper prints two versions of it: "around 40%" in the standfirst and pull line, "40-50%" in the body. No study, survey or method is given.

Bangkok University published its own write-up of the seminar, in English and Thai, on Tuesday 27 October. It quotes Sirisak at length on skills and fear and says nothing about a percentage, Draconic or a feature film. So the Post is the only record of the number, and we couldn't establish whether it was said on stage or in a separate conversation with the reporter. Thailand LocalPlus has since rewritten the Post story with the same quotes, which makes it a copy, not a second source.

None of that makes the forecast wrong. It makes it an informed guess from someone with a stake in the outcome, and it should be read that way.

The forecaster has a film to make

Sirisak has spent more than twenty years producing Thai animation and visual effects. He directed the 2012 Thai-Hong Kong co-production Monkey: The Masked Warrior, produced Inhuman Kiss, Thailand's 2019 Oscar submission, and has argued for Thai-Chinese co-production for years. He is vice-chair of the National Federation of Motion Pictures and Contents Associations and chief executive of Draconic, a Bangkok motion picture company on the commercial register.

According to the Post, Draconic wants to bring a typical Thai feature budget of roughly 30 million baht down to 15 million baht, about $444,000, and expects AI-generated visuals to give it a scale comparable to productions costing 100 to 200 million baht. The 30 million benchmark is fair, since Thai producers put ordinary features at 20 to 30 million baht. The scale claim is the company's expectation. Sirisak describes it as hybrid production, a film that combines "human actors, directors and scriptwriters with AI-generated environments, visual effects and production tools."

There's no title yet, and no Chinese partner, director, cast or distributor has been named anywhere we could find. For now it's a plan with a release window, the second or third quarter of 2027.

One piece of context the Post left out is that 15 million baht is exactly the floor of Thailand's new domestic production rebate. The cabinet approved the scheme on Tuesday 2 December 2025 and the culture minister launched it on Tuesday 27 January 2026: 15% cash back on in-country spending for productions of 15 million baht or more, rising toward 30% with bonuses, for projects with a Thai-majority company and a Thai copyright owner. Nobody has linked Draconic's target to the rebate, and whether a Thai-Chinese co-production qualifies depends on who owns the copyright. The coincidence is still worth knowing when the budget comes up again.

The numbers that don't hold up

Sirisak also cited figures from China, where he says fully AI-generated productions with virtual actors are gaining acceptance. One of them doesn't survive a check. The Post has him saying China launched 50,634 AI short dramas in January. DataEye, the tracker whose January count Xinhua and The Paper reported, put it at 14,634 AI dramas that month, about 470 a day. The gap looks like a slip in the telling or the transcription, and the real number is large enough without it.

His figure of around 100,000 one-person AI companies in China matched nothing we could find. Chinese counts of one-person companies exist, but they cover every kind of business and run into the millions. His claim that AI dramas take 80% of overseas short-drama ad spending roughly matches an industry insiders' estimate reported by 36Kr, which is an estimate rather than measured spend.

The crew side of the ledger

The people the forecast is about were not on the program. Thailand's film workers mostly work as dependent freelancers with no legal route to bargain collectively. On Sunday 20 September the Creative Workers' Union of Thailand, an affiliate of UNI Global Union, brought more than 60 workers together, including directors, cinematographers, editors and actors' associations, to draft the country's first fair-contract guidelines. We found no public response from the union to the 40 to 50% figure.

The size of the workforce is also hard to pin down. A government briefing on the rebate counts 45,035 film industry positions in 2023, and Netflix says its Thai productions employed 13,500 cast and crew between 2021 and 2024. Neither is a crew-only count, so the forecast can't honestly be turned into a number of jobs lost.

Panu Aree, introduced by the Post as a Bangkok University instructor and by the university as a former film distribution executive, was the bluntest voice on the day, at least in print. He told the Post that post-production faces the most immediate pressure, especially computer graphics and sound, and that "the impact of displacement will be seen in Thailand next year." The university's write-up quotes him on something else entirely: the value of knowing film history, theory and aesthetics.

What it means for AI creators

The most useful detail for people who make things came from Sutouch Parncharoen, an AI director and president of the AI Creative Association Thailand (Bangkok University transliterates his name as Suthat Panjaroen). He described the hybrid pipeline from the cost side and named the job he thinks it creates: "AI is creating demand for new technical roles, including AI operators responsible for managing production pipelines and automated workflows."

• Sutouch puts locally run open-source models at 10 to 20 baht per clip, against 400 to 500 baht for a 30-second 4K clip on commercial platforms. He named no model, platform or hardware, and the hardware is not in that sum.
• His comparison point is LED virtual production, which he says can cost up to 500,000 baht a day for a full volume. Smaller Bangkok LED stages advertise day rates far lower than that, so the hybrid saving depends heavily on what it replaces.
• He was candid about the limits: moving water and scattering flower petals still need practical filming or conventional CGI, according to the Post.
• Thailand already has a cheaper data point. Wanchana Intrasombat's AI animated feature Tawan released a 20-minute preview in June after about 28,800 baht in tool costs, which is the extreme end of the same argument.

Sirisak's own pitch to creators is about time: "We have a critical three-year window for Thai creators to capture this global shift." The roles he and Sutouch describe as safe or growing, directors, writers and people who can run a generative workflow, are the ones this audience already occupies. The roles they describe as shrinking are the crew who light and shoot the frames.

Our take

A forecast from someone building the cheaper film is a sales pitch with a number attached, and the number arrived without a method. Draconic's feature is the real test. If it reaches cinemas in 2027 at 15 million baht and looks like a bigger film, the crew math will need no forecast. Until then the people worth listening to are the camera and lighting crews drafting contracts of their own.

Timeline

• Date: Tue 2 Dec 2025. Event: Cabinet approves in principle a 15% domestic production rebate with a 15m baht floor; Source: Government spokesperson via MGR Online; PRD
• Date: Tue 27 Jan 2026. Event: Culture minister launches the rebate (15% base, up to 30%); Source: PRD English, 2 Feb 2026
• Date: Jan 2026. Event: DataEye counts 14,634 AI dramas launched in China in one month; Source: DataEye via Xinhua, 20 Mar 2026
• Date: Jun 2026. Event: Wanchana Intrasombat releases a 20-minute preview of AI animated feature Tawan; Source: TNN Thailand, 3 Jun 2026
• Date: Sun 20 Sep 2026. Event: Creative Workers' Union of Thailand drafts the first fair-contract guidelines; Source: UNI Global Union, 24 Sep 2026
• Date: Thu 15 Oct 2026. Event: Bangkok University seminar; Sirisak gives the keynote, Sutouch and Panu Aree speak in Session 1; Source: Event slide; Bangkok University
• Date: Tue 27 Oct 2026. Event: Bangkok University publishes its write-up, with no crew figure and no Draconic film; Source: bu.ac.th
• Date: Mon 2 Nov 2026. Event: Bangkok Post reports the 40-50% forecast and the Draconic plan; Source: Bangkok Post
• Date: Q2 or Q3 2027 (planned). Event: Draconic's Thai-Chinese AI-hybrid feature due in cinemas; Source: Bangkok Post

Sources and what is unconfirmed: Bangkok Post, Suchit Leesa-nguansuk, 2 Nov 2026, read in full; Bangkok University featured story, 27 Oct 2026, English and Thai; the seminar's event slide (date); Asia TV Forum 2026 speaker page; Thai company register (Draconic Co Ltd); Screen, Nov 2012; China Daily, Mar 2024; DataEye via Xinhua and The Paper; 36Kr, Jun 2026; PRD and MGR Online on the rebate; Thansettakij on Thai budgets; UNI Global Union, 24 Sep 2026; Variety on Netflix Thailand; TNN Thailand on Tawan. Unconfirmed: the method behind the 40-50% figure and whether it was said on stage; the Draconic film's title, partners and financing; Sutouch's surname (the association's own site gives a different one); the 100,000 one-person companies figure. The dollar conversion uses 33.76 baht to the dollar. We found no reaction to the story on X.