Moriarty believes that as computer graphics improve, the faces of actors, or even political figures, could be subtly altered to echo the viewer’s own features, to make them more sympathetic. Lifelike avatars could even replace actors entirely, at which point narratives could branch in nearly infinite directions. Directors would not so much build films around specific plots as conceive of generalized situations that computers would set into motion, depending on how viewers reacted.
“What we are looking at here is a breakdown in what a story even means—in that a story is defined as a particular sequence of causally related events, and there is only one true story, one version of what happened,” Moriarty said. With the development of virtual reality and augmented reality—technology akin to Pokémon Go—there is no reason that a movie need be confined to a theatrical experience. “The line between what is a movie and what is real is going to be difficult to pinpoint,” he added. “The defining art form of the twenty-first century has not been named yet, but it is something like this.”
Source: The Movie with a Thousand Plotlines – The New Yorker