AFP

Cannes, May 20: With 10,000 film types huddled in Cannes for the world's biggest filmfest, the industry took time off to mull its own script for the future. Twenty years ahead, who will be watching movies if small screens win out over traditional cinemas?   

Imagine a remake at Cannes 2026 of this year's opening film Wong Kar-Wai's "My Blueberry Nights" -- cut and paste in a bedroom and screened on video-sharing website YouTube, while the famed red-carpet ceremony screens on Second Life with a crowd of black-tie avatars.   

This scenario is already at hand, industry analysts said this week.   

"The digital revolution has already happened," Michael Gubbins, editor of British trade mag Screen International, told a business round-table on the challenges of the digital age.   

"The changes we are seeing today with digital are much more profound than all the changes we have seen over the past 100 years," he added.

It is key for the movie industry to avoid repeating the mistakes of the music world, decimated by the arrival of digital technology, the experts added.   

Take cinemas, traditionally the place for people to gather to watch movies. They are faced with the explosion of new Internet communities like YouTube and MySpace, the rapid growth of video-on-demand and the imminent arrival of TV on the Internet.   

But on the other hand, sites such as YouTube and MySpace have injected a new dimension into the film world -- interactivity -- while film critics are fast being outpaced by blogs offering word-of-mouth commentary.