Hollywood as we know it is dying

"someone who is good at the economy please help"

Hyperbolic headline? Don’t be so sure about that! Every other day I’m sent a newsletter saying “The nightmare scenario is here” or “The Oscars [and industry as a whole, my words, not theirs] have lost the plot” or Conan’s bit from those same Oscars about how fucked movie theaters are, or another clip of a director begging Hollywood as an entity to “make more, less expensive movies!”

The whole business these past few years has felt a little bit like that old dril tweet.

[There’s always a dril tweet]

truly the poet laureate of our time

When American culture was still essentially a mono-culture, The Academy Award Winners were often also the Box Office Winners, were also the Critical Winners. Over time, the monoculture has atomized, and as we all have a million viewing options and nothing to watch, The Oscars have slowly lost their finger on the pulse-ness. But, it was interesting to see that even though there were a couple big commercial movies nominated — virtually none of the winners were large studio movies.

The Brutalist ($10M), A Real Pain ($3M), Anora ($6M, although, there’s some recently reported controversy around how they managed that number), Flow (made by some guys in a garage basically, I loved it! don’t get me wrong).

The Big Studio Movies that were nominated managed to eek out a few technical awards (Wicked nabbed Best Costume and Production Design, Dune Best Sound). And… Emilia Perez was also there. [Which I just discovered was very expensive (25M Euro) and financed by fashion brand Saint Laurent?]

While critical/awards acclaim doens’t necessarily translate to box office success, there were plenty of smaller movies this year that DID CLEAN UP, which studios simply refused to participate in (ahem, The Substance — which Universal punted over to MUBI and then didn’t get to enjoy the $70M+ box office).

All signs point to: the system is extremely broken. What do we do about it?

Well, I think Cord Jefferson is right: “make more $10 Million movies!”

To go back to the dril tweet for a second. As the monoculture collapses, Hollywood has shifted towards focusing almost exclusively on… BIG.

Any time you’re trying to put a movie together the pressure is on to make it the biggest movie possible, so you can get a potential big return. That means you need THE BIGGEST STAR (aka Zendaya or Timothee Chalamet), and if you are lucky enough to get one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, then you have to pay one of Hollywood’s biggest salaries. And now you have a very expensive movie. Meaning it needs to earn… even more.

Combine that mentality with the shift towards streaming, and it means you keep getting Big Whiffs like Red One (“A confounding project that is clearly trying to be for all audiences (it’s weirdly kiddie-oriented, but feels more aimed at adults) and is so bad it ends up being for none.” — Katie Walsh, LA Times) or Netflix’s recent $320M spectacular Electric State (“a whimsical, sanitized mess of mimeographed ideas from a handful of far better cinematic inspirations.” — Courtney Howard, Variety)

We’re wasting our money on candles, when the entire family is dying.

When the focus is BIG and FOR EVERYONE, you almost always end up making something TOO BIG that’s actually not really for anyone.

And yet, it is eminently possible to make a modestly budgeted film that breaks through and earns a lot of money! Anora has made $16M domestic. We already talked about The Substance. It Ends With Us. Smile and then Smile 2. Everything Everywhere All At Once. Those weird Terrifier movies that I refuse to watch.

Making a movie as cheap as possible so it can clean up financially is M Night Shyamalan’s entire business model! And it’s the entire business model of… most businesses! Spend a moderate amount on each product so that you can afford to make many different products, and so you don’t need to sell one to literally every person on the planet in order to break even.

If we’re going to survive the next decade as an industry, and as the monoculture only continues to atomize even more, Hollywood desperately needs to diversify its portfolio — more smaller movies, more big swings, more crazy chances. A more diverse portfolio of smaller investments means that there’s more potential upside, for each individual project! This is Econ 101 stuff guys!

I’m always reluctant to lament “the good old days,” but if there was one thing about Hollywood’s golden age (now over) to miss, it’s having the business run by people who love making movies, and who, even more than that, loved taking chances.

The corporate consolidation and entrenchment of old leadership has made for an extremely conservative culture here in Hollywood, where chance is strictly forbidden. We want sure things. And if there’s a surefire way to never hit the jackpot, it’s to only ever try for the sure thing.

I know this isn’t you, dear readers. I know you are the good ones. The artists breaking in. The artists already broken in. I know you are here for the good fight — aka to make good things.

But what do I do with this, Colby? This take is not… helpful.

I was recently wisely told (by my psychiatrist) that anxiety only subsides when it’s actually heard. Meaning — we need to actually acknowledge the truth of the situation we’re in. If we don’t, we will never actually be able to make any kind of change. The business as it once was already did die. Streaming won. But, the shift to streaming has completely divorced viewership and financial success, meaning that this New Hollywood is also not long for this world.

Do not rely on the old, dying ways! Invent a new path. Do it yourself! Do it with your friends. Support each other. Go to the movies. Make more movies. Consider distributing your movie yourself. Take some risks. Shake things up.

Brian Newman in his newsletter (which I highly recommend) has been championing this for years. Here’s a recent piece of his about just how underserved the indie film audience really is. As he puts it… when the marketplace feels extremely screwy, that tends to mean there is… “a lot of opportunity in the marketplace.” I think he’s right!

When things are changing, there’s room for opportunity, and for being the one to steer the change. So I really don’t mean to be a fear monger. We all already know the industry is in a massive and irrevocable Vibe Shift. So… let’s just call it like we see it. The business desperately needs to change, and we artists, producers, executives, can and should be the ones to change it.

Nobody else is going to do it for us. Let’s go.