For business-related topics that fall outside of
distribution (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=12738.0).
Judge Dismisses Most of WGA Packaging Fee Lawsuit Against WME, CAA and UTABy Gene Maddaus
via Variety (https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/judge-wga-kickbacks-countersuit-1234591318/#article-commentsl)(https://i.imgur.com/VsY8qNo.jpg)
A federal judge on Monday dismissed most of the Writers Guild of America's lawsuit against the major talent agencies, including claims that packaging fees amount to illegal kickbacks and were a form of racketeering.
U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte
dismissed eight of the 14 claims (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6878880-Wga-Agency-Dismiss-Ruling.html) brought by the WGA in its countersuit. The countersuit, filed last fall, is part of a broader battle between the guild and the major agencies over the practice of packaging.
The judge threw out eight of the nine claims brought against WME, CAA and UTA by the guild but allowed the claims of eight showrunners who joined the litigation as individuals, although one of those plaintiffs, David Simon, was already forced to drop out because of a previous legal settlement.
The judge's ruling was seen as a setback for the WGA's cause in the legal arena. The WGA and agencies have not had meaningful discussions in months about resolving their differences on packaging fee and affiliated production entities, which spurred the guild's antitrust lawsuit against Hollywood's Big Three agencies.
"The WGA's claims against the major talent agencies were gutted today by the federal court. This is a resounding victory for CAA, UTA and WME," the three agencies said in a joint statement. "What has become crystal clear is that David Young, David Goodman and this WGA leadership have led thousands of writers over a cliff, wasted their member dues on failed lawsuits, and left them without agents to represent and advocate for them for more than a year."
WGA West president David A. Goodman responded in a statement, saying the WGA's claims will be supported by further evidence.
"We obviously would have preferred a complete victory. But the court's decision assures that the Guild's core claims, namely that packaging is a breach of fiduciary duty and that agencies have committed antitrust violations by fixing the price of those packages, will be explored through discovery, and ultimately in court. That's what we wanted. There remain six powerful claims in our lawsuit that we will pursue, and discovery is underway. We are confident that the evidence uncovered in this process will support the claims detailed in our lawsuit," he said.
The battle ignited a year ago when the WGA imposed new rules for talent agents that represent guild members. The agencies balked at the guild's effort to ban packaging and agencies having ties to production entities, which led to the mass firing of thousands of agents by WGA members in April 209 and sparked the current litigation in Los Angeles federal court.
WME, CAA and UTA are also suing the WGA in federal court, claiming that the WGA's new franchise rules for talent agencies amounts to an illegal boycott and an overreach of the guild's authority. If the case makes it to trial, the case will hinge on whether the agencies can demonstrate the WGA is engaging in an unlawful boycott. On the heels of two favorable rulings for the agencies from Birotte, agency sources said the Big Three were inclined to continue an aggressive legal strategy and "bury the WGA" in paperwork and legal bills with discovery and deposition requests.
A trial date has been set for March 2021, and has been estimated to run 20-30 days.
The union argues that packaging fees — standard practice in the industry for decades — pose a conflict of interest, as agents are incentivized to suppress their clients' wages.
The guild has been defending the agencies' antitrust suit, and filed its own countersuit in October. In the countersuit, the guild leveled its own antitrust allegations, accusing the agencies of refusing to bargain individually, and instead working only through their trade group.
The countersuit also alleged that agencies had set an industry standard packaging fee schedule, which amounted to illegal price-fixing. Further, the guild contended that the agencies' acceptance of packaging fees from producers amounted to an illegal kickback under racketeering law.
Birotte dismissed the racketeering allegations, finding that the law was aimed at corrupt union officials and was not meant to apply to talent agents.
He also dismissed federal price-fixing claims, finding that the WGA did not have standing to bring the claim because, as a union, it does not buy talent representation services, and therefore cannot claim to have been injured by a price-fixing conspiracy.
The judge also held that the agencies had not violated antitrust law by working through their trade group.
The judge did allow the WGA to pursue its price-fixing allegations under the Cartwright Act, the California antitrust law. The guild claims that Lee Gabler of CAA and Ari Emanuel conspired in the 1990s to set the "3-3-10" TV packaging fee structure, and that the agencies have since exchanged sensitive information to maintain this cartel.
Birotte held that the guild pleaded sufficiently specific allegations to nudge the claim "across the line from conceivable to plausible."
Birotte also let stand the guild's breach of fiduciary duty and unfair competition allegations on behalf of several individual members.
The two sides are still in for a protracted court battle, assuming they do not reach a settlement. In January, Birotte
denied the WGA's motion to dismiss (https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/writers-guild-agency-antitrust-ruling-1203449009/) the agencies' antitrust suit, finding a plausible claim that the union's hardball tactics had violated the law.
A trial date has been set for March 2021, and a trial is expected to take 20-30 days.
If you don't know/remember what this lawsuit was about, see these videos put out by the WGA:
Television Mandates for the 2020-2021 Season (https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=235E192387709B1D!1323&ithint=file%2cdocx&authkey=!AEBbUs2LuOCIVY8)
UTA Reaches Deal With Writers GuildJuly 14, 2020
The Hollywood ReporterThe agency breaking ranks could be the beginning of the end of the battle between the guild and major talent agencies.
UTA, the entertainment industry's third largest talent agency, has signed an agreement with the Writers Guild of America, the agency stated Wednesday in a letter to clients. Earlier, a source had informed The Hollywood Reporter of the deal and, on Tuesday night, multiple sources had said talks were in progress.
The agreement, although a compromise in certain aspects, marks a victory for the WGA that may presage an end to the ongoing battle between the guild and the major agencies. WME, CAA and UTA remain locked in federal litigation against the guild, with both sides asserting antitrust claims against the other.
UTA and the WGA will dismiss their cases against each other as part of the deal. The agreement came after UTA co-president Jay Sures reached out to the WGA several months ago seeking to resolve the deadlock, THR has learned.
In a note to members Wednesday (read it below or here), the Writers Guild of America West wrote: "The UTA agreement extends the packaging sunset date to June 30, 2022; until then packaging is only permitted with the informed consent of the writer. The agency can have up to a 20% non-controlling ownership of a production company." The guild had no comment other than to provide a copy of the letter.
The four largest agencies — WME, CAA, UTA and ICM Partners — had been steadfast in their refusal to sign with the WGA, as the guild's 2019 agency agreement largely prohibits
packaging fees and affiliate production (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/what-exactly-are-packaging-fees-a-writers-agents-explainer-1198974), both of which are business practices key to the large agency model. UTA holds only a minority interest in its affiliated production entity, less than 20 percent, while that cap may be less palatable to WME and CAA. Meanwhile, under the new agreement, new packaging will end in two years, but only if the WGA reaches a similar agreement with one of the other major talent agencies. Existing packages will continue in force, THR is told.
The agencies also contend that the WGA's preferred approach to the new agreement, which replaced a 1976 pact, requires the agencies to violate client confidentiality by providing excessive data to the union. But UTA obtained a compromise, allowing writers to opt out of data sharing.
In April 2019, more than 7,000 writers fired their agents at the direction of the WGA, and the guild filed suit against the four largest agencies. In the time since, Endeavor, the parent company of WME, had planned and then scuttled an initial public offering.
Amid the fight, the WGA has reached agreements with midsized shops, as well as key boutiques, including Paradigm, APA, Gersh, Verve, Kaplan Stahler, Culture Creative Entertainment, Buchwald, A3 Artists Agency (formerly known as Abrams) and Rothman Brecher – and has now achieved agreement with UTA as well. (The parent company of THR, Valence Media, has a partnership with UTA through Civic Center Media.)
All eyes are now likely to turn to ICM Partners, which is not in litigation with the guild and has no affiliated production entity.
The representation business has taken a financial hit amid Hollywood's production shutdown. CAA underwent companywide pay reductions, UTA temporarily laid off 171 staffers, Paradigm temporarily laid off 130 employees, and Endeavor laid off 83 staffers in Beverly Hills, per disclosures with the California Employment Development Department.
That economic weakness stands in contrast to the guild's situation: Its members were pretty much the only entertainment personnel working over the past few months, via virtual writers rooms and the like. And so it appears that the novel coronavirus gets at least some of the credit for tipping the scales.
The full note to members from the Writers Guild of America West is below:
QuoteDear Members,
The WGA and United Talent Agency (UTA) have agreed to a new franchise agreement. Therefore, effective immediately, UTA may once again represent WGA members for covered writing services. WGA and UTA have also agreed to withdraw the legal claims each has brought against the other in federal court.
In line with the previous agency agreements the Guild has made, the UTA agreement protects writers in three fundamental areas emphasized since the beginning of the campaign:
Contract, deal memo and invoice information will be provided to the Guild, allowing the WGA and the agency to partner in systematically addressing late pay and free work.
Strict limitation on agency ownership of production entities.
A sunset period that ends the practice of packaging.
The UTA agreement extends the packaging sunset date to June 30, 2022; until then packaging is only permitted with the informed consent of the writer. The agency can have up to a 20% non-controlling ownership of a production company.
You can read a red-lined version of the franchise agreement here (reflecting changes from the Paradigm agreement). Click here for the list of all franchised agencies.
Our goal remains to move the negotiation process forward with the remaining unsigned agencies. We will let you know when there are further developments.
In solidarity,
WGA Agency Negotiating Committee
Source (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/uta-talks-writers-guild-agreement-sources-say-1303270)
Quote from: The Hollywood ReporterUTA, the entertainment industry's third largest talent agency, has signed an agreement with the Writers Guild of America
Meanwhile, under the new agreement, new packaging will end in two years, but only if the WGA reaches a similar agreement with one of the other major talent agencies.
Quote from: The Hollywood ReporterAll eyes are now likely to turn to ICM Partners, which is not in litigation with the guild and has no affiliated production entity.
ICM Partners Nears Deal With WGA
August 5, 2020
Variety
ICM Partners is close to signing a franchise agreement with the Writers Guild of America, Variety has learned from sources.
Sources say that the agreement between the agency and the guild would be similar to the one signed by UTA in July. Under that deal, UTA agreed to end packaging fees in two years as well as agreeing to disclose financial details around deals they broker for writers, but only at the express consent of those clients.
UTA also agreed not to launch any any majority-owned production studio. They will keep their interest in Civic Center Media, a joint TV production venture with MRC, and cap its minority profit participation in the independent film sales space.
ICM and the WGA declined to comment.
With the deal, ICM would be the second of the four major Hollywood agencies to come to an agreement with the WGA along with UTA. CAA and WME have not yet come to such an agreement and remain engaged in a lawsuit with the guild, accusing the union of engaging in an illegal group boycott. With the agreement, UTA formally agreed to withdraw from the suit. ICM was not a part of that lawsuit.
Under its deal, UTA agreed to end packaging fees in two years time on the condition that another of the four major agencies signs a similar agreement. They also agreed to disclose financial details etc.
More than 80 agencies are now allowed to represent WGA members again after WGA West president David Goodman originally instructed guild members to fire their agents in April 2019 over the issue of packaging fees and affiliate production.
Several other prominent agencies — Paradigm, APA, Gersh, Innovative Artists and Verve — have signed deals with the WGA in recent months.
Like the rest of the entertainment industry, the agencies have found themselves under heavy financial strain due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic all but shutting down physical production. Writers have proven to be one of the few segments of the industry to still able to work under quarantine conditions, which no doubt played a part in many agencies' recent decision to sign agreements with the guild.
A new frontier for Hollywood
After a five-month hiatus, Hollywood film production has returned. But you won't find cast and crew members in Los Angeles County, where coronavirus cases remain high and testing is scarce. Instead, studios are shooting overseas, bringing numerous safety protocols with them. Among the first test cases is Universal's "Jurassic World: Dominion," which has become a model for moviemaking in the Covid-19 era.
Shot mainly outside London, "Jurassic World" resumed production in early July with some 750 people. To keep the virus at bay, Universal spent about $9 million on measures that include an entire rented hotel for the cast and crew, 150 hand sanitizer stations and temperature stations staffed by nurses. A comprehensive manual covers details like how to serve meals, which are vacuum sealed and distributed from behind plastic barriers.
Production has been divided into two categories: a larger one with departments that don't need regular access to the set and a smaller "Green Zone" for the director, cast and essential crew. Green Zone workers and hotel staff members are screened three times a week for the virus, thanks to a supply of 18,000 tests, and sets are regularly fogged with antiviral mist. After an initial two-week quarantine, the cast and crew have been able to wander their hotel bubble mask free — no social distancing required.
Only two crew members who had been on set in England have tested positive for the virus. Others have been sent to a second filming location in Malta, where four have tested positive. Universal said no one had fallen seriously ill.
Production changes are one thing, but the pandemic has also thrown a wrench into film debuts. Some Hollywood executives believe consumer behavior may be shifting permanently as big-budget films opt for streaming debuts over theater premieres, explained Nicole Sperling, a Times reporter who covers media and entertainment. "But then there's the argument that once theaters are open again, aren't people going to want to get out of the house?"
Changes onscreen. People in the film industry say the future of TV and movies will be defined by austerity, The Washington Post reports. Don't expect many crowd scenes, real-world locations or displays of romance. And expensive virus safeguards could mean there will be cutbacks in other areas, like the number of takes for each scene, resulting in a less polished final product.
NYTimes
Map of the 2020 Media/Entertainment/Tech universe, from Evan Shapiro
(click to enlarge)
(https://i.imgur.com/PoIcwVo.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/fosMD6v.png)
Pledging to Tell More Inclusive Stories, MGM Remakes Orion Pictures
The 36-year-old producer Alana Mayo will lead the division, which will release two or three films a year and focus exclusively on underrepresented filmmakers.
By Brooks Barnes
Aug. 20, 2020
Updated 3:09 p.m. ET
LOS ANGELES — Checks have been written to racial justice organizations. Training programs for Asian, Black and Latino filmmakers have been created. "We must do better" has been tweeted and retweeted by studio executives, most recently after the killing of George Floyd in police custody prompted a national conversation about racism and inequity.
But power in Hollywood still belongs almost exclusively to white men. "There are almost no people of color in the film industry who have the power to say, 'This movie is getting made and by this person,'" said Ana-Christina Ramón, an author of studies about Hollywood hiring that are published annually by the University of California, Los Angeles.
On Thursday, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the 96-year-old home of James Bond, Rocky and RoboCop, took a modest yet meaningful step toward correcting the imbalance, hiring a young producer, Alana Mayo, to remake its Orion Pictures division to focus exclusively on underrepresented filmmakers and stories. Ms. Mayo will lead a greenlight committee made up entirely of women — meaning the chairman of MGM's film group, Michael De Luca, will not have a vote in selecting the films that Orion makes or acquires for distribution.
"As a person who is a woman and Black and queer, I want to create something that will hopefully make other people like me feel like they are finally a part of the Hollywood system," Ms. Mayo said in a phone interview.
"One of the most exciting things about this opportunity is being able to greenlight movies," she added. "Who gets to say 'yes' is massively important. A lot of studio executives still have a fairly myopic view of what and who is film worthy. The human experience is 360 degrees. We have been looking at 20."
The overhauled Orion will initially release two or three films a year with budgets of up to $15 million, about the same output and budget level as before. (MGM's signature division works with higher budgets — a coming biopic about Aretha Franklin starring Jennifer Hudson cost MGM about $55 million to make — and aims to release eight to 10 films annually.)
Ms. Mayo, 36, has worked in the film business for more than a decade, climbing rungs at Paramount Pictures and, most recently, producing films and television series with Michael B. Jordan. They were instrumental in pushing WarnerMedia in 2018 to adopt an inclusive hiring policy for productions, and their recent civil rights drama, "Just Mercy," with Mr. Jordan in the lead role, was the first movie to adhere to it.
"We will absolutely have an inclusion policy on all Orion productions," Ms. Mayo said. "I now know how it is done in a practical sense. How it's achievable."
Such policies, still rare in Hollywood, evolved out of the concept of an "inclusion rider," a term Frances McDormand brought public attention to in her 2018 Oscar acceptance speech — a contractual obligation that actors and filmmakers could potentially wield to increase diversity in productions.
Orion has lately put out horror and comedy films with predominantly white casts and directed by white men. "Child's Play," a remake of the 1988 movie about a murderous doll, was a moneymaker last year, costing about $10 million to make and selling $45 million in tickets worldwide. But other recent releases — "Gretel & Hansel," the spiritual romance "Every Day" — have disappointed. The next movie on Orion's release schedule is the goofball comedy "Bill & Ted Face the Music," which will arrive in theaters and on VOD on Aug. 28.
John Hegeman, who has been Orion's president since 2017, is leaving the company, along with his entire team.
Mr. De Luca and Pam Abdy, president of MGM's film group, said in a statement that remaking Orion to focus on people of color, women, the L.G.B.T.Q. community and people with disabilities was "a moral and business imperative." Kevin Ulrich, chairman of the MGM board, cited Ms. Mayo's "fearlessness" as one reason she was hired.
"It was essential that we find an exceptional executive who will be a leader at the forefront of change in our industry," Mr. Ulrich said in a statement. He is the chief executive of Anchorage Capital Group, a New York investment firm that is MGM's largest owner. The plan to bring in Ms. Mayo was hatched with Creative Artists Agency, which serves as an adviser to Mr. Ulrich, not long after Mr. Floyd's killing in late May.
MGM's primary movie operation underwent its own shake-up in January. Out: Jonathan Glickman, who stepped down after nine years as the studio's film chief. In: Mr. De Luca, a former Sony Pictures and New Line Cinema executive (and a producer of the infamous 2017 Oscars telecast that found Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty naming the wrong film best picture). MGM has since shown a new aggression, finalizing a deal Mr. Glickman had started for an adaptation of "Fiddler on the Roof" to be directed by Thomas Kail ("Hamilton"), lining up a 1970s-era film from Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights") and signing Ryan Gosling to play an astronaut in a movie produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller ("22 Jump Street").
There is speculation in Hollywood that Mr. Ulrich is sprucing up MGM ahead of a potential sale to a company like Apple, which lacks a library for its streaming service. An MGM spokeswoman declined to comment.
Orion, founded in 1978 as an independent company, sizzled in the 1980s and early '90s, in part because it took risks on challenging stories. Oscar-winning hits included "Amadeus" (1984), "Platoon" (1986), "Dances With Wolves" (1990) and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991). Orion also gave the world "Caddyshack" (1980).
But the studio also had misfires, among them Francis Ford Coppola's "The Cotton Club" (1984) and "She-Devil" (1989), which paired Meryl Streep with Roseanne Barr. Orion eventually found itself unable to compete with larger studios and declared bankruptcy. MGM bought Orion in 1997, and it remained largely dormant as a film business — it also has a TV division, which will not be part of Ms. Mayo's purview — until Mr. Hegeman was hired in 2017.
Ms. Mayo, who grew up in Chicago (her mother was a paralegal, and her father was a radio executive), graduated from Columbia University with degrees in English and film studies. She got her start in show business as an intern for Lee Daniels ("Precious," "Empire"). She said Spike Lee was as an important influence, in particular his "Bamboozled," a 2000 satire about a modern televised minstrel show.
Ms. Mayo was briefly married to Lena Waithe, the Emmy-winning writer behind the Showtime series "The Chi."
There are other Black women in senior roles at film studios. Nicole Brown is the executive vice president of Tri-Star, a Sony division that recently won a bidding war for "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," a Whitney Houston biopic. Vanessa Morrison oversees the development and production of original films for Disney+.
But they are extremely few and far between, and most do not have the kind of movie-picking power that Ms. Mayo has been promised. According to the most recent U.C.L.A. study on diversity in Hollywood, senior management teams at studios are 93 percent white and 80 percent male. Five years ago, they were 92 percent white and 83 percent male.
As Ms. Ramón and her fellow researchers noted in the report, "Decisions about what types of films to make, how large a budget to assign to them, how they will be marketed and who will be at the directorial helm are all made by the men and women who occupy Hollywood's executive suites."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/business/media/mgm-orion-pictures-alana-mayo.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/business/media/mgm-orion-pictures-alana-mayo.html)
Crew death renews concerns over film set safety amid COVID-19By ANOUSHA SAKOUISTAFF WRITER
SEP. 1, 20206 AM
QuoteThe death of a 51-year-old assistant director who lost a battle with COVID-19 last week after returning to work on a commercial shoot has heightened concerns about the safety of film sets.
The assistant director's death has ignited debate on social media about the safety of returning to film sets, according to John Elmore, a 20-year veteran assistant director and colleague of Nolan's. Some have raised concerns about the lack of testing on sets, while others defended the production.
Commercials, which tend to have smaller crews and shorter shoots than television or film productions, don't require COVID-19 testing under local health orders or industry guidelines.
"Some people are afraid," Elmore said, who worked on the 2002 "Spider-Man" blockbuster and television series "The Oath." "They're thinking of just getting out of the business completely. It's important to know what happened and what still needs to be done for this industry to get back to work safely."
The untimely death of a crew member highlights the conflicts faced by filmmakers and workers on sets as they resume production. While many in the industry want to return to filming, with thousands of jobs lost in the hiatus, they have to balance the risks of exposure to COVID-19 as sets are typically crowded locations. Producers, unions and health officials have been working together for months to create a series of safety protocols for sets.
"If any good can come from John's passing, it would be for the production side of our industry to be more mindful this COVID thing is still out there waiting for us," said Ben Ketai, a Los Angeles-based film and television director who worked with Nolan for several years on his TV show "StartUp" that first aired in 2016 on the streaming video service Crackle. "Film sets are busy, crowded places and it's very easy to get into a comfortable rhythm and let your guard down. "
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-09-01/crew-death-commercials-film-set-safety
'The Batman' Pauses Filming After Robert Pattinson Tests Positive for COVID-19QuoteThe Batman has pressed pause on its London production after star Robert Pattinson tested positive for COVID-19, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. Warner Bros. would not comment specifically on the individual who tested positive on set.
"A member of The Batman production has tested positive for Covid-19, and is isolating in accordance with established protocols," a Warner Bros. spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. "Filming is temporarily paused."
Source (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/batman-pauses-production-1279645)
What is a COVID-19 compliance supervisor? What to know about Hollywood's newest job (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-10-27/covid-compliance-supervisors-hollywood-pandemic)
QuoteThe pandemic has spawned a new job on Hollywood sets — the COVID-19 compliance supervisor.
The role was created under an agreement last month between entertainment unions and an alliance of producers as part of the terms for Hollywood's return to production. Already, an industry is emerging around this important position. Some companies are offering training and certification, others are providing consulting services to productions.
The film and television community in the U.S. has slowly been returning to work since June after an almost complete shutdown in March because of the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost as a result.
Producers and crew members used to working on crowded and messy sets are now having to adapt to new arrangements and are looking to compliance supervisors to keep them safe and to keep productions going.
"The challenge is that we're living in a new world; the way that people have gone about doing their jobs on the set has changed dramatically" said Thom Davis, business manager of IATSE Local 80, which represents set medics, grips and other workers. Productions are required to have set medics; some of them have also taken on the position of compliance supervisor.
"You've learned to do things in a certain way," Davis added. "And now, all of a sudden, you can't do that. It takes a mental retraining."
What is a COVID-19 compliance supervisor?
According to the agreement, producers must hire a supervisor who is responsible for compliance and enforcement of industry protocols on each production.
The demands of the job are big: sanitization, testing, safety equipment and distancing. Cast and crew are split into different zones, based on the frequency of testing and ability to wear masks. The compliance supervisor is responsible for making sure these groups don't mix and has to intervene if crew members crowd together and masks slip.
The compliance supervisor is also responsible for training other crew members, such as first assistant directors, so they can pass on safety directions to their units. They have to be available at all times during working hours, according to the agreement.
Critically, this person has the power to stop a production if there are concerns about safety and has the ability to discipline — or even fire — safety protocol violators. Given that shutdowns on large productions can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, that is a big responsibility.
How do you become a COVID compliance supervisor?
There is no one route to the position. Unions and producers didn't set out required qualifications or training. As a result, compliance supervisors have a variety of backgrounds in medicine, film production or set safety.
For L.A.-based Jessica Lesley, it was an opportunity to start a new business. Lesley, 35, has a bachelor of science degree from Alabama's Tuskegee University and went on to the L.A.-based Streetlights production assistants course, which helps young people from diverse communities access Hollywood.
This summer, she thought her science background made her a good fit for providing COVID-19 safety services to the industry. "I started my company, and I've been going since June, and I've been extremely busy," Lesley said, adding that she's been booking jobs and hiring others to work with her on commercial shoots around the country.
She charges about $500 a day for a COVID compliance supervisor, less for assistants. Some charge as much as $1,000 a day.
Other companies have started up to offer compliance services and training to productions. Some focus on training for compliance supervisors.
One such company is the San Carlos, Calif.-based Health Education Services. It offers a two-hour webinar for $50; participants who pass the course receive a certificate and their names are listed on the the company's database. About 300 people a week are attending, said DJay Brawner, who helps teach the online sessions.
This course is targeted at those who have on-set experience, such as assistant directors or production assistants, but who may not have a background in science. Once the course is completed, participants get access to resources they can use in the job, such as screening surveys.
L.A. resident Will Nitch took the course and is on a public database of trained officers. Nitch, 40, has held various jobs in the entertainment industry, including as a production coordinator. About a month ago, he started a new business with actor Eddie Hargitay, focused on compliance services. They bought up trailers, hand-washing stations and cleaning products to provide all the services needed to make a production compliant, he said.
"My livelihood operates on whether Hollywood is operating or not," Nitch said. "I take it very seriously. I don't want Hollywood to shut down again."
Pure Sets, an LA-based company founded in the pandemic, provides a one-stop shop for productions. It has a roster of supervisors who have worked as medics, first responders, even a Navy seal. "One of the big challenges is finding people with a leadership quality," said founder Julian Lemaitre.
As part of the industry agreement, every production employee must complete a COVID-19 safety course. One such provider is a Burbank-based nonprofit, Contract Services. However, the training isn't intended to cover all that a compliance supervisor might need.
For some, that job is seen as a possible way into the industry when work is in short supply. But industry experience is often expected.
"All the producers I've talked to, especially the studios, indicate that what they are looking for, is somebody who has extensive on-set experience and preferably has a medical background, but that's not an absolute requirement," said Crabtree-Ireland.
No set standard of training has raised concerns.
Although unions and filmmakers agree that this role is necessary to keep the industry going and casts and crews safe, the new protocols do not lay out specific training requirements.
Consequently, experience and knowledge can vary widely.
One worry is that producers may not take the role seriously enough, for example by hiring production assistants to double as compliance supervisors. Some crew have been concerned when the compliance supervisor on set has not stepped in to limit crowding or enforce sanitation standards or mask wearing. "A lot of people are jumping on it as a quick way to make a buck and don't take the responsibility seriously," Lesley said.
Union officials even changed the name of the position, which originally was known as compliance officer, to reflect the authority needed on set, said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA's chief operating officer and general counsel.
"I've heard sporadic concerns about the training, but I've also heard concerns more about how that role fits in with the existing structure of the management representatives that the people are used to dealing with," said Crabtree-Ireland, who is leading the union's safety and reopening initiative.
Pasadena-based Neil Larson has been doing production safety work as a third-party contractor for several years and is now a compliance supervisor on sets. Larson, 61, said he took contact tracing and epidemiology courses online from Johns Hopkins University, along with other safety training. Since spring, he has been a compliance supervisor on shows like MTV's "Ridiculousness" and Nickelodeon's "Top Elf."
The level of experience and effectiveness of the supervisor varies between productions. "People will come back to me from other shows saying, 'Oh, God, it was horrible. I didn't feel safe,'" Larson said. Some producers want the compliance supervisor to just "show up and shut up" and simply tick a box by being on set, Larson said. "You can't do that. You have to keep people safe."
Hollywood's Obituary, the Sequel. Now Streaming. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/business/media/hollywood-coronavirus-streaming.html)
In the 110-year history of the American film industry, never has so much upheaval arrived so quickly and on so many fronts.
By Brooks Barnes
Nov. 28, 2020
LOS ANGELES — "Hollywood's like Egypt: full of crumbled pyramids. It'll never come back. It'll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands."
David O. Selznick, the golden era producer, made that glum proclamation in 1951. A new entertainment technology, TV, was emasculating cinema as a cultural force, and film studios had started to fossilize into bottom line-oriented businesses. As Selznick put it, Hollywood had been "grabbed by a little group of bookkeepers and turned into a junk industry."
Since then, Hollywood has repeatedly written its own obituary. It died when interlopers like Gulf + Western Industries began buying studios in the 1960s. And again when "Star Wars" (1977) and "Superman" (1978) turned movies into toy advertisements. The 1980s (VCRs), the 1990s (the rise of media super-conglomerates), the 2000s (endless fantasy sequels) and the 2010s (Netflix, Netflix, Netflix) each brought new rounds of existential hand-wringing.
Underneath the tumult, however, the essence of the film industry remained intact. Hollywood continued to believe in itself. Sure, we churn out lowest common denominator junk, studio executives would concede over $40 salads at the Polo Lounge. It's how we make our quarterly numbers. But we can still generate the occasional thunderclap, with ambitious films like "Get Out" and "1917" and "Black Panther" and "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" arriving on big screens and commanding the culture for months on end.
In one breath: All is lost! Big Tech is going to eat us alive.
In the next: Everyone still loves us. Just look at all those pinwheel-eyed fans buying tickets.
But the moment of crisis in which Hollywood now finds itself is different. In the 110-year history of the American film industry, never has so much upheaval arrived so fast and on so many fronts, leaving many writers, directors, studio executives, agents and other movie workers disoriented and demoralized — wandering in "complete darkness," as one longtime female producer told me. These are melodramatic people by nature, but talk to enough of them and you will get the strong sense that their fear is real this time.
Have streaming, the coronavirus and other challenges combined to blow away — finally, unequivocally — the last remnants of Hollywood?
"The last nine months have shaken the movie business to its bones," said Jason Blum, the powerhouse producer whose credits range from "The Purge" series to "BlacKkKlansman."
The feel of a dismantled film set
Streaming, of course, has been disrupting the entertainment business for some time. Netflix started delivering movies and television shows via the internet in 2007. By 2017, Disney was trying to supercharge its own streaming ambitions by bidding for Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, ultimately swallowing most of the company for $71.3 billion in an effort to expand its library of content and gain control of Hulu.
In recent months, however, the shift toward streaming has greatly accelerated. With more than half of the 5,477 theaters in the United States still closed, more than a dozen movies originally destined for big screens have been rerouted to streaming services or online rental platforms. Pixar's latest adventure, "Soul," will debut exclusively on Disney+ on Christmas Day. It will compete with "Wonder Woman 1984" (Warner Bros.), which will arrive in theaters and on HBO Max on Dec. 25, a crossing-the-Rubicon moment in the eyes of analysts.
Meantime, the owner of Regal Cinemas, the No. 2 multiplex chain in North America, just took on emergency debt to avoid insolvency. Trying to keep his own company afloat, Adam Aron, the chief executive of AMC Entertainment, the No. 1 chain, quoted Winston Churchill on his most recent earnings call. ("We shall fight on the beaches!") And the National Association of Theater Owners has found itself begging for a federal bailout. Deprived of one, the trade group warned, "movie theaters across the country are at risk of going dark for good."
Without appearing on big screens, are movies even movies? Wrestling with that question alone has pushed Hollywood into a full-blown identity crisis. But the film industry is simultaneously dealing with other challenges. Outrage over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer has forced the movie capital to confront its contribution to racism and inequity. Coronavirus-forced production shutdowns have idled tens of thousands of entertainment workers. The two biggest talent agencies, Creative Artists and William Morris Endeavor, have been hobbled by the shutdown, resulting in a diaspora of agents, some of whom are starting competing firms, a once-unthinkable realignment.
There has been an abrupt changing of the guard in Hollywood's highest ranks, contributing to the sense of a power vacuum. Nine of the top 20 most powerful people in show business, as ranked a year ago by The Hollywood Reporter, have left their jobs for one reason or another (retirement, scandal, corporate guillotine). They include the No. 1 person, Robert A. Iger, who stepped down as Disney's chief executive in February, and Ron Meyer (No. 11), whose 25-year Universal career ended in August amid a tawdry extortion plot.
Retrenchments at Warner Bros. have also bruised Hollywood's psyche. Over the years, as other film studios were lobbed between owners (Universal), downsized (Paramount) or subsumed (20th Century Fox), "Warners" remained virtually untouched, emerging as an emblem of stability and spending. In recent months, however, the studio has been streamlined by an aggressive new owner, AT&T, resulting in the departure of a startling number of executives who had been there for decades. For now, Warner Bros. has 10 movies on its 2022 theatrical release schedule, according to the database IMDbPro. Last year, it released 18.
The black icing on the cake: The shutdown has stripped Hollywood of its internal culture, the otherworldly (some would say silly) rituals that have long served as a magnet for so many. It has been a year without red carpets. There have been no see-and-be-seen power lunches at Chateau Marmont. Zoom is the new awards ballroom.
In a recent phone conversation that felt more like a therapy session, one Warner Bros. executive told me that "the town" felt like a dismantled movie set: The gleaming false fronts had been hauled away to reveal mere mortals wandering around in a mess.
Or perhaps, he continued, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with his employer, the proper metaphor was a movie — perhaps "The Remains of the Day," the 1993 drama starring Anthony Hopkins as an English butler. As Vincent Canby wrote in his New York Times review, the Merchant Ivory film was about "the last, worn-out gasps of a feudal system that was supposed to have vanished centuries before."
'Normal wasn't good enough'
Not everyone in Hollywood is walking around in a stupor. Some people even seem energized, especially those who have spent their careers wielding jackhammers against the Hollywood status quo. Ava DuVernay, for instance, has been outspoken about the need for studios to remake themselves — to dramatically diversify their upper ranks, which are overwhelmingly white and male, and to prioritize storytelling from a kaleidoscope of voices. Her production company, ARRAY, uses "change is ours to make" as its slogan.
"I see this as a time of opportunity," Ms. DuVernay told me. "Sometimes you have to take it down to the studs and build something new."
She continued: "It's not going to go back to the way it was, nor do we want it to. We want to move forward. I hear people saying that they can't wait for Hollywood to get back to normal. Well, I really resist that. Normal wasn't good enough. All of this change in such a short amount of time really lays bare how shaky the ground was to begin with."
Ms. DuVernay, whose film and television credits include "Selma," "Queen Sugar" and "When They See Us," grew more pointed. "Some folks are scared, and I have sympathy," she said. "But it's mostly the folks who are clinging to the idea that Hollywood is theirs and it was built in their likeness, and they will do anything to cling to it, even if that means destroying it."
She concluded by rolling her eyes at the Chicken Littles who fret that moviegoing is over.
"Talk about dramatic," she said. "Theaters aren't going anywhere, at least not all of them."
In fact, multiplexes may get a post-pandemic bump. Because so many studios have pushed back their biggest movies, next summer's theatrical release calendar looks like a blockbuster heaven: "Black Widow," "Fast & Furious 9," "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It," "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," "Minions: The Rise of Gru," "Top Gun: Maverick," Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," "Hotel Transylvania 4," "Venom: Let There Be Carnage." (To name a few.) With any luck, studio chiefs say, the newly vaccinated masses will come out in droves, in part because they won't take the theatrical experience for granted anymore.
In Japan, where cinemas are fully operating again (the country's response to the coronavirus has kept cases and deaths low), more than 3.4 million people turned out last month to see an animated movie, "Demon Slayer: Mugen Train," on its opening weekend. One Tokyo theater scheduled a jaw-dropping 42 screenings in one day to meet demand.
Popcorn for everyone!
"There's a reason that the Roaring Twenties followed the 1918 pandemic," J.J. Abrams, the Bad Robot Productions chairman, said by phone. "We have a pent-up, desperate need to see each other — to socialize and have communal experiences. And there is nothing that I can think of that is more exciting than being in a theater with people you don't know, who don't necessarily like the same sports teams or pray to the same god or eat the same food. But you're screaming together, laughing together, crying together. It's a social necessity."
Streaming services and theaters will settle into coexistence, he predicted.
"I think going to a theater is like going to church and watching a movie at home is like praying at home," Mr. Abrams said. "It's not that you can't do it. But the experience is wholly different."
Over? Hollywood? C'mon. "I'm working on and excited about and hopeful about a number of theatrical projects," Mr. Abrams said.
His most recent film, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," took in more than $1 billion at the global box office. It was one of nine movies to reach that threshold last year, with "Avengers: Endgame" collecting nearly $3 billion. All told, ticket sales stood at $42.2 billion, with weakness in North America ($11.4 billion) offset by an increase overseas ($30.8 billion).
The hoary tradition of exhibiting movies on big screens, which dates to the 1890s, may have vast challenges — not the least of which is a 78 percent plunge in domestic ticket sales for the year to date. But a business of its scale, as Mr. Abrams and others will tell you, does not vanish forever in the span of a few self-quarantining months.
'People change their habits'
But what happens in 2022, once the thrill of mingling together has burned off, studios have worked through their blockbuster backlogs and streaming services are stronger than ever?
Will young people — trained during the pandemic to expect instant access to new movies like "Hamilton" and "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" — get into the habit of going to the movies like their parents and grandparents did? Generation Z forms a crucial audience: About 33 percent of moviegoers in the United States and Canada last year were under the age of 24, according to the Motion Picture Association.
Most young people will have gone a full year without visiting a cinema by the time vaccines are expected to be widely deployed.
"Yes, there is pent-up demand to see movies in a theater," said Peter Chernin, whose Hollywood career has spanned four decades. "But people change their habits."
Mr. Chernin, who oversaw the release of theatrical megamovies like "Titanic" and "Avatar" while running Mr. Murdoch's empire from 1996 to 2009, has already voted with his feet. Last year, he aligned his Chernin Entertainment with Netflix, where he has more than 70 movies in development. The films in which he specializes — high-quality dramas like "Hidden Figures" and "Ford v Ferrari" — are a dying breed in theaters. It's too hard to make money when marketing campaigns start at $30 million.
But the audience has also shifted. Sorry, film snobs: Most people seem fine with watching these films in their living rooms (sometimes, shudder, on their smartphones).
"Cinema as an art form is not going to die," said Michael Shamberg, the producing force behind films like "Erin Brockovich," "The Big Chill" and, rather appropriately, "Contagion." "But the tradition of cinema that we all grew up on, falling in love with movies in a theater, is over. Cinema needs to be redefined so that it doesn't matter where you see it. A lot of people, sadly, don't seem to be ready to admit that."
In other words, the art may live on, but the myth of big screens as the be-all and end-all is being dismantled in a fundamental and perhaps irreversible manner. Because of the pandemic, the film academy has decided for the first time to allow streaming films to skip a theatrical release entirely and still remain eligible for the Academy Awards, nudging the Oscars closer to the Emmys. (The academy deemed the move "temporary," but some people, including Ms. DuVernay, one of the organization's 54 governors, think it will be hard to backtrack.)
Imagine what that means to Hollywood's sense of self. Since always, the film industry has swaggered into every room it has ever entered — Spielberg on line one, Scorsese on line two. Nothing less than "ensuring film's legacy as the great art form of our time" is one of the stated goals of the soon-to-open Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
Mr. Abrams, as much a television wunderkind as a movie one, described the difference between small screens and big ones by summarizing something he once heard on National Public Radio. Television, he explained, is the child and the audience is the parent. It's smaller than you. You can control it by changing the channel. With movies, the roles are reversed. You are the small one. You're supposed to look up at them.
Exactly how does that work in the streaming age?
No wonder Hollywood has been experiencing, as the trade newsletter The Ankler recently put it, "a heart attack wrapped inside a nervous breakdown."
Next week, the Oscar race will kick into high gear with the wide release of David Fincher's "Mank." Set mostly in the 1930s and filmed in black and white, the film focuses on Hollywood's romantic heyday — back when pictures were pictures — by telling a story about the creation of "Citizen Kane." (The Australian actor Toby Leonard Moore plays David O. Selznick.)
Critics have been transported. "Time-machine splendor," wrote Owen Gleiberman in Variety. "A tale of Old Hollywood that's more steeped in Old Hollywood — its glamour and sleaze, its layer-cake hierarchies, its corruption and glory — than just about any movie you've seen."
You can find "Mank" on Netflix.
Christopher Nolan on Warner's HBO Max decision:
"Some of our industry's biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christopher-nolan-rips-hbo-max-as-worst-streaming-service-denounces-warner-bros-plan
Well, yes. Still. I can't stand Nolan. :yabbse-grin:
https://twitter.com/perpetua/status/1336142829052194818?s=21
Interesting conversation with Jason Kilar (CEO of Warner Media)--the guy that pulled the trigger on this new exhibition model for WB.
https://www.radio.com/podcasts/sway-43436/movie-theaters-are-dying-did-jason-kilar-deal-the-final-blow-351965617
From Brian Newman's mailing list
Bye Bye Equity Pie
December 9, 2020
Another week of Covid-19, another accelerated demise of a business model seemingly central to the life of the movie industry. You would think in light of the hand-wringing (https://theankler.com/p/a-max-to-grind?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyNzY1MDY3LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoyMzQxOTY2MSwiXyI6InFQc2xxIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA3NDU4OTg3LCJleHAiOjE2MDc0NjI1ODcsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNTY1NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.BzjscNJ3VCXAeigUk7NlL_ZLN3VI5bSBqMEZnUYzSxc) and gnashing of teeth (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christopher-nolan-rips-hbo-max-as-worst-streaming-service-denounces-warner-bros-plan) caused by the Warner's decision to launch its entire slate on HBO Max that I'm thinking of windows again, but no, folks – I'm talking about the death of equity financing for films. Or once again, I'm writing about something no one wants to discuss.
Like so many accelerated changes, this is a death that was coming prior to the virus; a change that had been happening for at least a year or longer, but that can no longer be ignored. It's also so shocking that when I discuss it with my friends and colleagues – or bring it up on panels – I get the long, blank stare of disbelief.
So, let me turn to two recent pieces that kinda flew below the radar, but speak directly to the reality we face. As Exhibit A, I give you James Schamus during a virtual keynote Q&A at the Film London Production Finance Market (back in Oct) as reported in Screen (https://www.screendaily.com/news/james-schamus-financial-models-of-svod-giants-cannot-be-sustained/5153961.article):
Schamus pointed out that the competition between the streamers is taking place "in the absence of a time-honoured approach to the financing and selling of independent media", with "egotistical, bloviating, ridiculously self-centred individuals and family members who've made it in the used car business, the laundromat business, real estate, whatever business" no longer putting their capital into independent film.
The former Focus Features boss noted there are now only "a tiny handful of gatekeepers" financing independent content. "They have very little incentive to acquire more than a tiny handful of things, especially feature-length films," Schamus said.
That was Schamus speaking about independent media. Exhibit B would be Richard Rushfield in The Ankler (https://theankler.com/p/a-max-to-grind?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyNzY1MDY3LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoyMzQxOTY2MSwiXyI6InFQc2xxIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA3NDUyODk4LCJleHAiOjE2MDc0NTY0OTgsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNTY1NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.yhaBcv5ffcqakfpUe52Brk9yS7h2BU2w8cqTvKTJiKI) speaking about Hollywood (just yesterday), which is now facing the same death thanks to the Warner's announcement:
"beneath the surface of people trying to make movies and do well for each other, there's the real Hollywood, which is a business of fleecing the arrivistes for every penny they've got while they still have stars in their eyes."
In both instances, you have some super smart folks reading the writing on the wall for those of us not willing or able to slow down and look more clearly at what's going on – as the industry has shifted to SVOD and original content, there's no longer any incentive for equity investors to get involved, because there is no upside.
What Warner's made abundantly clear this past week was that there is no path to profits (much less riches) for investors in their individual movies; all in the hopes that Wall Street investors will take a chance on their overall fortunes as tied to HBO Max (so far, Wall Street doesn't seem super-impressed, but business writers are giddy) (https://lightshedtmt.com/2020/12/08/dear-chris-nolan-you-cannot-stop-the-movie-industrys-evolution/?curator=MediaREDEF). In this particular case, they only gave their investors, folks like Legendary Entertainment, about 90 minutes notice before they announced that there would be no back-end, and those partners are hoppin' mad.
But it's not just Hollywood. The fact is none of the major streaming services have much appetite for buying finished feature films anymore. While it was always a precious few who got lucky and sold Netflix for the big bucks out of Sundance, you're increasingly seeing a world where they don't bother to compete for indie or other arthouse films – and especially not documentaries, anymore. Nope. It's all about originals and series now. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are increasingly rare, and Covid-19 has only accelerated this trend.
Time was – just about two years ago, even – I could honestly look an investor in the face and say that while the film business was a tricky one, and a bad investment most of the time, there was a path forward to potentially recoup your investment. That's not a pitch I think I'll be making again anytime soon. But while coronavirus has brought this trend to the fore, it was happening B.C. Over the past year, it's become increasingly apparent that one can't produce "on spec" anymore – you have to work on commissioned work, where distribution and financing are locked-in from an early stage. That's because you can't count on a decent sale – because not only are the major buyers (SVOD) not buying, that also trickles down to the mid-tier buyers. It becomes really difficult to see a path towards recoupment. Now that we can add that it's impossible to get insurance for an indie film, and if you manage to get it made, there might not be any buyers, the dynamics around investment are going to change/disappear, and fast.
This is a profound shift, and the implications are still being sorted out. While there will remain some exceptions – most smart producers and talent will have to move to a model that relies a lot less on equity. The smart equity that remains should probably be focused almost solely on IP development and early-stage financing, where the dollars needed are lower, and the "out" is more focused on an early pre-buy or commission, with a smaller profit margin. I think a lot of companies will go out of business as well, because the profit margins on commissioned work (and TV in general) are much lower. An entire eco-system of support for indie films – from programs like Catalyst at Sundance, to Impact Partners for docs, will have to be re-thought (oh wait, that was already (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/documentary-dan-coga-liz-garbus-launch-production-company-story-syndicate-1202149001/) underway). Efforts like the DPA's waterfall guidelines (https://www.documentary.org/feature/documentary-producers-alliance-unveils-guidelines-documentary-waterfall) (which just came out in September (!)) will need to be re-written. Heck, the definition of indie film will have to change (again), once you can't make much of anything as an independent anymore (if you want to reach an audience and recoup; there will always be soft money docs and crowdfunding, but that can't sustain an industry). And while the industry will adapt, I think it will lead to a lot more safe-choices and thus less surprises and less artistic risk being taken.
Of course, this brings many opportunities as well. I can think of many ways to "bridge" this gap, and coming from the branded entertainment world, that's near the top of my list. But it's also a very tough puzzle to figure out – and those who can do so will be best positioned to thrive for the next five-ten years, before this all shakes out again and we try to build another new model. In the meantime, we need to add to our list of conversations to be openly had – and problems to solve – what to do when the equity vanishes?
Quote from: Drenk on December 22, 2020, 09:07:41 AM
Amazon was my first guess. Jeff Bezos made more than five billions since the tweet was posted. They're also the worst streaming service: I'm sorry, but I can only think of packages when I see the Amazon logo. Or a warehouse...
Quote from: wilberfan on December 10, 2020, 04:02:00 PM
Interesting conversation with Jason Kilar (CEO of Warner Media)--the guy that pulled the trigger on this new exhibition model for WB.
https://www.radio.com/podcasts/sway-43436/movie-theaters-are-dying-did-jason-kilar-deal-the-final-blow-351965617
In this conversation, Kilar uses a rhetoric against that service as some sort of consumer distinction that affects content (so they say)
(23min ish, Kara kinda walks jason into it)
"For them (Amazon and Apple TV) it's not existential to be great at storytelling --- nobody's staying up late at night worrying about what happens if their pipeline of movies and television doesn't resonate"
that's a fun use of existential and resonate
Quote from: jenkins on December 22, 2020, 11:32:50 AM
that's a fun use of existential and resonate
Corp AI generated romanticism broadcast straight outta the WB tower ~
the human condition is like my favorite topic ever but whenever it's talked about in terms of audience appeal i feel gross
DGA Sides With Writers Guild In Its Dispute With WME Over Endeavor ContentJanuar 12, 2021
DeadlineThe Directors Guild has sided with the Writers Guild in the WGA's ongoing legal battle with WME over the agency's ownership interest in its affiliated production entity – Endeavor Content. In a letter obtained by Deadline (read it below), DGA national executive director Russell Hollander told WME president Ari Greenburg that the DGA has "been closely following the negotiations and litigation and believe now is the right time to communicate our strong support for the WGA's efforts to remedy the affiliated production company issue."
In his letter dated December 31, Hollander also told Greenburg: "This continued conflict of interest is not acceptable to the DGA. Absent prompt resolution, we intend to take all necessary and appropriate steps to protect our members."
The DGA declined comment.
Here's the full text of Hollander's letter:
QuoteDear Ari,
The issue of talent agencies owning production entities is, and always has been, an issue of great concern to the DGA. While we have not commented publicly on these concerns, we have raised them on numerous occasions with representatives from WME and Endeavor Content. As discussions between WME and the Writers Guild of America have reached a critical point, it is time for us to make our position clear.
The issue of avoiding conflicts of interest is exceedingly important to the DGA and our members. Affiliated ownership carries with it inherent and obvious conflicts of interest. Agents should be free and unencumbered to carry out their duties to their Director clients with only the Directors' interests in mind and should procure work for Directors without the incentive to make cost-effective deals with production companies owned by the same parent company as their agency.
We are aware that the issue of conflicts of interest arising from affiliated production ownership remains the last outstanding issue preventing a resolution between the WGA and WME. We have been closely following the negotiations and litigation and believe now is the right time to communicate our strong support for the WGA's efforts to remedy the affiliated production company issue. We share their concerns and urge WME to resolve this issue with the WGA in a manner that will enable talent agents to satisfy their fiduciary duty to their clients free of conflicts of interest.
This continued conflict of interest is not acceptable to the DGA. Absent prompt resolution, we intend to take all necessary and appropriate steps to protect our members.
Sincerely,
Russell Hollander
National Executive Director
WME is the only major talent agency that has yet to sign the WGA's franchise agreement, and reducing WME's ownership stake in Endeavor Content to just 20% is one of the last remaining issues holding up an agreement. The WGA also wants WME and its private-equity owners, Silver Lake Partners, to agree to the same terms as CAA and its private-equity owner did last month when they signed the guild's franchise agreement.
The day before Hollander sent the letter, a federal judge denied WME's request for a preliminary injunction that would have ended the WGA's boycott of the agency until the antitrust case can go to trial. It was a major legal victory for the WGA and adds pressure on WME to settle the 21-month dispute and sign the WGA's franchise agreement, as have all the other major talent agencies.
WME has said that it wants to reach a deal with the WGA and offered a proposal last month that it hoped the WGA would accept, saying, "We want to find a way forward with the Guild and return to representing our writer-clients." The WGA, however, rejected that offer, saying that "WME has yet to grapple, in a serious way, with its own conflicts of interest."
The WGA's battle to reshape the talent agency business began in April 2018, when it notified the Association of Talent Agents of its intent to renegotiate its Artists' Manager Basic Agreement, and a year later, writers voted overwhelmingly to terminate the AMBA and all unfranchised agencies. Since then, the WGA has negotiated 10 successive versions of its franchise agreement to accommodate reasonable agency proposals – beginning in May 2019, when it signed Verve; again last summer, when it signed UTA and ICM, and last month when it signed CAA.
The DGA last weighed into the dispute between the WGA and the talent agencies in April 2019 – just days after the WGA told its members to fire their agents who refused to sign its new Agency Code of Conduct, modified versions of which will now phase out packaging fees by 2022 and sharply limit their corporate affiliations with related production companies.
At that time, the DGA told its hyphenate members that they didn't have to fire their agents for DGA-covered work even if they were also writers who were being told by the WGA that they must fire their agents who refuse to sign its Code of Conduct. "There are important issues that we are examining in the context of the DGA agency agreement," the DGA said back then. "As our franchise agreement is currently in effect, we are not instructing hyphenate members to terminate their agents with respect to DGA-covered services at the present time."
WME Signs WGA Franchise Agreement, Giving Guild Historic Win In Campaign To Reshape Talent Agency BusinessDeadlineUPDATED with statements and WGA West letter to members: The WGA has won its historic campaign to reshape the talent agency business, signing WME – the last agency holdout – to its franchise agreement today. All the major agencies now have signed the agreement, which will return them to a 10% commissioning business model not seen in decades.
The sides also agreed today to drop their antitrust lawsuits against each other "in consideration of a negotiated settlement executed by them."
"WME and the WGA have agreed to a new franchise deal that addresses writers' core concerns while recognizing the unique aspects of our business," Endeavor CEO Ariel Emanuel said in a statement. "Writers have been a part of this agency since our inception, and they will continue to be a part of the lifeblood of WME. We look forward to once again serving as their advocates during this unprecedented time in our industry."
WGA West President David A. Goodman issued this statement:
Quote"I've said repeatedly no one wanted the agency campaign over more than me, and I'm very pleased that we've achieved our goal: the agencies who represent us now have their financial interests aligned with their writer clients, and the agencies problematic business practices such as packaging fees and agency-owned production entities are at an end. As difficult as this battle was, the simple and just clarity of the goal, that a writer's agent should make more only when his client does, is what helped us succeed.
I could not be more grateful to the negotiating committee, elected leaders and staff whose commitment and tireless work over the last three years won the day. But, as with all the successes in the WGA's history, such as our pension and health benefits, our residuals in perpetuity, and our jurisdiction over the Internet, this achievement is owed to the members, who understood what we were fighting for, and were willing to make personal sacrifices for the greater good. I'm proud and lucky to be one of them."
The WGAW sent a letter to its membership today that outlines the deal; read it in full below.
Today's agreement allows WME's writer-clients to return to the agency for the first time since April 2019, when the WGA East and West ordered their members to fire their agents who refused to sign the guilds' Code of Conduct, modified versions of which will now phase out packaging fees by 2022 and limit the agencies' ownership interests in affiliated production companies to just 20%. WME was the last of the major agencies to sign the WGA's agreement, in part, because it has the most tangled corporate structure, and its production-distribution affiliate – Endeavor Content – has the most projects currently in production and development – more than 300.
WME's signing will also end its long-running legal battle with the guild, with both sides agreeing to dismiss their anti-trust lawsuits against one another – a fight that's been going on for nearly two years. The WGA dropped its lawsuit against UTA when it signed the franchise agreement last July, and against CAA when it signed in December.
The WGA has long maintained that packaging, in which agencies bring together many of the creative elements of a show – and agency affiliations with related production and distribution companies – create a conflict of interest for the agencies, giving them an incentive to low-ball writers on projects in which the agencies have a financial interest. The guild claimed that the packaging fees paid by the studios to the agencies were a violation of state and federal labor law because they amounted to "illegal kickbacks" from an employer to an employee representative. The guild also argued that agency affiliations with corporately related production companies made the agencies, in effect, both their clients' representatives and employers.
The WGA's victory could also normalize relations between the guild and the Association of Talent Agents, the bargaining representative of more than 100 agencies, including all the major ones. The dispute began on April 6, 2018, when the WGA sent the ATA a 12-month notice to terminate their Artists' Manager Basic Agreement of 1976 (AMBA), which regulated talent agency representation of writers. The WGA then made proposals to the ATA for a new AMBA agreement that would eliminate agency conflicts of interest, but the two sides were unable to reach a deal, and on June 19, 2019, the guild announced that it would no longer negotiate with the ATA, and would instead negotiate with individual agencies.
One by one, the agencies began to fall, signing the WGA's code of conduct – slowly at first, but then in a steady stream after more than 7,000 WGA members fired their agents in April 2019. Verve, which was not an ATA member, became the first mid-sized agency to sign in May of that year, followed by a succession of ATA member-agencies: Kaplan Stahler and Buchwald in July of 2019; the Gersh Agency and the Agency for the Performing Arts signed in January 2020; Paradigm signed last March; UTA in July; ICM Partners in August, and CAA in December. And now WME.
Labor disputes come and go, and even strikes end eventually, but curbing the major agencies' conflicts of interest will have a lasting and profound impact not only on writers and their agents, but on the industry as a whole.
The WGA West's "Two Davids" – executive director David Young and president David A. Goodman – deserve much of the credit for the guild's victory over the agency Goliaths, but they, no doubt, would be the first to share the credit with the WGA's 24-member Agency Negotiating Committee, which was co-chaired by Chris Keyser, David Shore and Meredith Stiehm. Their conquest of the agencies would not have been possible, however, without the unwavering support of the membership of the WGA West and East, more than 7,000 of whom fired their agents in the first shots of the battle back in April of 2019.
History will also record that seven writers – David Simon, Meredith Stiehm, Patricia Carr, Ashley Gable, Barbara Hall, Deric A. Hughes and Deirdre Mangan – led the charge as the named plaintiffs in the long-running court battle, which was ably waged by WGA West general counsel Tony Segall and a team of attorneys that included P. Casey Pitts, Stephen P. Berzon, Stacey Leyton, Andrew Kushner, Juhyung Harold Lee, Stephen Cannon and Ethan E. Litwin.
The WGA's victory could also open the door for SAG-AFTRA and the DGA to negotiate new franchise agreements with the ATA for the representation of their members. SAG-AFTRA hasn't had a franchise agreement with the ATA since the old Screen Actors Guild had a falling out with the ATA in 2002 when they couldn't come to terms over agency affiliations with related production entities. SAG argued back then, as the WGA did many years later, that such relationships made agents both the representatives and the employers of their members. SAG's move to disenfranchise the major agencies, although dramatic, saw no change in the way the agencies conducted business, and few if any actors left the big agencies to be represented by smaller ones that had agreed to SAG's terms. It's a standoff that continues to this day.
And the DGA recently weighed into the dispute between the WGA and WME, siding with the WGA. On Dec. 31, 2020, DGA national executive director Russell Hollander sent WME president Ari Greenburg saying that the DGA has "been closely following the negotiations and litigation and believes now is the right time to communicate our strong support for the WGA's efforts to remedy the affiliated production company issue."
"The issue of talent agencies owning production entities is, and always has been, an issue of great concern to the DGA," Hollander wrote. "The issue of avoiding conflicts of interest is exceedingly important to the DGA and our members. Affiliated ownership carries with it inherent and obvious conflicts of interest. Agents should be free and unencumbered to carry out their duties to their director-clients with only the directors' interests in mind, and should procure work for directors without the incentive to make cost-effective deals with production companies owned by the same parent company as their agency...This continued conflict of interest is not acceptable to the DGA. Absent prompt resolution, we intend to take all necessary and appropriate steps to protect our members."
The end of the historic legal battle between the WGA and WME came into view on Dec. 18 when U.S. District Court Judge André Birotte Jr., who is presiding over their antitrust case, repeatedly urged WME and the union to settle their dispute before it goes to trial. "Come on folks. Get together. Get this done," he told the lawyers who attended via Zoom.
A few days later, WME gave the WGA a proposal that updated the terms of a previous proposal, but the WGA rejected it on Dec. 29, saying, "WME has yet to grapple, in a serious way, with its own conflicts of interest."
The next day, the judge denied WME's request for a preliminary injunction that would have ended the WGA's boycott of the agency until the case can go to trial. It was a major legal victory for the WGA and added pressure on WME to settle and sign the WGA's franchise agreement. On Jan. 25, Endeavor president Mark Shapiro said that "We are currently in substantive discussions with the WGA to resolve the ongoing dispute. The tenor of the conversation is positive, and we are working diligently with the WGA to move this forward as quickly as possible."
And now that the deal is done, a new era of representing the interests of writers can begin.
Here is the WGA West's letter sent to its members today:
QuoteFebruary 5, 2021
Dear Members,
The WGA and William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC (WME) have reached a deal on a franchise agreement. Therefore, effective immediately, WME may once again represent Guild members for covered writing services. WGA and WME have also agreed to withdraw the legal claims each has brought against the other in federal court.
The WME franchise agreement contains the same terms as those set forth in the UTA/ICM/CAA deals and protects writers in the three fundamental areas that the Guild has emphasized since the beginning of the campaign:
* Contract, deal memo, and invoice information will be provided to the Guild, allowing the WGA and the agency to partner in systematically addressing late pay and free work.
* Strict 20% limitation on agency ownership of production entities.
* A sunset period that ends the practice of packaging by June 30, 2022.
* The WGA also negotiated a side letter with WME, its parent company Endeavor, and Endeavor's private equity owner Silver Lake that contains the protections previously negotiated with CAA, as well as additional terms. The purpose of the WME side letter is to address two complicated conflict of interest issues, one that is currently in play and one that is prospective. Specifically, WME is currently majority-owned by Silver Lake, and WME hopes in the future to become a publicly-traded corporation. Both of these circumstances required complex negotiations in order to ensure one thing: that WME be required to behave as a proper fiduciary, putting writer clients first regardless of the agency's ownership structure. WME, Endeavor and Silver Lake have worked with the WGA over the past month to craft an agreement that achieves this objective.
* WME/Endeavor agreed to a mutually-chosen third-party monitor, Louis M. Meisinger, a retired judge and mediator, to ensure that the agency sells down its interest in Endeavor Content to the required 20% or less in compliance with the Franchise Agreement. The side letter provides a deadline for the sale of Endeavor and Silver Lake's interests in Endeavor Content down to the permissible level.
During the divestment period, WME will escrow all after-tax gross profits, writer commissions and packaging fees related to WGA-covered projects produced by Endeavor Content. Judge Meisinger will also oversee all writer deals negotiated by WME with Endeavor Content to make sure the agency is properly carrying out its fiduciary duties for writer clients.
The side letter imposes serious consequences if the sale is not completed by the agreed deadline, including the right for the WGA to suspend WME's ability to represent writers and an enhanced obligation to escrow profits, package fees and commissions WME/Endeavor receives related to WGA-covered projects produced by Endeavor Content until the sale is complete.
* Consistent with the CAA agreement, the side letter ensures that WME/Endeavor and any Silver Lake entity will not jointly have a greater-than-20% ownership interest in any affiliate production company. The Silver Lake fund that owns WME/Endeavor will not have a greater than 20% ownership interest in any affiliate production company, regardless of whether WME/Endeavor also has an interest in the entity.
* The side letter provides that small (de minimis) shareholders of the agency are exempt from the 20% production ownership cap. This exemption applies only if the shareholder owns 5% or less of the agency and has no control over its operation or management.As long as WME remains a privately-held agency, the exemption will apply only to a limited group of institutional shareholders whose small stake confers no say over agency operations. WME must disclose those shareholders, and is also required to disclose to its writer clients the investor's greater-than-20% ownership interest in any production company that makes an offer of employment. WME must also provide the WGA the offer and final deal terms.
If WME/Endeavor becomes a publicly-traded company, it has agreed to publicly disclose the obligations shareholders have under the Franchise Agreement to prevent potential violations, including the fact that any shareholder who owns more than 5% of the public company would be bound by the Franchise Agreement. Thus, even in the event that WME/Endeavor goes public, any investor that owns 5% or more of the publicly-traded company will be required to abide by the 20% production cap.
* As in the CAA agreement, the side letter contains protections in the event a Silver Lake investment fund, other than the fund that has a direct interest in WME/Endeavor, acquires a greater than 20% interest in a production company. Silver Lake has agreed, going forward, to identify any such production company (as of today, there is none). If WME were to negotiate a deal with such a company, the agency would be required to disclose to its writer clients the existence of Silver Lake's ownership and to provide to the Guild a copy of the offer and final deal points.This transparency will allow the Guild to make sure that WME is negotiating appropriate deals for writers in these circumstances, and that Silver Lake's ownership interest is not suppressing the value of writers' services. If there are patterns in the writer deals—such as below-market pilot script fees, for example—the Guild will have the information it needs to investigate and take any necessary corrective action with WME.
The Guild appreciates the efforts of WME and Endeavor in working through the complicated issues involved in this negotiation.
You can read a red-lined version of the WME franchise agreement here (https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/WME-Franchise-Agreement-redlined.pdf). The WME/Endeavor/Silver Lake side letter is here (https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/WGA-WME-Sideletter.pdf). Click here (https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Agencies-Franchised-by-the-WGA.pdf) for the list of all franchised agencies.
This agreement concludes the negotiation phase of the agency campaign. The agreements expire on April 12, 2025 unless mutually extended on a year-by-year basis.
Congratulations are in order to the entire membership. Since saying thank you at the end of a long technical email is insufficient to recognize the member contributions and sacrifices this effort entailed, we will be back in touch soon with a wrap-up.
In solidarity,
WGA Agency Negotiating Committee
Chris Keyser, Co-Chair
David Shore, Co-Chair
Meredith Stiehm, Co-Chair
Lucy Alibar
John August
Angelina Burnett
Zoanne Clack
Kate Erickson
Jonathan Fernandez
Travon Free
Ashley Gable
Deric A. Hughes
Chip Johannessen
Michael Schur
Tracey Scott Wilson
Betsy Thomas
Patric M. Verrone
Nicole Yorkin
David A. Goodman, President WGAW, ex-officio
Marjorie David, Vice President WGAW, ex-officio
Michele Mulroney, Secretary-Treasurer WGAW, ex-officio
Beau Willimon, President WGAE, ex-officio
Kathy McGee, Vice President WGAE, ex-officio
Bob Schneider, Secretary-Treasurer WGAE, ex-officio
From
this article (https://deadline.com/2021/05/lionsgate-takeover-target-media-ma-ceo-jon-feltheimer-amazon-mgm-warnermedia-discovery-1234765650/) discussing the potential sale of Lionsgate:
QuoteFOUR DECADES OF MEDIA DEALS
1980s
1986 – Capital Cities buys ABC
1989 – Sony buys Columbia Pictures
1990s
1990 – Warner Communications and Time merge
1991 – Matsushita buys Universal parent MCA
1994 – Viacom buys Paramount
1994 – Viacom buys Blockbuster
1995 – Seagram buys Universal/MCA from Matsushita
1995 – Westinghouse buys CBS
1996 – Disney buys Capital Cities/ABC
1996 – Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting merge
1997 – Westinghouse sells its power and light bulb businesses and changes name to CBS
1998- AT&T buys John Malone's TCI cable
1999 – Viacom buys CBS
2000s
2000 – AOL buys Time Warner
2001 – Vivendi buys Seagram
2001 – Vivendi buys Barry Diller's USA Networks
2001 – Comcast buys AT&T Broadband
2003 – Vivendi creates NBCUniversal by combining the studio with GE's TV biz led by NBC
2004 – Comcast tries unsuccessfully to buy Disney
2011 – Comcast buys 51% of NBCUniversal
2013 – Comcast buys rest of NBCUniversal
2014 – AT&T acquires DirecTV
2015 – Charter Acquires Time Warner Cable
2017 – Disney acquires Fox (outbids Comcast, which buys Sky)
2018 – AT&T acquires Time Warner
2021 – AT&T sells part of DirecTV
2021- AT&T sells WarnerMedia
2021 – Amazon buys MGM
Dang!! Very interesting.
lol @ Comcast in 2004.
30 Rock's Kabletown arc was the first time I took note of these purchases/Corp-blobs. And when Disney bought Marvel... I remember finding that very odd, yet, it's somehow been better for Marvel than for Star Wars which I hadn't anticipated.
Someone joked that in another 10 years all of these media companies will be owned by PornHub.
They Resurrected MGM. Amazon Bought the Studio. Now What? (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/business/media/mgm-amazon-michael-deluca-pamela-abdy.html)
Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy have reinvigorated a once-storied Hollywood institution. Now it needs to figure out its place in a streaming company.
Nicole Sperling
July 6, 2021Updated 4:04 p.m. ET
Paul Thomas Anderson and Michael De Luca are film geeks with a shared history. As a studio executive, Mr. De Luca championed Mr. Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," films that established the director's reputation as a creative force. So when Focus Features said it would postpone the production of Mr. Anderson's new film because of the pandemic, it was Mr. De Luca, in his new role as chairman of MGM's Motion Picture Group, who swooped in and pledged to get the movie into production in Los Angeles when Mr. Anderson wanted to shoot.
And being that the two men can't resist the pull of old Hollywood, Mr. De Luca made sure to amp up the nostalgia associated with his efforts to reinvigorate MGM, the once mighty studio that in recent decades has been reduced to a financial Ping-Pong ball, volleyed back and forth by various investors eager to turn the company's 4,000-film library into a cash cow.
"I said, 'This will be fun. Come make your movie at Metro,'" Mr. De Luca recalled with a laugh, referring to the studio's former moniker of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Mr. Anderson was game.
"If Mike says something will happen, it happens," he said. "It's hard not to stress how rare of a quality that is."
The question now is, in light of Amazon's decision last month to acquire MGM in an $8.45 billion deal, will Mr. De Luca still be able to keep his promises? Or will he simply be part of a corporate hierarchy less prone to taking chances on films and filmmakers?
In the past 15 months, MGM has experienced a resurgence, led by Mr. De Luca, a one-time brash and reckless young executive who introduced filmmakers like Mr. Anderson and David Fincher to the culture when he was president of production at New Line Cinema, and now, after 36 years in the business, is seen as one of its most reliable statesmen. His deputy, Pamela Abdy, produced "Garden State" when she was at Jersey Films and amplified the career of Alejandro González Iñárritu, among others, during her time as a Paramount executive and later at New Regency.
At MGM, the two have compiled a heady mix of A-list directors and compelling material they hope hearkens back to the days when Fred Astaire and Judy Garland roamed the once-hallowed studio's hallways. The next six months will show if their strategy pays off. Mr. Anderson's movie will debut on Nov. 26. It will follow Ridley Scott's pulpy drama "House of Gucci," starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver. In December, Joe Wright's musical adaptation of "Cyrano," with Peter Dinklage and featuring music from The National, will be released.
And then there is "No Time to Die," the long-awaited 25th installment of the James Bond franchise and Daniel Craig's swan song in the role, which is scheduled for theatrical release on Oct. 8. (The film was completed before Mr. De Luca and Ms. Abdy's arrival and was delayed by the pandemic.)
"Mike and Pam understand that we are at a critical juncture and that the continuing success of the James Bond series is dependent on us getting the next iteration right and will give us the support we need to do this," Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, the sibling producing team who have long overseen the Bond franchise, said in a statement.
They added that "Amazon has assured us that Bond will continue to debut" in movie theaters. "Our hope is that they will empower Mike and Pam to continue to run MGM unencumbered," they said.
Still, Amazon's priorities are inherently different from a traditional studio's.
In 2019, Amazon Studios, under the leadership of Jennifer Salke, shifted away from exclusive theatrical windows, opting instead to make movies available in theaters and on Amazon Prime the same day, the strategy preferred by the prominent streaming platforms. The pandemic turbocharged that approach. Ms. Salke was able to buy films like "Coming 2 America" and the recently released "The Tomorrow War" from studios looking to offload their movies because theaters were largely closed. Viewership on Amazon Prime skyrocketed and movies, which had previously taken a back seat to television shows, suddenly became a much more attractive opportunity. Anemic overall film output would no longer do.
Mr. De Luca and Ms. Abdy stress that even in light of the pending acquisition, which still needs government approval, their philosophy of movie theaters first will remain.
"There is theatrical in our near future, there will be theatrical after the deal closes," Mr. De Luca said. "There will always be theatrical at MGM."
It's not clear how the management of MGM will be handled once the acquisition is complete. Amazon declined to comment on the record for this article. There are some in Hollywood's film community who are hopeful that Mr. De Luca and Ms. Abdy will oversee Amazon's movie business once the merger is complete.
Ms. Salke has led both divisions for the past three years, managing an $8 billion annual content budget, and Amazon has made no indication that will change. Before joining Amazon, Ms. Salke spent seven years as president of entertainment at NBC. (In an interesting twist, Ms. Salke's biggest bet is a $450 million television adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," which Peter Jackson previously adapted into a series of blockbuster films at New Line when Mr. De Luca was an executive there.) Her upcoming films include the Cannes Film Festival opener "Annette"; Aaron Sorkin's "Being the Ricardos," about Lucy and Desi Arnaz; and George Clooney's "The Tender Bar," starring Ben Affleck.
The producer Matt Tolmach, who has two projects in the works at MGM, including the horror film "Dark Harvest," set for release on Sept. 23, said Mr. De Luca's passion for good stories is infectious. "He read the script and he called me, and we had an hourlong conversation just about the possibilities and how amazing it would be and how we can push the boundaries," he said of "Dark Harvest." "That's what he does. He makes your movie better."
As Mr. De Luca sees it, the new MGM is about "treating the filmmakers like the franchise," he said. When he and Ms. Abdy first joined forces, the duo compiled a list of 36 directors they were hoping to lure to the studio. In 15 months, they've nabbed 20 percent of them, including Darren Aronofsky, Sarah Polley, Melina Matsoukas and George Miller.
"We don't mind taking big swings and gambling because I think it's either go big or go home," he added. "I think the audience rewards you if you are really original, innovative, bold and creative."
In a shareholder meeting last month, Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and executive chairman, called the reason behind the acquisition "very simple." He said MGM had a "vast, deep catalog of much beloved" movies and shows. "We can reimagine and redevelop that I.P. for the 21st century."
That runs counter to the approach Mr. De Luca and Ms. Abdy have primarily taken.
"Mike and I did not sit down and say let's raid the library and remake everything," Ms. Abdy said. "Our focus is original ideas with original authorship and real filmmakers, but you know every once in a while something will come up that's fun and we'll pursue it if we think it makes sense."
Those ideas include a hybrid live action/animated remake of "Pink Panther"; Michael B. Jordan directing the third installment of the "Rocky" spinoff "Creed"; and "Legally Blonde 3" with Reese Witherspoon and a script co-written by Mindy Kaling.
Of course, all of MGM's success is hypothetical, as none of the projects initiated by Mr. De Luca and Ms. Abdy have been seen yet. The company's recent acquisition of Sean Penn's directorial effort "Flag Day," which is set to debut at the Cannes Film Festival before opening on Aug. 20, will mark the regime's first release. The studio also has high hopes for "Respect," an Aretha Franklin biopic starring Jennifer Hudson, which comes out in August (and was in motion when Mr. De Luca and Ms. Abdy came to MGM).
But they said their efforts to reinvigorate the studio were more than just an attempt to make the company attractive to buyers. Anchorage Capital, the majority owners of MGM, put the studio up for sale in December and the speed with which a deal was made surprised Mr. De Luca and Ms. Abdy.
Both said they were in for the long haul. "If it works, I feel like it could go on forever," Mr. De Luca said. Ms. Abdy added, "Until they carry us out."
As part of their efforts, Mr. De Luca and Mrs. Abdy even had MGM's logo reworked: Leo the lion is now digital and the gold film ribbons that encircle him have been sharpened "to own gold the way Netflix owns red," Mr. De Luca said. The three Latin words encircling the lion — "Ars Gratia Artis" — are first spelled out in English: "Art for Art's Sake."
That's music to Mr. Anderson's ears.
"Long live the lion!" he said. "Whether it's 'The Wizard of Oz' or 'Tom & Jerry' cartoons, the lion is a symbol of our business. The healthier, the better."
And how does he feel about MGM being sold to Amazon?
"Who?" he responded.
QuoteHis deputy, Pamela Abdy, produced "Garden State" when she was at Jersey Films and amplified the career of Alejandro González Iñárritu
So that's 2 strikes against her.
Indie Film and TV Studio A24 Explored Sale With $3 Billion Asking Price (https://variety.com/2021/film/news/inside-a24-billion-dollar-sale-1235018988/)
Where Have the Low-Budget Movies Gone? - Filmmaker Mag (https://filmmakermagazine.com/111921-where-have-the-low-budget-movies-gone/?fbclid=IwAR18wcVVSdTKDOoer4m8N0dB3mTlYn4g659p16tXZXxfSea03LVNGYPRJNY#.YOyUBS1h1pQ)
Netflix's Scott Stuber Is Doing 'Everything I Can' to Land Christopher Nolan's Next Film (https://www.thewrap.com/netflix-scott-stuber-christopher-nolan-next-film/)
The streamer's film chief is feeling bold since signing Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners
Oscars Academy Postpones All In-Person Events and Screenings Until 2022 (https://www.thewrap.com/oscars-academy-postpones-all-in-person-events-and-screenings-until-2022/)
QuoteCOVID is still disrupting the Oscar season. On Friday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science canceled all in-person events and screenings for the remainder of 2021.
QuoteThe scaling back of in-person Academy events is the latest sign of anxiety about the recent surge in COVID infections and hospitalizations in the U.S. and worldwide.
I'll be disappointed--but not surprised--if late season releases get delayed.
This seems like an appropriate time to ponder such things:
All Bad Choices for James Bond: Should 'No Time to Die' Stick to October Release? (https://www.thewrap.com/all-bad-choices-for-james-bond-should-no-time-to-die-stick-to-october-release/)
James Bond has survived some pretty tight scrapes over the years. He's been thrown out of an airplane without a parachute. Shoved in a swimming pool full of sharks. Had a laser beam aimed at his groin. But in the six decades since 007 first appeared on screen, he's never fallen into a more treacherous or diabolical trap: Next month, he'll be venturing into movie theaters in the middle of a pandemic.
Even Blofeld is biting his nails.
MGM's "No Time to Die," the 25th official Bond film, is, as of this writing, still sticking to its Oct. 8 release date in the U.S., even as other studio tentpoles — like Paramount's "Top Gun" sequel — scurry for the presumed safety of 2022.
The film, twice postponed because of COVID-19, had suffered a series of setbacks during production from Danny Boyle exiting the director's chair over creative differences to Daniel Craig's injury on the set requiring ankle surgery. After all that, it's understandable that MGM and especially the Bond franchise's producers, Barbara Broccoli and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson, would be chomping at the bit to finally get the picture onto screens.
Still, a month out from its debut, it's worth pondering the question: Is this a smart move? Because there are other choices, even if none of them are what could be remotely called good. Like every studio right now, MGM — which is currently in the process of being absorbed by Amazon — is doing its best to untangle a Gordian knot of distribution dilemmas. Theaters in the U.S. and Europe, where Bond movies tend to sell the most tickets, are only filling about 40% to 50% of their seats, and those numbers could easily drop as the Delta variant continues to spread (or the Mu variant emerges). On the other hand, going straight to streaming for a tentpole this gigantic could turn out to be an even bigger gamble.
So, in the parlance of the clandestine services, let's war-game out some of the various release scenarios and see if there's one bad choice that, like "The Spy Who Loved Me," is better than all the rest ...
1. Stick to the Oct. 8 release date
"No Time to Die" reportedly cost $250 million to make. According to traditional Hollywood mathematics, that means it needs to gross at least $750 million worldwide, or three times its production budget, to break even (since studios split ticket sales with theaters and often spend as much on marketing event movies as they do on making them). Before the pandemic, when "No Time to Die" was greenlit, that was not an unreasonable target. The 2012 Bond film "Skyfall" grossed $1.1 billion. 2015's "Spectre" made $879 million. Today, though, pulling that sort of box office with a theatrical-only release seems about as plausible as Bond hopscotching across a pond of crocodiles (see: "Live and Let Die"). It could happen, but it's highly unlikely.
Yes, Universal's "F9" came close to that number this summer, with a global box office of $700 million. But that $200 million movie arrived in theaters in mid-June, before the Delta variant, when for a few sunny weeks it looked as if the pandemic was over. Also, "F9" made a huge chunk of its grosses in Asia, which at that time had returned to pre-pandemic levels of theater attendance. Delta has since forced many of those theaters to close again. Another difference: "F9" is the sort of film that skews younger than Bond films typically do, and polling shows that younger viewers are more inclined to return to theaters than older ones.
Perhaps a more apples-to-apples comparison might be Disney's "Black Widow," which also cost about $200 million but ended up only grossing $371 million globally when it was released in July. Still — and this is something MGM might want to pay attention to — Disney was able to goose those numbers up a bit by simultaneously releasing the picture on Disney+ for a premium of $30 per download, raking in an additional $67 million in digital revenue in its opening weekend.
2. Move the Date Again
This could happen, but it's not likely. For one thing, the Broccolis have insisted that they aren't budging and last week even released the third and final "No Time to Die" trailer as if to underscore their resolve. The two previous release delays haven't merely been frustrating for the producers, they've been hugely costly to MGM, which is carrying and servicing the debt on the film without any ticket sales to pay it back.
There are other additional costs in keeping the movie on the shelf, as well. After already launching (and scrapping) two expensive marketing campaigns, then a third for October, nobody at MGM can be relishing the possibility of doing it for a fourth time. Plus, the studio has already reportedly had to go back into the print for costly digital touch-ups to the various product placements throughout the movie (the phones had aged into last year's less-cool models). Nobody wants to do that again.
Even if MGM did decide to move "No Time to Die," though, where would it move it to? 2022 is already looking pretty crowded. "Mission: Impossible 7," "Jurassic World: Dominion," "The Batman," "Indiana Jones 5," "Avatar 2" — there's hardly a spot on the calendar that isn't already crammed with competition. At least by sticking to Oct. 8, Bond has the field pretty much to himself.
3. Stream It like Netflix (or at least like Disney)
Netflix has no problem splurging $200 million or more on movies that will never see the inside of a theater — just ask Martin Scorsese. From the streamer's point of view, it's all about baiting subscribers and managing the brand and if it costs $200 million a movie, so be it. Whether this strategy makes any economic sense, nobody knows. Netflix won't even bother to say how many people watch its films (and has been particularly silent on Scorsese's CG-heavy "The Irishman").
But Amazon, which announced a $8.45 billion deal for MGM earlier this year that expected to close in mid-2022, has a different sort of game plan — it's as interested in selling paper towels as it is streaming movies. And even if $250 million is a mere rounding error for Jeff Bezos (or even his successor CEO, Andy Jassy), it's hard to imagine Amazon's streaming brain trust being so cavalier about "No Time To Die." After all, one of the prime draws of buying MGM was adding the Bond franchise to its catalog.
While MGM reportedly had talks last fall with Apple and Netflix about selling "No Time to Die" for as much as $600 million, no deal ever materialized. Still, it might make sense for Amazon to pursue a quick deal for "No Time To Die" that follows the Disney hybrid model: simultaneously releasing the film in theaters as well as offering it as a premium download for Amazon Prime's 200 million worldwide members (which, by the way, is nearly twice the number of Disney subscribers). Even if just 10% of those members decided to pay, say, $29.99 to watch the first 007 movie in six years from the comfort of their own living rooms, that'd be almost $600 million in fees, almost every penny of which goes to Amazon. If the film picks up another $300 to $400 million from global theatrical, the way "Black Widow" did, then we're talking real money. In fact, that would put "No Time To Die's" grosses right up there with "Skyfall" and "Spectre."
Alas, that's not likely to happen. And that's partly because the Broccolis, who have final say in just about all things related to the Bond franchise, don't want it to. "We are committed to continuing to make James Bond films for the worldwide theatrical audience," the half-siblings announced last spring when rumors of a possible streaming premiere first started circulating.
So far, at least, they are sticking to their guns.
In summary: the Befores Movies have to take an L sooner or later.
MGM's Michael De Luca, Pamela Abdy Underscore Commitment to Theatrical (https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mgm-michael-luca-pamela-abdy-190848804.html)
QuoteMGM Motion Picture Group chairman Michael De Luca and president Pamela Abdy have stressed that the Hollywood studio remains a home for filmmakers who want to release their movies in the cinema.
Speaking at the Zurich Film Festival's industry event, the Zurich Summit – ahead of next week's theatrical launch of "No Time to Die" – the pair were interviewed on stage by CAA Media Finance co-head Roeg Sutherland. He asked how they convinced filmmakers to work with MGM rather than streamers "which are incredibly competitive about pricing."
"The good news is we don't really have to do a heavy sales pitch," replied De Luca. "The filmmakers that came with us prefer theatrical so it pitches itself. They're two very distinct experiences."
MGM has an impressive slate of films from leading directors coming up, including Ridley Scott's "House of Gucci," George Miller's "Three Thousand Years of Longing," Paul Thomas Anderson's "Licorice Pizza" and Sarah Polley's "Women Talking."
"If you're George Miller, Ridley Scott, Paul Thomas Anderson or Sarah Polley, the people that we made movies with, they all to a person prefer that theatrical experience for their movie if given the choice," said De Luca. "And we gave them that choice."
"Our slate reflects filmmakers who preferred theatrical, even in the era of the pandemic," added De Luca.
When building its slate, Abdy said there was no specific genre that the studio favored. "We try to go after filmmakers first and foremost. That's what attracts us mostly...for us the directors are the IP."
De Luca and Abdy's comments come, of course, just four months after streamer Amazon announced it was buying MGM for $8.45 billion.
De Luca addressed the deal only to say that because it is under review by the Federal Trade Commission, "we're still operating like two separate companies because until it closes that's just the normal course of business."
He added: "Neither of us will know what the integration might look like until we're on the other side of it getting approved and we're so far away from that."
Sutherland also asked De Luca and Abdy why they had "doubled down" on making movies during the pandemic while many other studios were stopping production.
"We're an independent studio, we don't have unlimited resources," explained De Luca. "Whenever you're at a smaller, scrappier company, you look to what the big guys aren't doing. We're very opportunistic about it...
"At that time, the word uncertain was being thrown around a lot – like 'theatrical has an uncertain future' – which the streamers definitely exploited to their advantage, which is fine. It's a competitive pitch for them. But we just thought, 'Okay, the studios are throttling back. Let's do the opposite.'"
As a result, said Abdy, MGM has been able to "build up an arsenal of films" ready to be released as the world opens up after the pandemic.
[edit] Another angle (https://deadline.com/2021/09/mgm-chiefs-pamela-abdy-michael-de-luca-preach-benefits-originality-not-everything-has-to-be-a-franchise-1234844361/)
https://twitter.com/fixyourheartsor/status/1442249420599447557
Netflix Leak Revealed How Much They Made On Their Biggest Show And It's Shocking (https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/netflix-leak-squid-game.html)
Quote...audiences have learned what Netflix has earned on Squid Game and how much they paid to make the show. The numbers are shocking. While the streaming service has declined to comment on the numbers reported, Bloomberg claims a lawyer for Netflix did attempt to dissuade the outlet from sharing the numbers, saying that it was "inappropriate". But share them Bloomberg has. According to their report of the Netflix leak, the streaming service paid $21.4 million to buy Squid Game. They've earned $891 million.
It's worth looking at how Netflix came up with that number. For one thing, it's important to note that only the streaming service itself measures their own viewership data, which is something they use when calculating their own show's value. According to the Netflix leak report, they then create a number based on "impact value". Based on subscriber viewing, which includes the number of people watching and how long they watch for, they calculate how much a show was worth to the streaming service.
These numbers from the Netflix leak reveal that the streaming service has put the value of Squid Game at more than 40 times what they paid for it. As the show's creator is currently in talks with Netflix for Squid Game season two and possible spinoff shows, hopefully, they can use this information to secure them a much higher payout this time around for their work. With this information made public, it's certainly something that both Netflix and the show's creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, may be asked about in the future.
Reports have suggested that the streaming service has already fired an employee they claim is responsible for the Netflix leak. Reportedly, this employee is one of the trans employees planning a walkout at the streaming service. It's been reported that one of the reasons behind the leak is that the employee wanted audiences to see what the streaming service paid for Squid Game versus The Closer, a controversial stand-up special from comedian Dave Chappelle.
The Closer is allegedly a transphobic special. It has caused a great deal of controversy both online and inside the company as employees reportedly brought up issues with the special before it was streamed. According to the Netflix leak, the streaming service paid $21.4 million for season one of Squid Game, which has become their biggest show ever and earned them $891 million in impact value. Meanwhile, they reportedly paid $24.1 million for the Dave Chappelle standup special, meaning they paid nearly $3 million more than they did for the nine episodes of Squid Game.
For now, it can't be said that the Netflix leak reveals all of the relevant information or that it is entirely accurate. However, Bloomberg is a respected outlet, and the firing of the employee responsible has been widely reported. It seems as though Squid Game has been an even bigger earner for the streaming service than anyone knew.
Bloomberg article (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-17/squid-game-season-2-series-worth-900-million-to-netflix-so-far)
I will do my best to re-animate a post wilder made on Oct 31st - it was a valuable resource of independent filmmaking information and the structure of correlated articles wilder featured paint a neat outline of the OTT and Theatrical zeitgeist we were met with in 2021:
Some context for the following. Aga Woszczyńska on how she got her film
Silent Land (https://xixax.com/index.php?topic=14569.0) made:
Quote
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
AW: In Europe we don't have big studios that invest private money to finance movies. We have a system of public funding that includes national film institutes, film commissions and regional funds, which support the films I make — artistic, not exactly targeted at commercial success and huge box office. My film is a co-production between Poland, Italy, and the Czech Republic. The film was initiated in Poland; I'm Polish and so is my main producer, Agnieszka Wasiak of Lava Films. The film was shot entirely in Italy and the post-production was done in the Czech Republic.
During our filmmaking journey, we met other great partners: in Italy, Giovanni Pompili at Kino Produzioni, and in the Czech Republic, Jordi Niubo at I/O Post. In Poland, we received support from the Polish Film Institute, Łódź Film Fund, and from Canal+ Poland. In Italy and the Czech Republic the film was supported by their local public funds. In Italy, we also got great logistic help from Sardinia FilmCommission. Our Czech Partner is a post-production studio, so they also invested in the film with their services and facilities. We are supported by European supranational funding, too: Eurimages and Creative Europe Media program.
So it's all a patchwork of different funds and partners, and we were financing "Silent Land" for about four years altogether. It's been a long, arduous process but it was an amazing feeling when we finally closed the budget and could greenlight the production.
Channel 4 CEO Meets New U.K. Culture Secretary for First Time as Threat of Privatization Looms - Variety (https://variety.com/2021/tv/global/nadine-dorries-channel-4-privatization-1235100609/)Why Channel 4 should not be privatisedFinancial TimesSeptember 16, 2021
Bafta-winning film-maker Roger Graef, a board member at the channel's launch, makes the case for
keeping it public
Channel 4 is unique as a publicly owned channel that pays for itself through advertising. It is committed to creativity and risk-taking in cinema, drama, comedy, documentaries and current affairs. The UK government has been conducting a "consultation" about privatising the channel — selling it off. The document's preamble is full of praise for the channel's achievements and it proposes that its distinctiveness will be protected through privatisation. But this particular gift horse has very sharp teeth.
What is the market case? Commercial television is already well served in Britain. ITV has six channels. Channel 5 is aimed at the same viewers. They all compete with C4 to win advertising. Online, hundreds of channels recycle US-style fodder and old films to do the same. The big subscription channels hoover up viewers like giant trawlers with three-mile nets.
That competition is the rationale for a change of ownership. Yet Channel 4 is in rude financial health. It has a record surplus of £74m, announced in June. If privatised, this would go to shareholders instead of being seen on screen — currently, its profits are recycled into independent productions. In this financial year, revenues are expected to exceed £1bn for the first time thanks to increases from digital services, which now account for more than one-fifth.
The government is right about market uncertainty. But if C4 is sold off — the government's
"preferred option" — its new owners will be driven by shareholders' demand for dividends to make it more populist. Yet this is limited by the current remit requiring the channel to innovate and be distinctive. To attract buyers, the government plans to "modernise" the remit. Risk-taking will be the first casualty.
So if there is no commercial need or consumer demand, what is the real motive behind the current threat to the channel? You don't have to be Hercule Poirot to see it. This government is even more sensitive to criticism than its predecessors of all stripes. Privatisation is a way to draw its sting.
This is not a small adjustment — in the name of ensuring the channel is "fit for the future", it
will erase the commitment of the past 40 years to provide programming not available on other channels. It will also nobble its current affairs output, a major source of thorns in successive governments' side. Note Boris Johnson's refusal to appear on Channel 4 News during the election and ever since to avoid tough questions (as he has refused the BBC's Today programme and Newsnight and other forthright interviewers). More populist and less hard-hitting news and current affairs will erode into "infotainment" — the Dutch elm disease of serious and innovative programming.
Yet Channel 4 was a Tory creation. Its unique structure, at its launch in 1982, was based on the formula of public service risk-taking underwritten by advertising, at first sold on its behalf by ITV: it was a brilliant creation by prime minister Margaret Thatcher and home secretary Willie Whitelaw. As an independent film-maker and member of the original board of directors, I was among those delighted by the encouragement to be original.
The guarantee of a sufficient share of independently produced content on
C4 (and then the BBC) has created the thriving indie sector we have in the UK today. But this was based on finding new talent and serving new audiences, covering neglected
areas in society — not on playing it safe. If a giant such as Amazon takes over the channel, all but the biggest indies will go to the wall.
C4 is not perfect. It has pursued ratings like other commercial channels: in the 1990s its chief executive Michael Grade arranged for the channel to sell its own advertising, and since then Channel 4 has spent much time and energy shoring up audiences with shows such as Big Brother and The Great British Bake Off. This strategy has risks: the more commercially successful it is, the less the justification for continued public ownership.
But C4 is still innovative and distinctive by contrast with other terrestrial broadcasters. Just
last week it showed Black to Front — a day and night devoted to programmes and adverts featuring black people. The following day it cleared the Saturday night schedules to show the US Open tennis final. Amazon charged the Earth for the rights. The channel showed it without ads. That is public service broadcasting. The remit has been eroded by pressure to gain viewers but it is not yet fully destroyed. Privatisation would administer the coup de grâce.
The so-called "consultation" about privatisation ended this Tuesday. But the government had already rejected new board candidates unless they supported privatisation, so the outcome is hardly in doubt. The whole exercise is a cynical charade. The channel does need protection — from its "protectors" in government.
Channel 4 privatisation 'could shut up to 60 production companies' - The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/14/channel-4-privatisation-60-production-companies-indie-producers)
Quote"If Channel 4 wants to grow at some point it will need cash. It won't be able to compete with the streaming giants..."
QuoteAn analysis of those 200 production companies found that almost 140 relied on Channel 4 for half or more of their TV production work.
"Regional production companies are more likely to be reliant on Channel 4projects," said Broughton."
"A reduction in spend on original productions could jeopardise 50 to 60 small production companies," said Broughton. "And potentially more if a buyer is particularly risk averse and looks to commission more from larger producers."
From Brian Newman's mailing list. Not gospel, but worth considering.
Follow the Money
October 27, 2021The phrase "follow the money" usually means to follow the money to find the real dirt on someone or something, especially in politics. But what I mean here is that filmmakers should follow the money if they want success in today's film world. And if you don't follow where the money's going, well... it ain't gonna be easy for you, but more power to you Super-Indie.
Exhibit A. This past week, Variety had an article (https://variety.com/2021/film/awards/story-syndicate-becoming-cousteau-liz-garbus-dan-cogan-1235094999/) on Story Syndicate - the powerhouse production company behind Becoming Costeau, and a ton of other docs, founded by Liz Garbus and Dan Cogan. It's a great intro to the company if you don't know them (most people know one or both of the founders, and full disclosure - I like them, and think they're doing some of the best work in the business), and it explains how they work, how it was set up and why. That last part is the most interesting to me, and it speaks to following the money. Co-founder Dan Cogan readily admits the company was founded because he saw the writing on the wall, and:
"I was paying attention to the fact that the streamers were buying fewer and fewer films and
instead were making (their own) docs and docuseries," explains Cogan, who serves as co-president
along with his wife. "So, it seemed clear to me that the future was going to lay in actually making
films and series for the streamers as opposed to making and financing them independently and
selling them, which is what I was doing at Impact."
I've written about this a few times before (Bye Bye, Equity Pie (https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?u=43175ffadd10a314510384941&id=f8fc14fb14), and The New Rules (https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?u=43175ffadd10a314510384941&id=f8fc14fb14)), but I'm glad to see this so clearly articulated for those who never seem to believe me. Sure, Cogan and Garbus also wanted to work together, and had some other reasons; but they're also smart, and could follow where the money was going – from one business model to another – and made the move before it might have been too late.
It's really simple – while the doc/nonfiction/unscripted space is booming, most of this is in
originals, not acquisitions. There are exceptions, but for the most part, the buyers don't want to buy your completed doc. In fact, it's become such a strong trend that one former sales agent recently confided that the sales agents don't even want these films, because they know that gig is up as well. Everyone is focused on pitching earlier, and earlier, and only moving forward on production of stuff if it's being "commissioned" and has a home on one of the major streamers or broadcasters (those that still exist are really becoming hybrid anyways).
This is also true in the fiction world – fewer films are being acquired after being independently produced. Which means – follow the money – you need to also be following their lead in the fiction space as well. Of course, this is easier said than done – you need contacts, great ideas, a track record, and the right project at the right time. But it's not like raising indie equity was every all that easy either, or that you don't need those same things to "make it" in the indie space. So this is just another new thing producers need to learn and focus on for success (and it's what's old is new again, as this was the case a long time ago, and has been in foreign films for quite some time).
Sure, there will be exceptions. Especially if you think you've got that perfect project that will attract those higher prices later. Or if you just don't have access, but have a film that just must be made. Or that falls outside of the commercial needs of the buyers – but at this moment, with all eyeballs on the streamers, you should also consider whether this is the time for things they won't be buying. There's also a good case for hybrid models – reducing your equity exposure by bringing on soft money (grants, donations, foreign co-productions, etc), going to the smaller-ish distributors earlier (because they need films that are being lost to Netflix, et al.), and when appropriate, looking for brand funding, which can also bring marketing support. As I've said before – zig when others zag (https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?u=43175ffadd10a314510384941&id=4dac211bf8)and build a new model.
But the smartest thing you can do right now is to follow the lead of folks like Story Syndicate, and follow the money to where the current business model actually is, not where we might wish it were.
Winds of Change
October 21, 2021It's become increasingly clear that things are not going back to normal anytime soon. You can make that as a general statement about the world today, but of course I'm focusing on the world of film. A few articles caught my eye this week, each of them showing some aspect of major, lasting change in the business – none of which bode well for arthouse/indie/specialized film (and I'd argue for brand funded films either, for those of you in that business too, like me).
First up was an article – one that actually launched last week in Filmmaker Magazine, but after I had pressed send on my newsletter – from Dan Mirvish – co-founder of Slamdance, filmmaker, author, multiple-hat-wearer – titled The Year of the Hybrid: 9 Ways to Make the Most of a Hybrid Festival Premiere (https://filmmakermagazine.com/112453-the-year-of-the-hybrid-9-ways-to-make-the-most-of-a-hybrid-festival-premiere/#.YX802dnMKDX). Dan takes a look at the current state of film fests- most going hybrid in some fashion due to Covid - and in his cheery, subversive way, proposes many ways that a filmmaker can take advantage of the situation to have a great premiere and festival run. He also proposes some new rules for how to evaluate a festival: are the Q&A's live or taped?; can you meet other filmmakers in person or online?; what else can you get/make out of this festival?
He also proposes that critics and distributors think differently about festivals as well, namely, in not relying solely on the big fests to set their agenda. As Dan writes, "To adhere to the same festival schedule and rules that guided us for the last 40 years is to deny the earth-shattering realities of how the festival world has changed around us." True, but I am fearful that all parties are too lazy to change their habits. Most are just trying to get by and keep hoping some semblance of normalcy will come soon. And sales agents/distributors are as lazy as festival organizers are hardworking. Plus, they're moving more towards paying attention to even less film fests – and building their own market platforms to bypass the festival system altogether – more than they're including them in some new reality. The top film fests are now slightly good for discovery, mainly good for industry press/buzz, and all of those below that level are mainly (and rightfully) there for building local cinephile buzz. Which is what Dan did, quite well, so the article is worth a long read. But it also points out that a lot of the changes that hit the festival world are here to stay – and it's up to the filmmakers/rights-holders to make them useful for your success, because no one else will be there to help you.
Second up, and more depressing was Anthony Kaufman, once again at Filmmaker Magazine, with Arthouses Adjust to a Reconfigured Landscape (https://filmmakermagazine.com/112346-the-covid-challenge-arthouses-adjust-to-a-reconfigured-landscape/#.YX81GNnMKDW). Kaufman takes an in-depth look at what's happening in the US arthouse market, and while often filled with portraits of innovative hope, it's got a lot more doom and gloom. From folks closing down, to others programming more mainstream fare so they won't go bankrupt, to many
contemplating smaller runs for even the best films - there's a lot of change going on. I'm pretty bullish on the survival of theaters, usually, but this article started getting me worried. And once again, it pointed out that the most indie of indies are going to need to fight for their success in
this new marketplace.
Of course, the pundits will say – but that's because everyone has shifted to streaming, and the rest of the market needs to adjust. Amen brother, but that's not working out so well either. Because next up was a series of articles focused on new research and charts released this week from ComScore and
Lightsaber Lightshed about the state of the streaming market. Here's one of the better summaries of the data (https://thestreamable.com/news/netflix-youtube-lead-connected-tv-time-spent-hulu-disney-plus-amazon-prime-video-numbers-stagnate), but all you need to do is look at these two charts:
(https://i.ibb.co/pQMfx0y/OTTViewing-Hours2021.png)
Everyone and their grandmother have spent the last year or two trying to launch a new streaming service of some sort. All of them are trying to get in the game of peeling a few eyeballs away from Netflix and YouTube, in the hope that somehow, they'll establish a direct connection to audiences/fans and build the riches. This has started the content wars, where everyone is trying to aggregate services, libraries and new "content," in the thought that this will somehow help them compete. On the giant side of the spectrum, this means Discovery/Warners, or Amazon buying MGM. On the small fry side, it's seen every day with places like Cinedigm (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cinedigm-chairman-ceo-chris-mcgurk-223000851.html)launching new/rebuilt (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cinedigm-announces-killer-launch-subscription-133000914.html) channels, or FilmRise (https://www.videoageinternational.net/2021/10/05/news/mipcom-content-highlights-filmrise/)buying up libraries for niche channels, or Struum (https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/25/struum-launches-its-classpass-for-streaming-service-to-the-public/?guccounter=1)giving you ClassPass access to all of them.
But it's not working. As everyone should have learned in the decade and a half since the long-tail theory was popularized– there's no riches in niches, it's all in the hits. Ok, there's some money in them hills, but not what everyone thinks, and in the grand scheme – the one that matters – they are barely making a dent. None of the aforementioned services even make it into the above charts - they are mixed in with "other."
As you can see from the charts, no one is getting close to stealing eyeballs from Netflix and YouTube, and the new services seem to just be peeling a few eyes away from Hulu and Amazon. Sure the "other" adds up to 18%, but you have to own all of other for it to matter. And the news is worse for the biggest players of all – the Disney's, Hulu's, Peacock's and Pluto's of the world – heck, even for Amazon.
This is not sustainable. I call it the (soon to come) great streaming implosion of 2023. I give it about two years; a smart friend of mine who knows this space gives it three to four. But it's coming. It will implode on its own – from overspending, from consolidation in hopes that a merger will save the day (it won't), and more likely, from consumers getting fed up and cutting the new virtual cord(s) and just sticking with TikTok or some new competitor. The little folks will just disappear, or be absorbed into the big guys, but with at least half of their libraries jettisoned due to the reality of how few people watch their library shows/films.
The biggest will get bigger.
But "discerning" consumers/audiences will undoubtedly find themselves stuck back in cable-land days, with a big bill, but little they want to watch. Because streaming is just like TV – it starts with big ideals, and ends up looking like Bravo, or Discovery. Heck, you can see that trend already in the bigger streamers – there's a reason Netflix doesn't want your arthouse film, but does want another true crime series. And if you look closer at the charts and the articles, most of the growth for Netflix was from outside of the US, which has been stagnant in subscriber growth for a long while now. This, of course, will lead to more popular fare (and often some good shows end up there too, by accident) to attract new, sizable audiences, and less films, especially if you're trying to distribute something other than a Blockbuster or a facsimile of one.
And that brings me to the last two articles to hit my virtual desk, the first being the fact that Magnolia being for sale (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/magnolia-pictures-explores-sale-1235026675/)is no longer a private-matter – Cuban saw the prices for Hello Sunshine and SpringHill and is ready to try to get some mega-bucks for premium indie/genre fare (they also own Magnet). Don't think for a second that any buyer will keep their focus on the same level of quality going forward. The second article was Bloomberg reporting (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-19/discovery-cuts-high-profile-shows-in-streaming-strategy-shift?curator=MediaREDEF)major cuts at Discovery – with them getting rid of star-driven shows/films, proving that as consolidation steams ahead, quality pick-ups and commissions will dwindle (And also showing that the Discovery/Warner preparation for a sale is
right on track).
As I've said many times since this virus started – just like 1918 gave us consolidation leading to the big studios, killing off a lot of indies – we're going to see more consolidation and changes to the film world as coronavirus kickstarted trends already underway before we had this flu. We're right in the middle of them now, which is pretty darn fun to watch, but it's scary when you start to think about what it means for the future of the kinds of things you probably like to make and watch if you're still reading this newsletter.
The New Rules
May 12, 2021Seems to me that as we round some kind of corner in the covid maze, we've figured out some new rules. I think we all know them, but I haven't seen them listed in one place yet, so here's a go.
1. Streaming has won. The war for attention, most importantly. The war for talent. For paying
attention to DEI. For eyeballs. For Wall Street. For setting the rules by which we all must live by. Any measurement. I'm not saying people won't still go to theaters, but we are in the streaming world completely now.
2. Global, Localized Content is all that Matters to Streamers. That and MCU sized spectacles. As this article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/world/africa/south-african-filmmakers-move-beyond-apartheid-stories.html) shows, as streamers look for new subscribers, they need content from the local community, and that content travels just fine.
3. For Indies/Arthouse/Specialized cinema, they only want two things – auteurs and/or DEI behind and in front of the camera. If your story isn't diverse, or isn't created by a diverse creator, or isn't somehow touching on something that will appeal to a DEI audience, it's not of interest to them. I want to be clear – I think this is the best development in Cinema, and am not bemoaning this fact. It's about time. But anyone who hasn't woken up to this and is pitching another white boy coming of age film, good luck with that.
4. Acquisitions are dead. (https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?u=43175ffadd10a314510384941&id=852208962e) Yes, there will be exceptions. They will mainly be found at Cannes,
Sundance, Toronto or Telluride. Of course, the occasional super low budget, or major cast, or Funny/Scary/Smarty/Arty genres will have some surprises. But for the most part, the streaming world is about originals, pre-buys and commissions, and the "do it on spec" world is dead.
5. And that's when they even think about films, because as we all know, the action is in series. Heck, talk to any film festival programmer for more than ten minutes, and the conversation will probably veer towards their favorite shows more than the movies.
6. Festival Buzz... was just coming from the free champagne. Who am I kidding, beer. I am loving the experience of watching 20 films from my couch at home, instead of traveling to some film fest. But there used to be a sense that festivals contributed some kind of buzz that helped lift a film and let it rise above the noise to enter the cultural consciousness. That isn't happening in the virtual or even hybrid festival world (again, outside of Sundance, etc.), and I suspect it never
was. You just thought it did because you were jet-lagged, drinking free booze and subsisting off canapes, so it felt like some kind of buzz.
7. Outdoor is here to stay. I used to be on the board of Rooftop Films, and we were among the few who figured out that outdoor movies were the future. Everyone has caught up, and this space is only gonna keep growing, even as people venture back indoors. Because it's more fun, less risky, and it can bring in new programmers and audiences.
8. Docs Rock... if they're rock docs. Or murder mysteries. Or about some Chef or cuisine. Or are super flashy, loud, American (redundant) and of broad appeal. But investigative journalism? Thoughtful social impact film? Artful doc about an artist? Cinema-verite slice of life? Not so much. Sadly, because some amazing work is being done in all of the other spaces not being bought by the Streamers, but how does it get seen? We have a problem here that few are acknowledging, and I fear most artful and/or social issue docs will become good for college entrance essays – or to get teaching jobs – but not much else.
9. Everyone has figured out that the easiest path to the Oscars is via the Short categories.
Unfortunately, that means every publisher and platform is putting more money into those campaigns than it cost to make all of the films, combined, so it's an arms race now, and closed to truly indies.
10. Brands are the new investors. And they should be investors, not sponsors or donors or sole funders. And smart ones are getting in at the development stage, because you have to sell early – per 4 above. Only a few have caught on to this, but it's a growing area, and the right way to go. Of course, they're also marketers, and can help get eyeballs to these projects so they rise above the fray, which gets us to the most important/hard rule.
11. It's nearly impossible to break through the noise. Almost no one has figured out how to do it (Neon, A24, and... who else below the Studio/SVOD level?). I know this much – buzz only seems to exist anymore in the social media sphere, but only those two distributors and Netflix have gotten that memo, and everyone else acts like it's only useful for snide remarks and vitriol. Hopefully someone else figures out how to use social media to break through the noise before social media is the only media left for us to consume.
Of course, as I hinted with the Baldessari rules above, the rules are made to be broken. And just last week, I noted that one should zig when everyone zags. I may be missing some rules in the above list, and almost included "no jerks" based on the Rudin exposé, but then I started laughing cereal through my nose, because the film world has hundreds if not thousands more that are being tolerated, and I've worked with at least ten of them. So to me, these seem to be real rules that we have to live within to some extent right now.
I'm wondering where the Saturation Point will be with new content/services/platforms. At some point there will be literally too much to consume. Wonder what will rise to the top and where the line will fall in terms of getting our attention?
Does this belong here?
Quentin Tarantino is selling seven unseen 'Pulp Fiction' clips as NFTs (https://thebrag.com/quentin-tarantino-is-selling-seven-unseen-pulp-fiction-clips-as-nfts/)
Quentin Tarantino is getting involved in non-fungible tokens by selling seven never-before-seen scenes from his classic 1994 film as NFTs. QuoteAlmost three decades later, Tarantino is bringing the film into the digital age, announcing that he's auctioning off seven uncut and unseen scenes as Secret NFTs (as IndieWire reports). They'll be available via the NFT market OpenSea for anyone wealthy enough to consider buying them. And with Pulp Fiction being probably Tarantino's most beloved film, there should be a lot of eager fans in competition for the seven NFTs.
Tarantino's NFTs will also "include the uncut first handwritten scripts of Pulp Fiction and exclusive custom commentary from Tarantino, revealing secrets about the film and its creator."
The director released a statement explaining his decision to enter the world of NFTs. "I'm excited to be presenting these exclusive scenes from Pulp Fiction to fans," he said. "Secret Network and Secret NFTs provide a whole new world of connecting fans and artists and I'm thrilled to be a part of that."
QuoteWho knows, maybe one day we'll see a filmmaker create an entire film and sell it off as an NFT. Just imagine being the sole owner of the latest Paul Thomas Anderson or Greta Gerwig film.
Yes.
And also; wtf
A new world of connecting scammers and rich fans.
Covid-Era Conundrum: ‘No Time to Die’ May Be the Year’s Highest-Grossing Hollywood Movie, But It Could Still Lose Millions (https://variety.com/2021/film/news/no-time-to-die-highest-grossing-movie-losing-money-blockbusters-1235111919/)
QuoteOver the weekend, “No Time to Die” eclipsed $730 million in global ticket sales, making the James Bond sequel both the year’s highest-grossing Hollywood film and the top performing film at the box office since COVID-19 appeared on the scene and nearly shut down the movie business.
The action-packed spy spectacle, which endured several coronavirus-related delays, has become the rare pandemic-era box office hit, which is even more impressive considering adult audiences — the core demographic for “No Time to Die” — have been reluctant to return to theaters. However, the movie cost more than $250 million to produce, at least $100 million to promote and tens of millions more to postpone over 16 months. Insiders say “No Time to Die” needs to make closer to $900 million to break even, a feat that would have been realistic had a global health crisis not entirely upended the theater industry. As a result, the film now stands to lose $100 million in its theatrical run, according to sources close to production. Other industry sources suggest the losses wouldn’t quite reach the nine-figure mark though they would still be substantial.
MGM, the studio behind Bond’s latest adventure, disputes this math. In a statement to Variety, the company insisted “No Time to Die” didn’t just break even but was a money maker.
“Unnamed and uninformed sources suggesting the film will lose money are categorically unfounded and put more simply, not true,” MGM spokesperson said in a statement. “The film has far exceeded our theatrical estimates in this timeframe, becoming the highest grossing Hollywood film in the international marketplace and passing ‘F9’ to become the highest grossing Hollywood film since the pandemic. With the PVOD release of the film already doing stellar home viewing business, all while continuing to hold well theatrically, ‘No Time To Die’ will earn a profit for MGM, both as an individual film title and as part of MGM’s incredible library.”
MGM clearly isn’t conceding that “No Time to Die” is a financial disappointment, but their contention is disputed by others with knowledge of Bond’s budget and with a deep understanding of what a film of that scope and scale needs to earn to get into the black.
[...]
MGM’s Pamela Abdy Talks ‘House of Gucci,’ the Future of Bond and Amazon (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/pamela-abdy-mgm-house-of-gucci-bond-legally-blonde-3-1235050312/)
QuoteAs a teenager growing up in New Jersey, Pamela Abdy danced competitively five to six days a week. Her dream of making it a career was shattered, along with her foot, during her sophomore year at Boston’s Emerson College, but a professor made a compelling connection by comparing cinema to choreography. Abdy had found her new calling: producing movies.
Many years later, as the pandemic shut down Hollywood in spring 2020, MGM chief Michael De Luca convinced Abdy to come on board as president of the studio’s motion picture group. Within weeks of her arrival there, where Abdy now oversees eight creative executives, she and De Luca closed deals to pick up Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (out Nov. 26) and Joe Wright’s musical Cyrano (Dec. 17, qualifying run), while beating out Netflix and another streamer for Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci (Nov. 24). All three films, each shot during the pandemic, will open in cinemas during the heart of awards season.
MGM has hardly been Abdy’s first brush with prestige. Before taking on the studio — and its crown jewel, the James Bond franchise, which finally saw the release of No Time to Die — she got her start at Danny DeVito’s Jersey Films (Garden State, Man on the Moon) and went on to a tenure at Paramount Pictures, New Regency and Makeready, working on such esteemed titles as Babel, Birdman, The Big Short and The Revenant. Abdy sat down with THR on a recent Friday afternoon, hours after arriving back in Los Angeles — where she resides with her husband and 9-year-old daughter — from a tour that included a Rocky anniversary event in Philadelphia and House of Gucci‘s London premiere. She opened up about her early days with DeVito, House of Gucci‘s box office prospects and, pending regulatory approval of Amazon’s $8.5 billion purchase of MGM, her studio’s future once it’s part of a tech behemoth.
I might as well get this out of the way. Who is going to be the next 007 now that Daniel Craig is done?
It’s wide open. We’ve had very early preliminary conversations with Barbara [Broccoli] and Michael [Wilson], but we wanted Daniel to have his last hurrah.
What was De Luca’s pitch when he asked you to take this job?
I’ve known Mike for years and years. He called me on a Sunday and said, “I want to do this together. We can be filmmaker-driven. We can chase after all the directors that you and I both love.” I said, “Slow down.”
Other studios passed on making Licorice Pizza, Cyrano and House of Gucci. Why take the risk?
We’re trying to take original swings. If you look at our slate, the one thing in common is that the movies are filmmaker-driven. There are singular voices telling these stories — Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin, Ron Howard, George Miller, Zach Braff, Michael B. Jordan and more.
Some box office pundits say the adult drama is a dying genre on the big screen. Can House of Gucci prove them wrong?
Lady Gaga is one of the most remarkable superstars out there. She has older fans and younger fans. And it isn’t just an adult drama. There’s so much deliciousness in the film for everyone. I think more movies like that have to get made.
[...]
What is your stance on guns on set in the wake of the Rust tragedy?
I don’t think there should ever be live ammunition on a set, and we also understand creatively the need to not censor a story where a gun is part of the scene. That said, we take on-set safety seriously on every production and aim to utilize visual effects and enhance sound effects wherever possible.
How did you get the job at Jersey Films?
I saw an advertisement for an internship. That was in 1995. I had seen the Jersey Films logo on Reality Bites and Pulp Fiction. I loved both.
ViacomCBS reaches deal to sell Studio City lot for $1.85 billion (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-11-30/viacom-sells-cbs-studio-radford-lot-hackman)
QuoteThe staggering price tag underscores the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scramble for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. ViacomCBS disclosed its plan to sell the property last summer.
The deal, announced Tuesday, represents one of the largest ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles. In addition to the real estate assets, CBS will turn over its lucrative studio operations business, which includes stage rentals, facilities management and production support services on the lot.
QuoteHackman Capital Partners is one of the world's largest providers of entertainment production facilities. It currently owns four studios in the L.A. region, along with facilities in New York, New Orleans, London and Scotland. In 2019, Hackman Capital purchased CBS' other sprawling complex in Los Angeles — the 25-acre Television City that sits adjacent to the Original Farmers Market and the Grove — for $750 million.
Hackman Capital recently announced plans for $1.25 billion worth of improvements to Television City that will add soundstages, production support facilities and offices for rent. The company's plans for the Studio City complex have yet to be disclosed.
QuoteEver since Viacom and CBS merged nearly two years ago, the New York company has been casting off signature CBS properties in an effort to generate cash.
QuoteThe Radford complex was the very studio lot that gave rise to the name Studio City.
The back of this lot was literally across the street from where PTA grew up.
A Panel Recap on the State of Indie Producing - Dear Producer (https://dearproducer.com/our-professional-everest-a-panel-recap-on-the-state-of-indie-producing/?mc_cid=dd0ddc0f32&mc_eid=9e3341076b)
This Year, Hollywood's China Relationship Finally Unraveled - The Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hollywoods-china-relationship-finally-unraveled-1235062742/)
2021 Box Office Revenue’s Still in Recovery (https://crossscreen.media/state-of-the-screens/2021-box-office-revenues-still-in-recovery/)QuoteBig news: The domestic box office was down 60% (↓ $6.8B) vs. 2019.
U.S. movie ticket revenue (YoY growth) according to Box Office Mojo: (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/)
1) 2012 – $10.8B (↑ 7%)
2) 2013 – $10.9B (↑ 1%)
3) 2014 – $10.4B (↓ 5%)
4) 2015 – $11.1B (↑ 7%)
5) 2016 – $11.4B (↑ 2%)
6) 2017 – $11.1B (↓ 3%)
7) 2018 – $11.9B (↑ 7%)
8) 2019 – $11.3B (↓ 5%)
9) 2020 – $2.1B (↓ 81%)
10) 2021 – $4.5B (↑ 113%)
Interesting: There was a big spread (https://www.wsj.com/articles/heres-where-americans-are-back-at-the-movies-11637686801) between the area with the slowest recovery (Washington, DC) vs. the fastest (Utah).
Areas with best recovery:
1) Utah
2) Idaho
3) South Dakota
4) Wyoming
5) Nevada
Areas with worst recovery:
1) Washington DC
2) Vermont
3) Hawaii
4) Maryland
5) New York
Interesting: Marvel films accounted for more than ¼ of domestic box office revenue last year.
Marvel share of domestic box office according to Matthew Ball
1) 2008 – 5%
2) 2019 – 15%
3) 2021 – 26%
(https://7038182.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7038182/hubfs/2022-01-13_13-28-34.png?width=1120&upscale=true&name=2022-01-13_13-28-34.png)
https://twitter.com/ballmatthew/status/1477657032798846979
Mubi buys The Match Factory in major international deal
SCREENDAILY
January 14, 2022
International film platform Mubi has made a major acquisition of Germany-based sales and production firm The Match Factory.
The deal includes both sales firm The Match Factory and production arm Match Factory Productions.
The Match Factory will maintain its offices in Berlin and Cologne, and will expand its presence through Mubi's headquarters in London and offices in New York and Los Angeles.
The Match Factory's current management team will continue to lead the company's operations, maintaining its current slate of sales titles and projects in development including new films from Lukas Dhont, Christian Petzold, Fatih Akin, Emin Alper, Andreas Dresen and Marco Bellochio; plus Amat Escalante and Joshua Oppenheimer through Match Factory Productions.
The acquisition is a major one for the international film business. Founded in 2006, The Match Factory has handled sales on numerous international hits including Waltz With Bashir, Toni Erdmann, Girl and Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.
Managing director Michael Weber founded Match Factory Productions in 2013 with Viola Fugen, producing arthouse titles including Memoria, Never Gonna Snow Again, Martin Eden and The Traitor.
"As long time partners of The Match Factory we have gained tremendous admiration and respect for Michael and his team," said Efe Cakarel, Mubi founder and CEO. "We could not be more excited for them to join us in pursuing the goal we clearly share: to bring beautiful cinema to film lovers around the world. Mubi and The Match Factory are highly complementary businesses and we look forward to joining together with our friends."
"When I embarked on the The Match Factory journey together with my partners Reinhard Brundig, Viola Fügen, Thania Dimitrakopoulou, Jenny Walendy and the late Karl Baumgartner, I envisioned discovering filmmakers and their stories, working with them and bringing their finest work out to the world," said Weber. "I have taken great pleasure and satisfaction throughout the years with the many encounters with truly gifted people, creative minds, generous souls. Cinema is a vibrant and living ecosystem, constantly altering and expanding.
"Efe and his team share the same vision and passion for cinema. We admire them for gaining new audiences and creating such an impressive, sustainable success story. Our combined strengths will open new opportunities to nourish the future for the cinema we love."
Hollywood relies on China to stay afloat. What does that mean for movies? (https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1081435029/china-hollywood-movies-censorship-erich-schwartzel)
February 21, 20229:00 AM ET
Fresh Air with Terry Gross - WHYY
Today's Hollywood blockbusters are specifically being crafted to appeal to Chinese audiences — and pass muster with the Chinese government — according to Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel.
He highlights a few notable situations of product placement: In the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction, Mark Wahlberg's character withdraws money from a China Construction Bank ATM — while in Texas. In another scene from the same film, a character buys Chinese protein powder at a Chicago convenience store.
And just 10 days after its release, Age of Extinction became the highest grossing film of all time in China. The movie has since been overtaken at the box office by a string of other blockbusters, but Schwartzel says its influence lingers.
Schwartzel has trained his eye to spot what he calls "Chinese elements" in movies: "You'll start to see it everywhere," he says. "I go to the movies now and I can see the Chinese cell phone — even if it's blurred in the frame."
In his new book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, Schwartzel writes about China's growing influence on Hollywood. He contends that China has watched as Hollywood films helped sell America to the world — and it wants to do the same.
"As China has broadened its ambitions on the world stage and tried to become a bigger and bigger player in global politics, it has seen how culture can play a huge role in helping that effort," Schwartzel says.
China is already a powerhouse at the box office: In 2020, it overtook North America as the world's largest film market, and Schwartzel says that movie studios are increasingly reliant upon Chinese audiences to break even.
Marvel's 1st Asian Superhero Gets The Full Blockbuster Treatment In 'Shang-Chi'
"It comes to the point where even on some of the biggest films that make tons of money around the world, like a Fast & Furious film or a Marvel superheroes movie, getting into China and making money there ... can mean the difference between profit and loss," he says.
But before a film can be shown in China, it must first get past Chinese government censors. And Schwartzel notes that the Chinese government has been quick to punish studios that take on topics it doesn't want the Chinese public to see or that it feels will make China look bad.
"No studio in Hollywood today would touch a movie that concerns a storyline involving the Uyghurs or Xinjiang or issues involving Taiwanese independence or demonstrations in Hong Kong," Schwartzel says. "Because of the economic muzzle that China has on the studios today, those things are just complete non-starters."
It started in 1994, and a couple of things were happening at the time. China's economy was modernizing and opening up to the world. This is a time when companies like Boeing were moving into China. ... After the Cultural Revolution, Chinese movie theaters reopened, but they really struggled because really, the only thing that the government had to offer were these very medicinal propagandistic films, and they were really the only show in town until things like television or even karaoke lounges gave people something a little bit more fun to do. And if movies were popular, it often was because they were pirated and available for sale on the city corner.
So the theaters were really struggling, and in 1994, an executive who was stationed in the region for Warner Bros. suggested to a very prominent theater owner that Western movies might help the theaters recover. And so Warner Bros. sent the first American movie over, which was Harrison Ford's The Fugitive, to screen in a theater, and a contract was drawn up that only sent 13% of ticket sales back to Warner Bros., so this was a really paltry amount. And despite having this massive population, the Chinese box office was still really small. I think The Fugitive made around $3 million [in China], which is nothing to a studio as big as Warner Bros., but was an absolute blockbuster in Chinese terms. And the Chinese audiences, who had essentially been shut off to Hollywood's influence in the 20th century, started to do what audiences around the world had done decades prior — they flocked to the theater to see American films. And by the late '90s, only a handful of American movies were flowing into China. But nonetheless, they were causing these surges in box office sales.
On how the 1997 films Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet angered the Chinese authorities and impacted Hollywood studios
These two films, Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet, come out only three years after American movies are getting into China at all. And neither movie is put into production with China in mind, because no one at this point is making movies thinking they will make any money in China. And so Disney, which was releasing Kundun, had inherited the project. It was a Martin Scorsese film, and both films were about a young Dalai Lama and also China's invasion of Tibet. So both films feature not just a valorization of this Chinese state enemy, but also portray on screen in really unvarnished terms the Chinese invasion of Tibet and the persecution of Tibetans. Mao Zedong is featured in a scene in Kundun looking like an absolute buffoon next to this wise lama. It was obvious that China wouldn't like the films, but it didn't seem like it was going to be that much of an issue because no one expected the movies to play in China at all.
Nonetheless, China made it clear that not only did it not like the production of these films, but it was going to punish the studios behind them for making them at all. So Kundun was being released by Disney, which at the time had already invested more than a billion dollars in the market, and had already had aspirations to build a theme park on the mainland and start hooking Chinese children on Disney toys and movies and all sorts of other revenue streams, even back in the mid '90s, despite China's middle class still really coming into focus. Disney knew that it was going to be a source of revenue in the years to come. Sony was releasing Seven Years in Tibet, and again, Sony was releasing movies in China at the time, but the bigger economic concern was the supply chain that its parent company had when it came to Sony Electronics. And what made both of these films such cautionary tales for all of Hollywood was that after they were released, both companies were banned in China, despite the fact that the movies had not been released onto Chinese screens. And Chinese authorities made it clear by doing so that if a studio made a film that angered officials, it was not going to be about punishing that studio, but it would be about punishing its parent company. And so suddenly it seemed like a lot more was at stake than just angering officials over the release of one film.
Is China a threat or an opportunity? Depends which Americans you ask
On how Disney executives reacted to China's ban of Kundun
The executives at Disney ... knew if they canceled the production as the Chinese authorities had requested, they would have been tarred in the Hollywood community for squelching free expression, for muzzling Martin Scorsese. They knew that they would have a lot of domestic blowback if they did that, too. So they had to really thread the needle. And what they ultimately decided to do was release Kundun into theaters, but bury it. And so Kundun was released on Christmas Day on four screens, and then when it didn't perform well, the Disney executives used that lousy performance to justify not expanding it much further. And actually, despite all their efforts, they still were banned in China, and the then CEO Michael Eisner, had to fly over to Beijing a year later and meet with officials and apologize. There's a fascinating transcript that exists of his meeting with a Chinese official in which he says, "The bad news is that the movie was released. The good news is that nobody saw it."
China influences the movies Hollywood makes. But it may not need the U.S. anymore
On the deal between Hollywood and the Chinese government
The primary deal was struck in 1994 and that started to allow 10 films a year onto Chinese screens, and that hummed along for a while, until 2012, when there was a significant expansion of that deal negotiated between then Vice President Joe Biden and his counterpart, Xi Jinping, who was not yet president of China, but was the heir apparent. Biden and Xi met on one of Xi's trips to the U.S. and negotiated an expansion that would allow 34 foreign films onto Chinese screens a year, and that previous 13% of ticket sales that had gone back to the studios grew to 25%. And this is a deal that really cements China's influence in Hollywood because it means that almost every studio in town can guarantee that their biggest releases will get into the country, and not only that, that they will make significant money.
On the rules film studios must follow to get their movie shown in China
China influences the movies Hollywood makes. But it may not need the U.S. anymore
There's a literal list of rules that the censors in Beijing use as something of a checklist. So when a movie has finished filming and it is ready for release, a copy of it is sent to Beijing to the Ministry of Propaganda, where a collection of censors who tend to be a collection of state bureaucrats and even some film studies professors watch the movie. And obviously anything that might concern Tibet or Chinese history or Mao is going to be off the table. But those movies, as I said, aren't getting made anyway.
But even a superhero movie might be watched for certain scenes that contain images or themes they don't want the Chinese people to see. And it ranges from the cosmetic to the thematic.
In 2006, Mission: Impossible III filmed some scenes in Shanghai that feature Tom Cruise running through the streets, and in the background there is laundry drying on clotheslines from apartment buildings, and the Chinese authorities requested that that laundry be edited out of the frame because they thought it presented an image of China that was more backwards than they wanted the world to see. And then there are just deeper issues with some of the core tenets of Hollywood moviemaking.
So for example, there was a film that came out more than a decade and a half ago called In Good Company, and it's a pretty innocuous romantic comedy starring Topher Grace as this young guy who gets a job and displaces the older boss. And it seems like a pretty run of the mill PG-13 family friendly film. It nonetheless did not get into China. And at the time, the head of the Motion Picture Association started asking around in Beijing why that was the case. He couldn't understand why a movie that obviously was not nearly as politically charged as something like Kundun would not get into China. And the authorities said, "It's a movie about the younger generation challenging the system and taking on the powers that be, and that's a theme that we cannot abide here in China." So you realize that not only do studio chiefs today have to watch a movie and think about how every frame of China is scrutinized, but also think quite a bit about how core elements of American storytelling will be interpreted by censors in Beijing.
On how Hollywood studios rationalize the censorship
The economics have made it something of a no-brainer, because China's box office has grown as America's box office has flatlined. ... Pre-COVID, around 2008 or 2009, when studios started to wake up to how much money could be made at the Chinese box office, something else very important happened, which is that the DVD market collapsed. And it can be hard to remember this in an era where we're all streaming, but for many years, DVD sales, because they were so cheap to make and profitable to sell, really kept the lights on at a lot of studios. And so when the DVD market collapsed, studios were scrambling to find a way to make up for that lost revenue when China entered the picture.
I think a lot of studio executives, if they were on the line, would say that they censor movies for all kinds of markets. They censor movies for airplanes. It's a market reality they have to respond to. But what we've seen with China over the past decade is a scale of censorship that is unlike anything Hollywood has had to reckon with, and also a playbook of censorship that goes far beyond cutting a scene for a movie before it goes into a certain country. China has made it clear that it wants to censor films that are being made in America and released around the world, not just movies that are being released into their home market.
Netflix Officially Signs Updated Windowing Agreement In France
February 22, 2022
Deadline
Netflix has become the first global streamer to ink a deal with the French film industry that will see the window between theatrical and SVOD release significantly reduced.
It is now official that Netflix will be able to show movies 15 months after their theatrical releases in the country, slashing the previously long-held 36-month mandatory window by more than half.
"This agreement is a new step towards our virtuous integration in the unique French cinema ecosystem. It reflects both our constructive contribution to the AVMS negotiation process and our commitment to be part of the French cultural exception," said a Netflix spokesperson on Tuesday.
"Netflix is now able to offer movies 15 months after their release in theaters. This is a significant improvement for our members who had to wait for 36 months until now. Netflix will however continue to promote an earlier window to better reflect consumers' actual viewing habits."
Netflix will still be able to circumvent a theatrical release entirely by premiering titles directly online on a case-by-case basis.
As part of the deal, the streamer will need to invest at least $45M (€40M) in a minimum of 10 local films that will be released in French cinemas per year. There are further terms, such as a diversity clause that will see Netflix need to commit a minimum of 17% of the $45M pot to movies with a budget at less than €4.5M (€4M).
The move could move Netflix one step closer to be being present again in Cannes Film Festival's official selection. As Deadline reported earlier this month, director Andrew Dominik has suggested that his upcoming Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde could be set for the Riviera in an out of competition berth, something the streamer hasn't occupied since 2017.
The legislation stems from the EU's Audiovisual and Media Services (AVMS), which has been updating windowing rules all over the continent, as well as addressing further questions across the broadcasting and streaming ecosystems.
20th Century Studios Will Primarily Release Streaming Films In The Future
The Playlist
The Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/avatar-death-on-the-nile-sequel-and-free-guy-future-1235103538/#recipient_hashed=0abd56a6ab006be60ae79d00fb9e9dfb304b62a672a172fab699c03633832c4d) spoke to Steve Asbell of 20th Century Studios, as the studio president paints a grim future for their theatrical release lineup for the next couple of years. When asked about the number of theatrical releases the audience can look forward to in 2023 and 2024, Asbell had a rather depressing answer.
"It goes like the other divisions, two or three theatrical movies a year. We're navigating the marketplace like everyone else."
He also highlighted upcoming installments from established franchises like "Avatar," "Free Guy," and "Planet of The Apes" will continue to be released in theaters.
For some context, the studio released 10-plus films theatrically in 2019 and Asbell goes on to suggest the bulk of their work could be funneled to Disney's various streaming services as part of a new "streaming mandate."
"We have this explosive new streaming mandate to pursue, yet we also have titles that we can make ...In order to meet the volume that we are looking at — which is, by 2023, 10-plus movies just for streaming — it's going to be a combination of originals in those genres," Asbell said of the studio's new push to make movies for streaming.
Bleak
We Aren't Just Watching the Decline of the Oscars. We're Watching the End of the Movies. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/oscars-movies-end.html)
Opinion by Ross Douthat
Everyone has a theory about the decline of the Academy Awards, the sinking ratings that have led to endless Oscar reinventions. The show is too long; no, the show is too desperate to pander to short attention spans. The movies are too woke; no, the academy voters aren't diverse enough. Hollywood makes too many superhero movies; no, the academy doesn't nominate enough superhero movies. (A querulous voice from the back row: Why can't they just bring back Billy Crystal?)
My favored theory is that the Oscars are declining because the movies they were made to showcase have been slowly disappearing. The ideal Oscar nominee is a high-middlebrow movie, aspiring to real artistry and sometimes achieving it, that's made to be watched on the big screen, with famous stars, vivid cinematography and a memorable score. It's neither a difficult film for the art-house crowd nor a comic-book blockbuster but a film for the largest possible audience of serious adults — the kind of movie that was commonplace in the not-so-distant days when Oscar races regularly threw up conflicts in which every moviegoer had a stake: "Titanic" against "L.A. Confidential," "Saving Private Ryan" against "Shakespeare in Love," "Braveheart" against "Sense and Sensibility" against "Apollo 13."
That analysis explains why this year's Academy Awards — reworked yet again, with various technical awards taped in advance and a trio of hosts added — have a particular sense of an ending about them. There are 10 best picture nominees, and many of them look like the kind of Oscar movies that the show so desperately needs. "West Side Story": Steven Spielberg directing an update of a classic musical! "King Richard": a stirring sports movie lifted by a bravura Will Smith performance! "Dune": an epic adaptation of a science-fiction classic! "Don't Look Up": a big-issue movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence! "Drive My Car": a three-hour Japanese film about the complex relationship between a widowed thespian and his young female chauffeur!
OK, maybe that last one appeals to a slightly more niche audience. But the point is that this year's nominees offer their share of famous actors, major directors and classic Hollywood genres. And yet, for all of that, almost nobody went to see them in the theaters. When the nominees were announced in February, nine of the 10 had made less than $40 million in domestic box office. The only exception, "Dune," barely exceeded $100 million domestically, making it the 13th-highest-grossing movie of 2021. All told, the 10 nominees together have earned barely one-fourth as much at the domestic box office as "Spider-Man: No Way Home."
Even when Hollywood tries to conjure the old magic, in other words, the public isn't there for it anymore.
True, this was a Covid-shadowed year, which especially hurt the kinds of films that older moviegoers frequent. Remove the Delta and Omicron waves from the equation, and probably "West Side Story" and "King Richard" would have done a little better. And many of the best picture nominees were released on streaming and in theaters simultaneously, while "Don't Look Up" was a big streaming hit for Netflix after a brief, pro forma theatrical release.
But an unusual crisis accelerating a technological transformation is a good moment to clarify where we stand right now. Sure, non-superhero-movie box office totals will bounce back in 2022, and next year's best picture nominees will probably earn a little more in theaters.
Within the larger arc of Hollywood history, though, this is the time to call it: We aren't just watching the decline of the Oscars; we're watching the End of the Movies.
A long time coming ...
That ending doesn't mean that motion pictures are about to disappear. Just as historical events have continued after Francis Fukuyama's announcement of the End of History, so, too, will self-contained, roughly two-hour stories — many of them fun, some of them brilliant — continue to play on screens for people's entertainment, as one product among many in a vast and profitable content industry.
No, what looks finished is The Movies — big-screen entertainment as the central American popular art form, the key engine of American celebrity, the main aspirational space of American actors and storytellers, a pop-culture church with its own icons and scriptures and rites of adult initiation.
This end has been a long time coming — foreshadowed in the spread of television, the invention of the VCR, the rise of cable TV and Hollywood's constant "It's the pictures that got small" mythologization of its own disappearing past.
But for decades these flights of nostalgia coexisted with continued power, and the influence of the smaller screen grew without dislodging the big screen from its commanding cultural position. TV in the 1960s and '70s was incredibly successful but also incredibly disposable, its endless episodes standing in relation to the movies as newspaper opinion pieces stand to best-selling books. The VHS tape created a different way to bond with a successful movie, a new life for films neglected in their initial run, a new source of revenue — but the main point of all that revenue was to fund the next Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts vehicle, with direct-to-video entertainment as the minor leagues rather than The Show.
There have been television stars since Milton Berle, and the '80s and '90s saw the slow emergence of what we now think of as prestige TV. But if you wanted true glory, real celebrity or everlasting artistic acclaim, you still had to put your work up in movie theaters, creating self-contained works of art on a larger-than-life scale and see how critics and audiences reacted.
If you succeeded, you were Robert Altman (who directed small-screen episodes of shows like "Bonanza" and "U.S. Marshal" for years before his big-screen breakthrough) or Bruce Willis (who went from "Moonlighting" to "Die Hard"). If you tried to make the leap and failed — like Shelley Long after "Cheers" or David Caruso leaving "NYPD Blue" — you were forever a cautionary tale and proof that the movies still stood alone, a mountain not just anyone could climb.
The late 1990s were this cultural order's years of twilight glow. Computer-generated effects were just maturing, creating intimations of a new age of cinematic wonder. Indie cinema nurtured a new generation of auteurs. Nineteen ninety-nine is a candidate for the best year in movies ever — the year of "Fight Club," "The Sixth Sense," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "Election," "Three Kings" and "The Insider," so on down a roster that justifies not just a Top 10 but a Top 50 list in hindsight.
Tellingly, Oscar viewership actually rose from the late 1980s onward, peaking in 1998, when "Titanic" won best picture, which (despite its snobbish detractors) was also a victory for The Movies as a whole — classic Hollywood meeting the special-effects era, bringing the whole country to the multiplex for an experience that simply wouldn't have been the same in a living room.
To be a teenager in that era was to experience the movies, still, as a key place of initiation. I remember my impotent teenage fury at being turned away from an R-rated action movie (I can't recall if it was "Con Air" or "Executive Decision") and the frisson of being "adult" enough to see "Eyes Wide Shut" (another one of those 1999 greats — overhyped then, underrated now) on its opening weekend. And the initiation wasn't just into a general adulthood but into a specific lingua franca: There were certain movies you simply had to watch, from "Austin Powers" to "The Matrix" (1999 again!), to function socially as a college student, to understand the jokes and references that stitched together an entire social world.
Just another form of content?
What happened next was complicated in that many different forces were at work but simple in that they all had the same effect — which was to finally knock the movies off their pedestal, transform them into just another form of content.
The happiest of these changes was a creative breakthrough on television, beginning in earnest with "Sopranos"-era HBO, which enabled small-screen entertainment to vie with the movies as a stage for high-level acting, writing and directing.
The other changes were — well, let's call them ambiguous at best. Globalization widened the market for Hollywood productions, but the global audience pushed the business toward a simpler style of storytelling that translated more easily across languages and cultures, with less complexity and idiosyncrasy and fewer cultural specifics.
The internet, the laptop and the iPhone personalized entertainment and delivered it more immediately, in a way that also widened Hollywood's potential audience — but habituated people to small screens, isolated viewing and intermittent watching, the opposite of the cinema's communalism.
Special effects opened spectacular (if sometimes antiseptic-seeming) vistas and enabled long-unfilmable stories to reach big screens. But the effects-driven blockbuster, more than its 1980s antecedents, empowered a fandom culture that offered built-in audiences to studios, but at the price of subordinating traditional aspects of cinema to the demands of the Jedi religion or the Marvel cult. And all these shifts encouraged and were encouraged by a more general teenage-ification of Western culture, the extension of adolescent tastes and entertainment habits deeper into whatever adulthood means today.
Over time, this combination of forces pushed Hollywood in two directions. On the one hand, toward a reliance on superhero movies and other "presold" properties, largely pitched to teenage tastes and sensibilities, to sustain the theatrical side of the business. (The landscape of the past year, in which the new "Spider-Man" and "Batman" movies between them have made over a billion dollars domestically while Oscar hopefuls have made a pittance, is just an exaggerated version of the pre-Covid dominance of effects-driven sequels and reboots over original storytelling.) On the other hand, toward a churn of content generation to feed home entertainment and streaming platforms, in which there's little to distinguish the typical movie — in terms of casting, direction or promotion — from the TV serials with which it competes for space across a range of personal devices.
Under these pressures, much of what the movies did in American culture, even 20 years ago, is essentially unimaginable today. The internet has replaced the multiplex as a zone of adult initiation. There's no way for a few hit movies to supply a cultural lingua franca, given the sheer range of entertainment options and the repetitive and derivative nature of the movies that draw the largest audiences.
The possibility of a movie star as a transcendent or iconic figure, too, seems increasingly dated. Superhero franchises can make an actor famous, but often only as a disposable servant of the brand. The genres that used to establish a strong identification between actor and audience — the non-superhero action movie, the historical epic, the broad comedy, the meet-cute romance — have all rapidly declined.
The televised serial can establish a bond between the audience and a specific character, but the bond doesn't translate into that actor's other stories as easily as the larger-than-life aspect of movie stardom did. The great male actors of TV's antihero epoch are forever their characters — always Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper, Al Swearengen — and recent female star turns in serial entertainment, like Jodie Comer in "Killing Eve" or Anya Taylor-Joy in "The Queen's Gambit," haven't carried their audiences with them into their motion-picture follow-ups.
It is important not to be ungrateful for what this era has given us instead — Comer and Taylor-Joy's TV work included. The surfeit of content is extraordinary, and the serial television drama has narrative capacities that even the most sprawling movies lack. In our most recent week of TV viewing, my wife and I have toggled between the ripely entertaining basketball drama "Winning Time" and a terrific Amanda Seyfried turn as Elizabeth Holmes in "The Dropout"; next week we'll turn to the long-delayed third season of Donald Glover's magical-realist serial "Atlanta." Not every stretch of new content is like this, but the caliber of instantly available TV entertainment exceeds anything on cable 20 years ago.
But these productions are still a different kind of thing from The Movies as they were — because of their reduced cultural influence, the relative smallness of their stars, their lost communal power, but above all because stories told for smaller screens cede certain artistic powers in advance.
First, they cede the expansive powers inherent in the scale of the moviegoing experience. Not just larger-than-life acting but also the immersive elements of the cinematic arts, from cinematography to music and sound editing, which inherently matter less when experienced on smaller screens and may get less attention when those smaller screens are understood to be their primary destination.
Just to choose examples among this year's best picture nominees: Movies like "Dune," "West Side Story" and "Nightmare Alley" are all profoundly different experiences in a theater than they are at home. In this sense, it's fitting that the awards marginalized in this year's rejiggered Oscars include those for score, sound and film editing — because a world where more and more movies are made primarily for streaming platforms will be a world that cares less about audiovisual immersion.
Second, the serial television that dominates our era also cedes the power achieved in condensation. This is the alchemy that you get when you're forced to tell an entire story in one go, when the artistic exertions of an entire team are distilled into under three hours of cinema, when there's no promise of a second season or multiepisode arc to develop your ideas and you have to say whatever you want to say right here and now.
This power is why the greatest movies feel more complete than almost any long-form television. Even the best serial will tend to have an unnecessary season, a mediocre run of episodes or a limp guest-star run, and many potentially great shows, from "Lost" to "Game of Thrones," have been utterly wrecked by not having some sense of their destination in advance. Whereas a great movie is more likely to be a world unto itself, a self-enclosed experience to which the viewers can give themselves completely.
This takes nothing away from the potential artistic advantages of length. There are things "The Sopranos" did across its running time, with character development and psychology, that no movie could achieve.
But "The Godfather" is still the more perfect work of art.
Restoration and preservation
So what should fans of that perfection be looking for in a world where multiplatform content is king, the small screen is more powerful than the big one and the superhero blockbuster and the TV serial together rule the culture?
Two things: restoration and preservation.
Restoration doesn't mean bringing back the lost landscape of 1998. But it means hoping for a world where big-screen entertainment in the older style — mass-market movies that aren't just comic-book blockbusters — becomes somewhat more viable, more lucrative and more attractive to audiences than it seems to be today.
One hope lies in the changing landscape of geopolitics, the current age of partial deglobalization. With China becoming less hospitable to Western releases in the past few years and Russia headed for cultural autarky, it's possible to imagine a modest renaissance for movies that trade some potential global reach for a more specifically American appeal — movies that aspire to earn $100 million on a $50 million budget or $50 million on a $15 million budget, instead of spending hundreds of millions on production and promotion in the hopes of earning a billion worldwide.
The more important potential shift, though, might be in the theatrical experience, which is currently designed to cram as many trailers and ads as possible in front of those billion-dollar movies and squeeze out as many ticket and popcorn dollars — all of which makes moviegoing much less attractive to grown-ups looking for a manageable night out.
One response to this problem is the differential pricing that some theater chains have experimented with, which could be part of a broader differentiation in the experience that different kinds of movies promise. If the latest Marvel spectacle is packing theaters while the potential "West Side Story" audience waits to see it on TV at home, why not make the "West Side Story" experience more accessible — with a low-cost ticket, fewer previews, a simpler in-and-out trip that's more compatible with, say, going out to dinner? Today's struggling multiplexes are full of unsold seats. Why not see if a streamlined experience for non-Marvel movies could sell more of them?
But because these hopes have their limits, because "West Side Story" making $80 million domestically instead of $40 million won't fundamentally change the business of Hollywood, lovers of The Movies have to think about preservation as well.
That means understanding their position as somewhat akin to lovers of theater or opera or ballet, who have understood for generations that certain forms of aesthetic experience won't be sustained and handed down automatically. They need encouragement and patronage, to educate people into loves that earlier eras took for granted — and in our current cultural climate, to inculcate adult tastes over and above adolescent ones.
In the case of movies, that support should take two overlapping forms. First, an emphasis on making it easier for theaters to play older movies, which are likely to be invisible to casual viewers amid the ruthless presentism of the streaming industry, even as corporate overlords are tempted to guard classic titles in their vaults.
Second, an emphasis on making the encounter with great cinema a part of a liberal arts education. Since the liberal arts are themselves in crisis, this may sound a bit like suggesting that we add a wing to a burning house. But at this point, 20th-century cinema is a potential bridge backward for 21st-century young people, a connection point to the older art forms that shaped The Movies as they were. And for institutions, old or new, that care about excellence and greatness, emphasizing the best of cinema is an alternative to a frantic rush for relevance that characterizes a lot of academic pop-cultural engagement at the moment.
One of my formative experiences as a moviegoer came in college, sitting in a darkened lecture hall, watching "Blade Runner" and "When We Were Kings" as a cinematic supplement to a course on heroism in ancient Greece. At that moment, in 1998, I was still encountering American culture's dominant popular art form; today a student having the same experience would be encountering an art form whose dominance belongs somewhat to the past.
But that's true as well of so much else we would want that student to encounter, from the "Iliad" and Aeschylus to Shakespeare and the 19th-century novel and beyond. Even if the End of the Movies cannot be commercially or technologically reversed, there is cultural life after this kind of death. It's just up to us, now, to decide how abundant it will be.
Bad article. It's not taking into account the fact we lived during a pandemic that shattered many theatrical windows and limited productions. It's unfortunate major studios no longer make adult entertainment, but the streamers do now. It's the current reality of the marketplace. Yeah, Oscars lost luster and mainstream relevance but the same was said when Beautiful Mind won BP..and then Crash... and then Green Book. It's been this cycle.
I think his greater point--that The Movies are done, ie no longer the cultural center-of-gravity--is valid, tho.
MGM Shakeup: Mike De Luca & Pam Abdy Leaving As Studio Enters Amazon Fold - Deadline (https://deadline.com/2022/04/mgm-mike-de-luca-pam-abdy-leaving-mgm-studio-folds-into-amazon-1235011024/)
As David Zaslav Reshapes Warner Bros., Are His New Film Execs on the Same Page? (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/david-zaslav-michael-deluca-pam-abdy-warner-bros-1235160877/)Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy built their reputations with a relationship-driven, filmmaker-friendly approach — but that style might be at odds with the imperative to save money.QuoteMichael De Luca and Pam Abdy, on the other hand, are likely to be welcomed in the film community with wide-open arms. Between them they have decades of industry experience, and De Luca's relationships with talent in particular were a selling point with Zaslav. (He has surely observed what Hollywood does to outsiders who start making pronouncements without a goodwill ambassador to guide and protect them.) De Luca's affability helped him compete for talent and material when he was situated at MGM, a studio that wouldn't have been top of the list for anyone with something good to sell. But the more potent lure is always money, and De Luca is known for spending it. That would appear to be very much at odds with Zaslav's natural inclinations and, given the debt, imperative to keep a tight rein on costs.
Even some of De Luca's friends worry how this will go. "He's talent-friendly, he's a passionate advocate for certain kinds of projects," says an executive who knows him well. "Is that going to cut it in a big corporate environment?"
A veteran high-level player actually chortles when asked to prognosticate. "I love Mike. But Mike has been totally consistent in making movies that are flashy and lose a lot of money," he says (with some hyperbole). "Zas says, 'We're going to make hits for less money' and then you hire a guy who does the exact opposite." Says another longtime insider: "The idea of fiscal responsibility and creative freedom? Someone's head's going to pop off."
Certainly De Luca and Abdy spent money at MGM, though a source says they stayed within the development and production budgets they were given. Their mandate as chairman and president, respectively, was to make the drifting studio look like it was in the game to help drum up a sale. (The logic of this is unclear as the Bond franchise and the library were the real assets on the block.)
Insiders saw De Luca's hire there then — and at Warners now — as evidence of the great persuasive powers of CAA's Bryan Lourd. And certainly many CAA clients benefited from the deals that followed. Paul Thomas Anderson made Licorice Pizza, Lady Gaga starred in House of Gucci, Joe Wright and Peter Dinklage made Cyrano, and so on.
MGM was in the awards conversation and Licorice Pizza was the studio's first best picture contender since Rain Man in 1988. But sources say leaders at Amazon, which acquired MGM for a rich $8.5 billion in March, were astonished at the tens of millions of losses on the slate. In fairness, the movies were released theatrically during the pandemic. But Licorice Pizza cost about $50 million and grossed a paltry $32 million. Cyrano was dead on arrival. And Amazon has a few more left in the pipeline that are expected to fare poorly.
Looking at that history, there is plenty of reason to see De Luca and Zaslav as a very odd match. "People admire Mike's taste and they love being in business with him," says one De Luca associate. "But people, I know, had urged them to give him something smaller, not as big a thing. This is a big thing."
A few more paragraphs discussing De Luca's career round-out the article--which I found rather interesting.
CAA Completes Acquisition of ICM Partners - Deadline (https://deadline.com/2022/06/caa-completes-acquisition-icm-partners-1235051289/)
The End of Ownership: Why the Battle Over Paying TV Creatives Is Only Getting Crazier
by Cynthia Littleton
Variety
There's a storm brewing in Hollywood's creative community, just as the largest unions and employers are preparing to wrestle anew at the contract bargaining table.
The industry is bracing for the prospect of bitter labor strife in the 2023 round of negotiations with the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA. The discussions are sure to be more charged than usual because of the tectonic shifts across TV and film that were accelerated by pandemic conditions in 2020 and '21.
Hollywood's famously Byzantine formulas for compensating creative talent have become outmoded in the process, and that has many industry insiders feeling as though they're working a lot harder just to keep pace with pre-pandemic paychecks. The growing income gap between richly rewarded A-listers and everyone else on the set is fueling indignation among rank-and-file union members — as evidenced last year by IATSE's near miss with a strike.
But the looming labor talks aren't the only explosive issue on the horizon. In recent months, the sentiment has spread in the creative community like a California wildfire that the deal-making structures implemented over the past decade by the streaming giants are costing them the chance to build precious ownership stakes in the TV shows and movies they make.
Like everything about Hollywood deal-making, the reasons why are extremely complicated — more on that below — but the emotion that this heavy mood is provoking in the grassroots is not hard to interpret. It's raw, unfiltered resentment that is a source of generational friction among established actors, writers, producers and directors. Meanwhile, the town's top talent representatives are trying to impose a reality check for why the era of massive windfalls from "Friends"-, "Big Bang Theory"- and "ER"-level syndication sales is never coming back.
For starters, the highly fragmented TV ecosystem of today simply isn't built to support long-running series that rack up 200-plus episodes — which is another reason the guild contracts for TV series need a major overhaul.
At a time when everything is under scrutiny by cost-conscious conglomerates, veteran deal-makers say the marketplace for streaming-content licensing deals is actually starting to open up in interesting ways. But getting to the next evolution of the digital economic paradigm over the next 12 months — amid economic uncertainty, belt-tightening, M&A and significant new developments such as Disney and Netflix expanding with ad-supported options — won't be easy.
"The explosion in production and now the tumult in distribution economics has led to a much more dynamic business environment than a year ago, where ownership, licensing terms and the overall financial risks and rewards are open for discussion between studios/producers and many streamers and networks," says Craig Hunegs, operating partner at private equity firm ZMC and a former senior business executive for Warner Bros. TV and Disney TV.
In short, the town is in a prickly mood that will only be inflamed by the inevitable saber rattling of labor negotiations.The WGA's most recent three-year contract covering most high-level TV and film work expires May 1. The DGA and SAG-AFTRA pacts run through June 30. The DGA will undoubtedly be the first to engage in talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture andTelevision, possibly before year's end.
"We need to move to a world where clients and talent representatives have access to the data around how projects are performing on the various platforms so that we have insight into what's working and what's not," says Dan Limerick, WME's chief operating officer and head of business affairs. "We need to get adequate value for shows that are performing. That's the next frontier."
The younger end of the spectrum feels "ripped off," in the exaggerated-for-effect words of a 40-something showrunner. Part of the lure of working in the showbiz big leagues has been the promise that big commercial success would be followed by beaucoup bucks. Not just a one- or two-time fat paycheck but, in a home-run scenario, profit participation points — a 1% to 5% (or more) share of profits delivered by the property for the rest of time. Achieving backend signaled a level of status and financial security in the form of an annuity that could someday benefit your grandchildren's grandchildren, so long as the title was still making money somewhere in the world.
working a lot harder just to keep pace with pre-pandemic paychecks. The growing income gap between richly rewarded A-listers and everyone else on the set is fueling indignation among rank-and-file union members — as evidenced last year by IATSE's near miss with a strike.
But the looming labor talks aren't the only explosive issue on the horizon. In recent months, the sentiment has spread in the creative community like a California wildfire that the deal-making structures implemented over the past decade by the streaming giants are costing them the chance to build precious ownership stakes in the TV shows and movies they make.
Like everything about Hollywood deal-making, the reasons why are extremely complicated — more on that below — but the emotion that this heavy mood is provoking in the grassroots is not hard to interpret. It's raw, unfiltered resentment that is a source of generational friction among established actors, writers, producers and directors. Meanwhile, the town's top talent representatives are trying to impose a reality check for why the era of massive windfalls from "Friends"-, "Big Bang Theory"- and "ER"-level syndication sales is never coming back.
For starters, the highly fragmented TV ecosystem of today simply isn't built to support long-running series that rack up 200-plus episodes — which is another reason the guild contracts for TV series need a major overhaul.
At a time when everything is under scrutiny by cost-conscious conglomerates, veteran deal-makers say the marketplace for streaming-content licensing deals is actually starting to open up in interesting ways. But getting to the next evolution of the digital economic paradigm over the next 12 months — amid economic uncertainty, belt-tightening, M&A and significant new developments such as Disney and Netflix expanding with ad-supported options — won't be easy.
"The explosion in production and now the tumult in distribution economics has led to a much more dynamic business environment than a year ago, where ownership, licensing terms and the overall financial risks and rewards are open for discussion between studios/producers and many streamers and networks," says Craig Hunegs, operating partner at private equity firm ZMC and a former senior business executive for Warner Bros. TV and Disney TV.
In short, the town is in a prickly mood that will only be inflamed by the inevitable saber rattling of labor negotiations.The WGA's most recent three-year contract covering most high-level TV and film work expires May 1. The DGA and SAG-AFTRA pacts run through June 30. The DGA will undoubtedly be the first to engage in talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture andTelevision, possibly before year's end.
"We need to move to a world where clients and talent representatives have access to the data around how projects are performing on the various platforms so that we have insight into what's working and what's not," says Dan Limerick, WME's chief operating officer and head of business affairs. "We need to get adequate value for shows that are performing. That's the next frontier."
The younger end of the spectrum feels "ripped off," in the exaggerated-for-effect words of a 40-something showrunner. Part of the lure of working in the showbiz big leagues has been the promise that big commercial success would be followed by beaucoup bucks. Not just a one- or two-time fat paycheck but, in a home-run scenario, profit participation points — a 1% to 5% (or more) share of profits delivered by the property for the rest of time. Achieving backend signaled a level of status and financial security in the form of an annuity that could someday benefit your grandchildren's grandchildren, so long as the title was still making money somewhere in the world.
Generous profit participation definitions are the closest thing that even the most successful showrunners — Dick Wolf, Shonda Rhimes, Chuck Lorre, Ryan Murphy — have when it comes to owning the content they produce for studios and platforms. Also known as "backend," the agreements are notoriously contentious and the stuff of a thousand lawsuits accusing studios of self-dealing and breach of fiduciary duty. Nonetheless, size matters, and the size of a megastar's share of a project's all-important Modified Adjusted Gross Receipts revenue line has long been a measure of accomplishment and a source of bragging rights.
The A-list of today is now a full generation (or more) removed from the 1970s-'80s heyday of successful writer-producer entrepreneurs such as Norman Lear, Aaron Spelling and Stephen J. Cannell. Those legendary multi-hyphenates flourished during the golden age of independent production that was ushered in by regulatory changes at the Federal Communications Commission in 1970. The winds shifted toward consolidation and vertical integration of networks and studios in 1993 after a federal judge struck down the rules that limited how much content ABC, CBS and NBC could actually own.
Fast-forward to 2022, and the younger cohort that has hustled to establish itself in the frenetic Peak TV era can often feel like the rules and the prizes have been changed in the middle of the game. The level of frustration has also spiked as producers say there has been a swift pull-back of spending in recent months. Netflix, after jolting Wall Street with its forecast of subscriber losses to come this year, unleashed a slew of cancellations, and HBO and HBO Max jettisoned some pricey and risky projects.
The sense of urgency that some feel to respond to the behind-the-scenes changes in entertainment were voiced bluntly and publicly last month by Jeff Sagansky, the former CBS Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment president, who is an investor in media and related businesses.
"The TV industry is at an inflection point with this new delivery paradigm," Sagansky tells Variety. "There has never been so much work, and for brand-name talent, their compensation has never been as good. But for everyone else — the guilds, talent agencies and creative talent are going to have to decide if the new way of compensating talent is a problem or not."
Discussion of the alarm sounded by Sagansky in his June 1 appearance at the NATPE Hollywood conference has been in the ether for creatives just as the guilds are starting to focus with members on key issues of importance for the 2023 contracts. He questioned why creatives don't press harder for streamers to reveal data on how their shows perform. "We are in a golden age of content production and the dark age of creative profit sharing," Sagansky said at the time.
The fight over the future of seven- and eight-figure contracts with profit participation terms won't be settled by collective bargaining. But anger over the perception that rights are being lost will be channeled into clenched fists for the guilds to achieve big gains in union-covered residuals and royalty rates.
A veteran network executive-turned-producer says the harsh business reality is there is no going back to the way things were. In reality, pay scales for above-the-line creatives in the U.S. are coming down to "middle-class levels" because the changing economic structure of streaming won't support the old jackpot-hit model. It's no accident that Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and other streamers are talking up the appeal of local-language series such as "Squid Game" and "Money Heist," produced at a fraction of the cost and usually outside Hollywood union jurisdiction. The advent of U.S.- based platforms with global reach is challenging every baked-in convention of the content business.
"We all got used to streamers paying out fat money," says a top industry dealmaker. "Now that they're maturing as businesses, we have to adjust. But they're still paying people a lot of money to make great shows that would not get made anywhere else."
During his time at Disney TV, Hunegs led the charge to implement a massive overhaul of Disney's dealmaking protocols with creative talent. As the company shifted its focus to supplying TV series to Disney+ and Hulu, the company needed to address the challenges of valuing content and monitoring profit participation pools when there were no plans for after-market sales of the shows. The Disney TV plan, which put the emphasis on performance-based bonuses rather than formal backend points, was hammered out with representatives from major talent agencies and law firms.
Hunegs, who exited Disney in 2021, declined to elaborate on that process. A prominent entertainment attorney who was involved in those discussions gave Disney credit for transparency and willingness to listen to the concerns on the other side of the table. The source said there is broad acceptance that things need to change for a new era of television. But getting there won't be easy or fast. "Disney's definition makes it tough ... but Disney has always been tough," the veteran rep said. "Where we are now is an interim step."
***
For decades, studios and producers made most of their money not on the initial primetime run of a series, but through later opportunities to sell the show in syndication and through international licensing. The sweet spot for studios and producers was a scripted series that ran for 22 or 24 episodes per season for at least five seasons. The WGA's two-inch-thick Minimum Basic Agreement contract is built around formulas that pay writers per episode on a season-long basis. For profit participants, syndication and international sales were the welcome events that created a pool of profits to share.
But streaming has upended that decades-old continuum. Streaming platforms, like HBO and Showtime before them, generally prefer scripted series that run from six to 12 episodes per season. The production cycle on streaming series typically occupies a longer period, and there is more downtime between seasons before renewal decisions are made. Moreover, streamers rely on having a voluminous library of shows on demand to keep their paying subscribers engaged. Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max and others require initial license terms of 15 years or more on high-end shows, without the windows that would allow producers to sell rerun packages to outside outlets.With no outside sales opportunities, it's much harder to put a hard dollar value on a show.
To account for that lost profit-making opportunity, Netflix and others developed the "cost-plus" template of buying TV series. Streamers agreed to a license fee that covered a show's production costs and had a premium of profit built in for the studio. In the early days, when Netflix had to incentivize major studios to produce for the platform, the streamer paid premiums of 30% to 40% of a series production budget. Lionsgate Television made an estimated $3 million per episode in its premium for the early Netflix hit "Orange Is the New Black," which ran for seven seasons and 91 episodes from 2013 to 2019.
But over time, terms have tightened all over town, not just at Netflix. The producers' premium nowadays is more likely a negotiated flat fee — a shift that came amid suspicion that production budgets had begun to rise across the board in order to boost premiums. Now, some producers are complaining that Netflix is taking a harder line on costs such as COVID-related precautions and production overages, eating into producers' profit margin. With predetermined premiums, the downside of having a show that flops is protected, but the upside of fielding a runaway hit is limited.
For junior- and mid-level writers, the new series math is tough no matter how you tally it. Even at higher per-episode rates, writers earn less for an eight-episode series produced within an 18-month cycle than they would have a decade ago for 22 episodes produced within a 12-month cycle.
Yet top talent representatives are not uniformly up in arms to preserve the profit participation paradigm of old. Some argue the old system had plenty of pitfalls and benefited only the top tier of talent. "There are about 14,000 members of the Writers Guild, and maybe 150 of them have ever seen any real backend," says a veteran industry deal-maker. Reps also argue that the "present value" of guaranteed cash upfront is worth more than the potential of a piece of future profit streams.
This reflects the realpolitik that profit participation deals have been fraught with problems for creatives. Most of the nuances in Hollywood accounting come into play when calculating these profit stakes. Negotiations over the MAGR (or Modified Adjusted Gross Receipts), in industry jargon, refer to the contractual profit definition, meaning that it is baked into the deal that the production entity takes overhead, distribution and other fees off the top before the final pool of profit distributions is calculated. The definition (and definitions within that definition) have been the subject of business-affairs brawls in setting movie and TV contracts with high-level creators for decades.
Profit participation disputes have also been the spark for countless self-dealing lawsuits between platforms/studios and profit participants. AMC Networks last year reached a $200 million settlement with the executive producer of "The Walking Dead" in a lawsuit that ran for seven years; AMC is still in litigation over a separate suit with other "Walking Dead" participants that was filed in 2017.
The litigation boils down to creatives accusing the studio of taking undue steps to dampen the value of their participations. In early 1997, the creators of ABC comedy "Home Improvement" filed a milestone suit against Disney, accusing the Mouse and ABC of conspiring to a pay a below-market license fee for the sitcom, produced by Walt Disney Television.
The "Home Improvement" lawsuit also led to a blizzard of paperwork at vulnerable companies in their effort to document deal decisions undertaken on an arm's-length basis. Talent and agents scoff at the idea that employees of the same large firm would not wink at each other on price and other financial terms. But industry veterans say that deal-making between sibling networks and studio divisions has often been some of the toughest, as both sides have every motivation to dig in on terms to keep their respective profit and loss statements as strong as possible.
In a nutshell, TV shows produced for Disney or Netflix are no longer treated as individual businesses with their own income statements and profit and loss reports. The paperwork designed to ward off profit participation lawsuits doesn't happen because the shows are accounted for in a central content-spending budget. There are no syndication sales or international deals to track, so there's no pool of discrete profits created to fight over in the life of a show, at least not for some time.
These dynamics help explain the sky-high production pacts in recent years for megastar showrunners. Top players à la Rhimes and Murphy are savvy enough to command money upfront through high fees and generous overhead and development funds. That's because the days of waiting on a big check after the studio completes a round of aftermarket sales are fast disappearing.
The solution for the end of the backend era is a newly imagined model of deal-making. The greatest hurdle in the coming years is access to data, so that talent representatives can assess the performance and value of a property. The cutting edge of making new deals includes a series of elaborately constructed performance bonuses that kick in over a period of years, plus longevity and award bonuses. Industry sources note that in this system, cancellation of a show after two or three seasons is the cruelest cut because bonus payments typically become significant from Season 4 on.
The twists and turns of the marketplace may also work in talent's favor in bringing more gradations to monetize opportunities for streaming series. Industry insiders, from union officials to talent agents, managers and lawyers, are watching closely as Netflix adds an advertising tier to its service. In a previous era, such a move would be seen as creating discrete rights for existing Netflix series and movies that will be featured on the ad-supported platform.
But the harder fight will be the war at home as the creative community gets used to a new normal. Privately, industry insiders recognize that Hollywood's traditionally lofty pay scales and legacy of perks is fading for all but the 1%.
"People grew up reading about Aaron Spelling's big house," says a longtime executive-turned-producer. "They see an older generation of writers that have Malibu beach houses. But there aren't going to be as many writers with Malibu beach houses in the future."
Neon Exploring Sale As It Taps Merchant Bank Raine
Deadline
(https://i.imgur.com/8DpqyUW.jpg)
Neon, the independent film distributor founded by Tom Quinn and Tim League and which broke through at the 2020 Oscars with Parasite, the first foreign-language title to win Best Picture, is looking to be sold, Deadline has confirmed from sources.
The company is hoping to branch out more into television and streaming, and bulk up its production pipeline. The fact that A24 notched a $225 million equity investment in March provides hope that some or all of Neon's businesses could be sold. Reports are that A24 at that time was valued at $2.5 billion. It's unclear at this time what Neon would be worth.
The distributor has had a recent streak of distributing those movies winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, starting with 2019's Parasite from Bong Joon Ho. It continued with Julia Ducournau's Titane and this year's comedic crowdpleaser Triangle of Sadness from Ruben Ostlund.
Neon turned Parasite into one of the top-grossing foreign films in the U.S./Canada, grossing $53.3 million; the pic altogether made $263.1M worldwide. The movie won four Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Original Screenplay and International Film. The pic was nominated for six Oscars.
Neon also had at Cannes this year the David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream and David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future starring Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen. The distributor's other top-grossing movies include the Oscar-winning I, Tonya, which made $30M, and the breakout documentary hit Three Identical Strangers which made $12M at the domestic B.O.
The New York Times was the first to report the news about Neon.
Neon declined to comment for the story.
HBO Max Has an Inventory Problem
Variety
A decade into the streaming revolution, seams are showing and stitches are starting to pop.
The recent uproar about HBO Max removing a significant number of series episodes and movies from its platform amounts to Unintended Consequence No. 9,789 for an industry that has been turned inside out by digital disruption.
The situation that Warner Bros. Discovery is scrambling to address by lightening the content load should be crystal clear to anyone who has ever worked in retail sales management. Simply put, HBO Max has an inventory problem. The long-tail theory of content that has fueled the streaming business conflicts with the focus on tentpole hits that has traditionally fueled the entertainment economy.
With the major exception of Netflix, no network or platform in the 75-year history of commercial television has amassed such a broad and deep library of content that is made available for on-demand public viewing as HBO Max has in its 27 months of existence. And that means no network has had to deal with the real-world problem of managing the long-term cost of maintaining such a voluminous inventory.
In the retail world, if a product doesn't sell, at some point it comes off the shelf to make room for something new. That has long been the case in linear television too; if a show doesn't find an audience, the cancellation ax falls. In the past, however, if CBS or NBC yanked a show, the network didn't have to keep shelling out coin to make it available on demand. But that has been the norm in the streaming arena.
The bill adds up quickly when the costs of residual fees for actors, writers and directors are included — costs that are triggered no matter how many or how few people cue up a particular episode of a vintage series. There are also producer fees, music licensing fees and myriad other royalties that come into play. Industry sources say the cost varies widely on a title-by-title basis, depending on the underlying deal terms, but there is no version of keeping a show available for viewing on a platform that doesn't incur at least tens of thousands of dollars in fees per series per year. For the lowest-performing 30% of HBO Max's active library, that adds up to tens of millions of dollars a year.
At a time when Warner Bros. Discovery is facing serious post-merger financial pressure, there's no question that lightening the load on HBO Max is a natural place to squeeze out some savings. This move was also made easier by the harsh reality that the shows being removed have virtually no viewership. In some cases, recently yanked shows had episodes that racked up zero views in a 12-month period. There is no spin on the long-tail theory — the sentiment that niche content that drives passion and engagement can be as valuable or more so than mass-appeal hits — that can support an economic argument to keep spending to drive zero views.
Netflix is surely grappling with this same pressure as the streamer adjusts to an environment of slowing subscriber growth around the world. This dynamic spurred Warner Bros. Discovery to act faster to remove content that wasn't getting any traction. Much was made of HBO Max removing about 200 episodes of "Sesame Street" from the platform. But a week later, there are still hundreds of episodes of "Sesame Street" available for viewing, including the past 12 seasons and selection of vintage seasons.
If tens of millions of new customers are signing on every year, it might make sense to keep that quirky drama or offbeat comedy in the lineup because you never know what will play well in Peoria, or Istanbul or Rio de Janeiro. The high-flying promise of vast archives of content available to consumers with just a click (or voice command) has crashed into the hard reality of Warner Bros. Discovery's debt-strained balance sheet. Nobody can afford to maintain that big an all-you-can-eat buffet for $15 a month.
But media consumers young and old now have been trained to expect anything and everything is available somewhere, for a price. The jolt of the content inventory reduction push post Q2 earnings could spur renewed affection for brick-and-mortar media like books and DVD sets among younger consumers as they absorb the jolt of these real-world issues of inventory management versus the infinite promise of cloud storage.
One industry veteran likened the gyrations in streaming over the past few months to the wave of clear-eyed analyses of player stats and ROI for star baseball players' salaries in the early 2000s: "This business is becoming 'Moneyball.'"
Nothing in that article seems wrong, but I don't like the tone of it: "these are the economic realities of streaming, so get used to it."
WB Discovery is hardly an exemplar of business wisdom here. The merger has put them in such a bad position that they can't afford to release more than 2 more movies this year. I thought Netflix had an infamously obscene amount of debt, but their $15 billion is dwarfed by WBD's $55 billion. And now they're brashly mistreating artists, I guess trying to alienate whoever wasn't already pushed away by their recent years of mismanagement. Maybe they can get Chris Nolan back. I'm sure he'd love to be featured next to the "90 Day Fiance Universe" tile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eALwDyS7rB0
which in turn references:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lcB9u-9mVE
Quote from: WorldForgot on October 08, 2022, 11:24:31 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eALwDyS7rB0
which in turn references:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lcB9u-9mVE
"I worked at R+H 11 years ago. John Hughes is exactly the man depicted in this film. He's among the most humble, compassionate, intelligent and mild mannered people I've ever encountered. He openly discussed all sorts of topics with me at the lunch table. He told me the reason R+H exists was for the employees and their benefits package proved it. Each Friday he'd present the company's bids, profits and losses with anyone interested and the ultimate bankruptcy was clear then as the losses often outweighed the profits. Heartbreaking on many levels."
IATSE Escalates VFX Workers' Push to Unionize with New Survey (https://www.indiewire.com/2022/12/iatse-vfx-workers-union-drive-1234791102/)
QuoteThe International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) is escalating its push to get visual effects workers to organize as a union, launching a survey on Monday that is designed to study working conditions and pay rates for VFX talent in Hollywood compared to other industry standards.
Though other inquiries into this area have been made before, the survey is the first time IATSE has sponsored an official VFX study. The survey, which is open to all those in the VFX space, including non-IATSE members, is available here. It polls industry workers on salary, workplace safety, overtime pay, available resources, and more.
"VFX is integral to almost every film and television production made today. Yet the workers who make VFX possible are among the only film and TV workers not represented by a union today," IATSE organizer and VFX worker Mark Patch said in an official statement. "Knowing our worth is an essential step towards building a more sustainable VFX industry."
IATSE communications director Jonas Loeb explained that the union's involvement in this push is intended to drive higher participation than ever before, such that "the more in the VFX community that participate, the more representative the study will be."
VFX workers in recent months have been vocal about intense workloads, low pay, and long hours that have plagued the industry as more and more movies and TV shows have demanded elaborate CGI work, with some arguing that conditions have only worsened in recent years as the demand for content has exploded.
Movie studios can be sued under false advertising laws if they release deceptive movie trailers (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/ana-de-armas-yesterday-false-advertising-1235467419/)
QuoteMovie studios can be sued under false advertising laws if they release deceptive movie trailers, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson issued a ruling in a case involving "Yesterday," the 2019 film about a world without the Beatles.
Two Ana de Armas fans filed a lawsuit in January, alleging that they had rented the movie after seeing de Armas in the trailer, only to discover that she was cut out of the final film.
Universal sought to throw out the lawsuit, arguing that movie trailers are entitled to broad protection under the First Amendment. The studio's lawyers argued that a trailer is an "artistic, expressive work" that tells a three-minute story conveying the theme of the movie, and should thus be considered "non-commercial" speech
From Brian Newman's mailing list
QuoteFebruary 16, 2023
I've begun to believe that the biggest problem in arthouse/indie film is not the un-produced or un-distributed films, but the films with distribution, or rather, with how they get distributed. To be even more specific, I think the problem is this whole independent thing – meaning, we have too many independent distributors all fighting for our attention, when we probably need just one. Or, as I tend to think about it - we have too many small distributors and streamers (often the same thing) who think they are all somehow doing a better job than the next guy and who refuse to work together, when we could probably just use one.
Now, before you think I'm crazy and argue for the value of small independent voices in the distribution ecosystem, and against consolidation, just hear me out. Because what I'm really arguing for here, is more consolidation and/or collaboration in how things get to the audience, especially when it comes to digital offerings, and less about which company owns who, although I am not opposed to some mergers, either.
How many streaming services do you subscribe too? Most folks have about five, apparently, and I'm betting those consist of the big ones – Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney, or maybe Discovery+, Paramount+, Peacock... you could name many more and you haven't even gotten to the ones that specifically try to serve the indie/arthouse audience. You have offerings from IFC, Mubi, KinoLorber, Criterion, Ovid... I could list many, many more – but I gave up when I looked at the services tracked on JustWatch and realized they had over 150 streamers to choose from. WTF?! No one can keep track of all of these services, much less all of the films they might want to see across their offerings, even with a service like JustWatch. And they don't. Most consumers stop with the top five streamers, and even the most dedicated cinephiles probably stop somewhere South of ten, I'd bet, and even they haven't heard of most of these services, or the films on them. And forget about trying to see your favorite film from distributor X if you don't subscribe to their output deal streamer of choice - which is why I've missed too many A24 films that went to Hulu.
Whatever happened to the Universal Jukebox we were promised, and which we pretty much have when it comes to music? Who are all these megalomaniacal narcissists who think they really need to "own their audience" and that they must build these tiny subscriber bases? Why not just join forces and have one good alternative place to find all the great films – hopefully, curated a bit by good curators and people who I want to follow, and sure I could search by distributor (or filmmaker), etc. – but why not work on something like that instead of atomizing the audience across hundreds, if not thousands (when you look more globally) of services?
I think the arthouse film audience is probably much bigger than anyone thinks it is, but it has been split across way too many distributors and streamers for any one of them to capture the total possible audience. This has been true even before streaming – too many distributors chasing the same few quality projects and competing for the same slots at the cinema, all because they think they can do a better job releasing the film than someone else. And now, it's too many channels chasing the same eyeballs across the screens, all hoping we'll either pay a subscription or – worse for all of us – sit through ads programmed by robots ruining our viewing experience for a VRBO commercial – in search of an aggregate of pennies that might keep the doors open.
If you look at the problem from the consumer perspective, which is what you should always do when trying to solve an industry's problems, then it's pretty obvious that we need a one stop shop for these niche films, aggregating them from across multiple sources, and making them available for either one low monthly price and – what no one does – allowing anyone to rent an individual title from the system without becoming a subscriber (Amazon does this, and they rule the world). And while I'd hate it, sure, you could also give them the option to watch for free with ads (Amazon again). I'd go a step further and say that this membership should also get you discounts at every arthouse theater in the country, like an arthouse MoviePass, and that the systems of curation and money exchange should be intertwined. And you could build the whole thing on the back of JustWatch... JustSayin'.
In fact, I'd bet most of us would pay for such a system over Netflix almost any day of the week. And would have done so from the start. But building that kind of system would have taken a lot of work, and a lot of real, direct audience engagement, and an investment of time and money that went completely against the dominant business model – which is, licensing out that work to someone else. So, when Netflix came along and said "we'll do this for you," everyone jumped onboard, not waiting to hear the end of the sentence, which was, "until we don't need you anymore." Which is what's now happened with Hulu and all of the other options, so we're stuck in a bad system when we could have built the right one from the beginning.
But dreaming up any such system, which I've done a bit in the past, requires one contemplating a lot more collaboration across the industry. And that won't happen anytime soon. Perhaps not until ¾ of these folks have disappeared as their business model collapses around them, and the last few standing might finally realize they should have been collaborating to aggregate the audience instead of atomizing them in pursuit of a maintenance of their status quo, squeezed into a frankenstenian copy of the Netflix model (which is what we have now). The solution isn't trying to become a niche single player Netflix, but instead building (together) the new Netflix of great films, all in one place.
One can dream...
Producer Data: The Numbers Don't Lie (The Truth about Independent Film Revenue) (https://filmmakermagazine.com/120384-truth-about-independent-film-revenue)
Fascinating glimpse into the funding money moves of indepedent film, independent productions by budget and resulting revenue
QuoteLast fall, desiring information to aid our own filmmaking careers, we launched an experiment to see whether we could obtain hard data on independent film revenue. Having experienced firsthand how difficult it is to get this information, we created a Google form and asked filmmakers to self-submit not just their feature film top-line revenue data, but thorough, detailed and specific numbers on everything from their budgets to best- and worst-performing revenue streams to cast to how much their films made in gross and net terms. From the details of the 104 submitted films, we have drawn critically important—and many surprising—conclusions.
For our own part, the information we gleaned will, in large and subtle ways, alter the way we put together our future films. But there was another reason we launched this experiment. In addition to wanting this information as filmmakers ourselves, we spend a lot of time talking to other filmmakers. Liz managed the Creative Distribution Initiative at Sundance Institute and now works as a sales and distribution consultant. Naomi teaches classes and consults with filmmakers on indie film development and financing and, in her work as one of the founders of The 51 Fund, interacts with many filmmakers who are trying to get their films financed. Between the two of us, we encounter filmmakers at the beginning and end of the herculean process of making a film.
Informed by a combined 20-plus years of experience in the industry, we are increasingly concerned about the disconnect between what many filmmakers think can happen and what we know the reality to be. Week after week, we listen as filmmakers earnestly explain to us how they believe making a film for "as little as $250,000" makes it a near certainty that they'll recoup their investors' money. "CODA sold to Apple for $25 million," they say with straight faces, "and my film is also a coming-of-age." We ache for these filmmakers: We, too, have been suckered into these illusions. But seeing the actual financial state of independent film as clearly as we now both do, it feels increasingly critical that we confront how dire a situation the field faces. We say this not because we wish to discourage anyone, but rather because we care so passionately about a brighter future for independent film.
At this moment, there are only two possible paths for an independent film. The first is what Naomi refers to as the "golden elevator." A project that manages to get on the golden elevator is very likely to bear out a filmmaker's wildest dreams: premiere at a top film festival, big dollar sale to a streamer, maybe an Independent Spirit Award, distribution by NEON or A24. These high-profile stories keep the rest of us dreaming as the filmmakers breezily explain in interviews a charmed path up into the stars. But there are only a tiny number of highly elite and tightly gate-kept tickets onto that golden elevator. A place in a highly prestigious lab might get you on board (though certainly isn't guaranteed to do so). So may the attachment of a hugely famous actor (not a sort-of-famous one) or the full-throated backing of WME or CAA (but only if they're really pushing the project, not just casually attached). For a good example of the trajectory of a golden elevator film, see this year's Sundance success stories, such as Fair Play, produced by the high-profile team of Ram Bergman and Rian Johnson through their new production company, or the trio of debut features financed by A24 and written about elsewhere in this issue.
Critically, in almost every case we've witnessed, a project gets their ticket onto the elevator before—often well before—the film is actually even made. One of the most pernicious and lingering myths, we think, is that it is possible to get on that elevator at a higher floor—that if you can just scrape it together and make a truly brilliant film you can get into that festival or sell to a streamer for serious money later. In our experience, this is simply not true today. Certainly, there will always be unicorns, but for the rest of us, the reality is that, if you are not on that elevator at the basement, the chances that you will gain access to any of these outcomes are vanishingly small.
We call the non-golden elevator films—the actually independent films—"free-range films" (a term coined by director Maria Nieto) because they are made fully outside the institutional industry apparatus. In the current landscape, these films find themselves scrambling down a well-worn set of uninspiring distribution paths. Out here, in the land of mid-level film festivals or no-one's-ever-heard-of-them film festivals, filmmakers encounter unrealistic projections from predatory distributors or the candid and depressing truth from honest ones that recoupment is near impossible after platforms, agents and distributors take their pieces of the pie. This is because content has been and continues to be devalued on a daily basis as audiences are sold more and more SVOD and AVOD platforms that allow them unlimited viewing for small monthly fees—fees effectively subsidized by low license fees to creators—that pale in comparison to the true cultural value of all the films in those libraries.
All of the above we had previously gleaned from our own experiences. But it was difficult to figure out where to go from here since, without actual revenue information from free-range films, it has been impossible for us to model our future films' revenues or instruct other filmmakers on their own realistic revenue potentials. This difficulty has been partly because revenues of free-range films aren't openly reported anywhere and partly because filmmaking teams are almost always reticent about sharing their actual earnings numbers. The latter difficulty in getting accurate information is both because the industry actively discourages us from sharing this information and, we believe, because few people want to admit how dismal their numbers actually are.
[...]
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Make your film for as little money as possible.
Strike Chaos Consumes Hollywood: What Made Studios Balk and Writers Walk
By Cynthia Littleton, Gene Maddaus
Variety, May 2, 2023
The Met Gala may have been the last glitzy event to avoid picket signs.
As of 12:01 a.m. on May 2, members of the creative community on both coasts (and production hubs in between) have traded the finery of that event for fire and brimstone on picket lines. The breakdown of the Writers Guild of America's contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has unleashed a torrent of emotion not seen among Hollywood union members since the last time the WGA went on strike, in 2007. The strike promises to bring even more upheaval to a marketplace that is already grappling with the fallout from technological disruption and still rebuilding from the pandemic. Six weeks of tense negotiations made it clear that the industry faces a reckoning after a decade of the Peak TV content boom that has strained Hollywood's creative infrastructure to its breaking point.
"People strike for a reason," actor Brian Tyree Henry said as he made his way inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue for the gala. "I hope they get what they deserve, and I hope that people listen to them."
A prolonged walkout by TV and film writers will have ripple effects across the entertainment community. Now that the strike has been called, industry insiders are scrambling to shut down shows — late-night comedy programs, including "Saturday Night Live," and daytime talk shows are the first to feel the hit. Studios are initiating emergency contingency plans to keep film production rolling on projects with completed scripts. The major networks are worried about pickets crashing upfront advertising presentations scheduled to be held in New York this month. Marketers and publicity mavens are trying to figure out how to salvage junkets and Emmy FYC season as a bumper crop of eligible programs have all manner of screenings and events lined up in the pursuit of viewers.
Now, the workaday stuff of Hollywood will take a back seat to the spectacle of WGA versus Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, Amazon, Apple, Sony Pictures Entertainment and more.
"Hollywood is an industry that runs on stories, period. There's nothing without the storytellers," says "Jane the Virgin" writer Rafael Agustin. "I'm angry because the WGA is inevitably going to win, but the AMPTP insisted on stopping an entire industry as opposed to properly compensating the labor force that helps them make billions."
In its messaging to about 11,500 members, the guild has gone so far as to accuse the major studios and streamers of handicapping their own industry through unrestrained spending on content to build up streaming platforms. The WGA has cast the issues on the table for writers as essential to ensuring the survival of screenwriting as a viable job.
"Here is what all writers know: the companies have broken this business," the WGA stated in its message announcing the strike to members. "They have taken so much from the very people, the writers, who have made them wealthy. But what they cannot take from us is each other, our solidarity, our mutual commitment to save ourselves and this profession that we love. We had hoped to do this through reasonable conversation. Now we will do it through struggle. For the sake of our present and our future, we have been given no other choice."
Guild member Abdi Nazemian sees the WGA strike as part of a larger battle over growing income inequality and efforts to "devalue" labor.
"This is about more than writers," says Nazemian, whose credits include 2017's "Call Me by Your Name" and the NBC sitcom "Ordinary Joe." "It's about how we value human labor. It's about the truly alarming rise in wealth disparity. It's about keeping unions strong so we can revitalize our middle class. And it's about standing up to corporate greed, which impacts everyone everywhere these days."
The issues on the table for the WGA and the AMPTP are complex. But the single biggest factor that pushed the scribes to strike is the glaring lack of trust between labor and management at a time of massive transformation for the entertainment industry. Streaming has changed the way movies and TV shows are produced and distributed. Those changes have benefited the WGA's most elite members, with massive $200 million and $300 million production deals handed to proven hitmakers such as Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, Greg Berlanti, Dick Wolf and J.J. Abrams. But the gap between the top echelon of earners and their closest competitors has widened, just as it has for the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, both of which have new contracts to negotiate by a June 30 expiration deadline.
Nobody in the C-suites or the production trenches can say exactly where the streaming revolution will lead. But just about everyone with skin in the game is frightened that the new era will come with far lower pay scales for creatives and profit margins for corporations.
The guild's 700-plus-page master contract governing film and TV work was written for a different era. Updating that contract means not only wrangling over new deal terms, it also likely means revisiting the hard-won gains the WGA has made over decades. All of that is a very tough assignment to complete against a hard deadline, hence the cratering of the talks.
"With the advent of streaming and the pandemic changing people's viewing habits, it's another world," says Paul Hardart, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business and director of its Entertainment, Media & Technology program. "And therefore it requires a different deal."
On May 1, after a final day of negotiations, the AMPTP made a tactical decision to take the first step in ending the negotiations, about four hours before the midnight PT deadline. Sources close to the situation say that as it became clear the sides were too far apart to bridge the gap, they engaged in a game of bargaining chicken. The AMPTP told WGA negotiators that a better offer would come only if the guild budged on some of its key asks. The WGA did not comply — and then both camps waited to see who would be the first to break it off. Some WGA negotiating committee members hung around AMPTP headquarters in Sherman Oaks until about 8:45 p.m. PT, after their counterparts had left the building.
WGA leadership had no faith that a few more days at the bargaining table would make enough of a difference to reach a deal. Meanwhile, AMPTP member companies are adamant that they came in with a generous offer that has only been sweetened since the formal negotiations began on March 20. But the level of change across the industry over the past decade has been so significant that fear of future unknowns overwhelmed the two parties' ability to find compromises.
The sides struggled to reach agreement even on a basic set of facts. Depending on whose data you believe, either total writer compensation has never been higher or overall writer pay rates have never been lower. In this environment, with everyone feeling so much trepidation about what the future holds for film and TV, both sides reverted to defensive postures. After the penultimate WGA-AMPTP meeting ended on the evening of April 30, word began to spread throughout the creative community that the chances of avoiding a strike were slim to none.
"I'm feeling the historical gravity of this moment. I'm worried about how this will affect not just writers but our entire industry," says Charise Castro Smith, a writer whose credits include 2021's "Encanto." "The guild's proposals are fair, and they reflect the reality that writers shape culture and deserve to be able to provide for their families. So many young writers of color coming into the industry get boxed out or stuck at staff writer or forced to do free work. The future of writing as a profession is at stake."
There's no doubt that the WGA has the upper hand in the court of public opinion. It's harder to muster sympathy for corporations. But the truth is, not only are corporations coming through the shock of the pandemic, but they've absorbed big losses on streaming investments. So the prospect of seeing their costs of doing business with writers increase significantly is sobering, particularly as they also have to forge new deals with the DGA and SAG-AFTRA this summer.
Working actors are closely watching the WGA drama unfold as they deal with some of the same pressures as writers in the transition to streaming. "Everything changed with streaming, and everybody needs to be compensated for their work," says Amanda Seyfried, the Emmy-winning star of "The Dropout." "That's fucking easy."
The seismic shifts in TV production in recent years mean that the norm for employment for writers has changed from getting hired on a show that produces 22 to 24 episodes per season over an eight- or nine-month time frame to being hired on a series that may produce only six or eight or 10 episodes (that is, a "short-order show"). In the six years since the WGA last had a robust contract negotiation with the AMPTP — bargaining in 2020 was muted because of the pandemic — those short-order shows are now the norm.
The ramifications of this are significant for writers, who are typically paid by the episode. In the new world order, short-order series hire writers to pen all the scripts over a 10- or 13-week period before physical production begins. All of this adds up to lower paychecks overall. Plus, a huge problem that has come to the fore as part of the negotiation is the growing experience gap between more established scribes and greener writers. Writers who are cut loose before production begins don't have the same opportunities to gain on-the-set training on how to oversee production and post-production functions, which are vital steps for those who aim to become showrunners. Those apprenticeship opportunities were plentiful under the old 22-episode system, in which lensing on Episodes 1 and 2 would begin while the writers' room chipped away at Epiodes 5 and 6, and so on.
For writer David H. Steinberg, what's at stake is a whole model of TV production that has served the industry since the days of "I Love Lucy," "Gunsmoke" and "Father Knows Best." Steinberg created and ran "No Good Nick," a traditional multi-camera sitcom on Netflix. The show was ordered straight to series, with 20 episodes and 11 writers who worked for 40 weeks. "That was a great system," he says. "Everyone loved it. It trained the writers and made what worked out to be a better show than if it were just six episodes."
The fear is that the streaming companies have figured out that they don't need to hire so many writers, or make so many episodes, to attract subscribers. "The people who run these companies are just tech people and Wall Street people who are trying to churn out product to have subscriber growth," Steinberg says.
There's a level of quality control that also comes from the traditional model. "The writers' room is a tested formula for making good television," he says. "The auteur model doesn't work as well for television. It's hard for one person to keep the story in their head for that many episodes. It's better as a collaborative process. Collaborating with other writers gets you a better product."
On top of the change in viewing habits and business models, writers are also confronting the threat of artificial intelligence; they fear the studios will use AI to replace them. The guild offered a proposal that would protect writers from encroachment by AI on their credits and compensation, but the AMPTP rejected that proposal, and suggested meeting annually to discuss advances in technology.
Dave Schilling, an up-and-coming writer who is not yet in the guild, says he is particularly troubled by that response. "We know where this road leads: automation," he says. "The idea that writers would or should just allow this steamroller to run us over is not realistic."
But some also think it could prove to be a useful tool. Austin Bunn, a screenwriter and associate professor at Cornell University, says that while AI could never produce the kinds of screenplays he's interested in writing, he could see it being helpful in creating "para-literary material," like pitch decks and look books. "I'm kind of boosterish on AI and its role in the creative process," Bunn says. "I don't feel threatened by it at all. Storytelling ultimately does come down to some part of me that wants to express itself. A machine can craft a sentence, but there's no passion behind it."
So what comes next? TV production will gradually come to a halt — not overnight, but as soon as programs run out of existing scripts. Movies with completed scripts may go before the cameras, but directors and producers could find themselves stuck if rewrites are needed.
Late-night comedy series and daytime talk shows will be the first to feel the impact. "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver" are expected to immediately go into reruns. Daytime talk shows including "The Drew Barrymore Show," "Tamron Hall" and "The Kelly Clarkson Show" may be able to produce a few more episodes this week but will soon revert to reruns.
Linear broadcast and cable networks may load up with more unscripted shows, newscasts and live-event coverage. But Netflix, Amazon, Apple and other streaming-only platforms will have more options to recirculate older original series or promote vintage series. The streaming model gives them more flexibility than linear networks, where fans of "Chicago Med" and "Grey's Anatomy" expect to tune in Wednesdays at 8 p.m. or Thursdays at 9 p.m. for new episodes. (The early-May timing of this work stoppage provides a little relief, as the broadcast networks are already shifting into summer programming mode, which is typically heavy on unscripted content.)
It's anybody's guess how long the strike will last. The 2007 strike went on for 100 days, into 2008. The longest WGA strike, in 1988, lasted 153 days. "In general, the most successful strikes are the shorter ones," says Ileen A. DeVault, professor of labor history at Cornell. She notes that TV writing operates on a longer timeline than most industries, "so it could be different." She adds, "But the longer a strike, the less likely it is to turn into a victory."
The unrest that exploded this week has been building for years. Writers walked up to the edge of a strike over many of the same issues in 2017 before reaching a last-minute deal. In 2020, they lost the chance to negotiate due to the pandemic.
Now, the strike comes amid a rising climate of labor activism, both in Hollywood and in the broader economy. In 2021, many members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees rallied for a strike authorization and then rebelled when their leaders chose not to exercise it. And there have been high-profile organizing campaigns at Starbucks locations and Amazon warehouses.
"There is a broader feeling right now, across industries and across the private sector, that workers who can fight are doing so," says Alex N. Press, labor reporter at Jacobin Magazine. "There's a wind-at-their-backs feeling for a lot of workers in this country."
Clayton Davis, Marc Malkin, Jazz Tangcay and Brent Lang contributed to this report.
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