In theory, everyone in Hollywood and everyone in the whole movie business should be on top of the world. So why aren’t they? Why is the industry ending the summer in such a jittery, neurotic state? Is Hollywood really on the verge of collapse?
There was, after all, every reason to look forward to this year’s autumn awards season with sky-high morale. The #Barbenheimer phenomenon was a box-office smash beyond distributors’ wildest dreams. What started as a speculative hashtag joke has generated real returns for two very different movies: a fantasy-comedy about a doll and a searing epic about the father of the A-bomb. And even the attendant online debates – is Barbie just a glorified ad? Does Oppenheimer overlook the Japanese perspective? – have energised engagement with cinema. The movies have become important again and people have been brought back to the cinema in their biggest numbers since the pandemic. It also shows that original films from auteur directors can deliver numbers to match and even exceed any franchise.
And yet and yet. The studios and producers have been neglecting the very people who have been labouring to create this new surge, and striving for years before that. The resulting WGA writers’ strike in May in support of greater residuals had serious implications for TV shows and movie projects in the development stage. Now Sag-Aftra (the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of TV and Radio Artists) has come out on strike too, due to concerns around residuals and AI – a scenario that Variety magazine described as “Armageddon”.
Now there are ominous signs that the studios might simply pull all their big-ticket theatrical releases from the autumn schedule until the new year, after the (presumed) strike settlement, a sickening echo of the endless pandemic delays to the Bond blockbuster No Time to Die. British actors in Equity can’t go on the strike in the same way, but the union’s leadership has vowed transatlantic solidarity, bolstered by a rousing speech in London from Brian Cox. British actors tempted to step in for striking American players will be seen as disloyal: although UK agents’ phones may be humming with big offers.
Now the mood is clouding over with the strange signs of posturing as the studios play a game of chicken with their striking workforce and with each other. Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav has startled the film world and the industry press with his somewhat gloating announcement that the strike has so far saved the company in the region of $100m (£78.5m). Could it be that the corporate masters of Hollywood are not too bothered about non-production, because it sweetens the bottom line? Zaslav is after all the same guy that pulled the plug on the $90m Batgirl film as a tax writeoff.
Well, maybe. But almost in the same breath, Zaslav said that he expected the strike to finish in September. This could be a negotiating tactic, a piece of bravado, telling his mutinous workforce: we respect you, we want to settle this, sure, but on the other hand we are in a strong cash-rich position, and you guys have put us there. And he is sending an ambiguous message to his competitors too: the message being that taking movies out of awards contention isn’t at all inevitable and by September this will all be history.
In this game of chicken, each studio will wonder if its opponent will blink and pull its award-bait movie from cinemas first, leaving them a freer field and a greater chance at Oscar glory – even though the strike means that promoting their films has become very difficult. Every sign is that the studios will want to settle this strike quickly, nervily obsessed, as they always are, with a succession of big immediate first-weekend returns on new releases.
And there is one other factor that means things aren’t all doom and gloom – the extremely healthy market for existing world-cinema movies from outside Hollywood, including complete British films. Exhibitors in Britain are reporting excitement for demanding, auteur-led movies of all types – not simply #Barbenheimer.
