Hollywood’s current state of failure and the reasons for it

[CB2001]

The Critical Drinker has bought up the idea that due to expenses (which does make sense) as part of the problem:

I mean, technically he's not wrong (as I think it's one of the factors, but not all of it). I mean, there's a lot of films from the 1990s that were made at mid-to-lower budgets that ended up making their money back and were more creative in the process.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

Basically, all of these problems started when the “silent film era” ended and “talkies” began.

I’ve always held this opinion.

This was “peak” Hollywood. Just give me creepy people projected with a herky-jerky film rate accompanied by cue cards and a redundant piano tune.

 

[batguy]

I don't think it's even debatable that the huge budgets are killing creativity.

You wanna see wild lawless creativity? Look at 'South Park' in its prime. Those guys can do whatever the hell the they want because each episode costs about $12 and takes a few weeks to make. They don't get messages from the studio like: "According to our focus groups you need to add a talking animal sidekick and put a wedding at the end of the episode."

 

[Cephus]

I disagree with the whole idea of the "evil" CEO who does nothing all day but sit behind their desk and collect a massive paycheck. I'm not sure what most CEOs of major corporations do but I imagine that they're some of the first people and likely some of the last to leave. They likely start working on their way to the office, on the way home, and probably at home as well. Most of their days are likely spent going from one meeting to another, reading and writing reports, taking and making countless phone calls. And not to mention the countless amount of OT worked, missed recitals & ball games, and working vacations they've had over the years climbing the corporate ladder to get where they are now. Given all of that and the immense responsibility of running a multi-million or even multi-billion dollar company, I say that they deserve every penny they get.

Every CEO I've known, and it's been quite a few, work their asses off. I've never seen one that just sits around and does nothing and gets a fat paycheck for it. When I see people whining, mostly, I figure, it's jealousy. Jealousy is not attractive.

I will say, however, that I don't think that they deserve golden parachutes where they're guaranteed a fat bonus regardless if the company has made or lost money during their tenure or the year. That is ridiculous, they should get a (generous) base salary with bonuses being paid based on the performance of the company. The company does well, they do well, but it has to be a multi-tier matrix that's not based solely on the company's bank account since it's too easy for an unethical CEO to layoff large numbers of employees just to make the company's ledgers look good in order to get their bonus.

That's between them and the shareholders. If the shareholders think they deserve it, they get it.

 

[Lightning]

they should get a (generous) base salary with bonuses being paid based on the performance of the company. The company does well, they do well, but it has to be a multi-tier matrix that's not based solely on the company's bank account since it's too easy for an unethical CEO to layoff large numbers of employees just to make the company's ledgers look good in order to get their bonus.

Back in '93 Clinton signed a law aimed at reigning in CEO pay by limiting tax deductions for executive pay to 1 million dollars for each of the top 5 executives in a company. Performance based pay was excluded from this so everyone just shifted all the extra money to bonuses and stock options. Then the company just defines the performance goals however they want. And they can still deduct that from their income to pay less taxes.

 

[batguy]

That's between them and the shareholders. If the shareholders think they deserve it, they get it.

Why have Disney's shareholders paid Bob Iger hundreds of millions of dollars to run the corp out of business? At this point he should be paying them.

Meanwhile, when there are calls to pay workers a living wage, the same crowd will throw excuses like: "Sorry, corporations are legally required to maximize stockholder profits. We are just doing what it takes to be competitive." The profit motive gets selectively invoked to justify the inequalities of the system.

So the workers keep the unlivable wages, the taxpayers pay the other half of what they need through social programs, and the stockholders pocket the difference.

The whole corporate system needs serious reforms. These problems are much bigger than Hollywood.

 

[Cephus]

Why have Disney's shareholders paid Bob Iger hundreds of millions of dollars to run the corp out of business? At this point he should be paying them.

Meanwhile, when there are calls to pay workers a living wage, the same crowd will throw excuses like: "Sorry, corporations are legally required to maximize stockholder profits. We are just doing what it takes to be competitive." The profit motive gets selectively invoked to justify the inequalities of the system.

So the workers keep the unlivable wages, the taxpayers pay the other half of what they need through social programs, and the stockholders pocket the difference.

The whole corporate system needs serious reforms. These problems are much bigger than Hollywood.

I don't know. Ask them. I mean, I'm one of them, but I can tell you I didn't vote for that. If I had control, Iger wouldn't have a job. Neither would Kathleen Kennedy. However, I don't have control. which means the majority shareholders either agree with what Iger is doing, which I agree is stupid, or they are living in a haze of "remember what Disney was once upon a time?" which I think is more likely. In either case, my shares have died in value over the last 18 months.

The thing here, since we've been talking about the WGA strike, is that those people make, on average, $70k a year. A lot of them only work a couple of months a year, if that. A lot of them are complaining that they're only working 6 weeks at a time and only making $7k a week. Great! That givees you 46 weeks a year to go get another job if you want more money. Their idea of what a "living wage" is and that of most Americans are very, very, very different.

 

[Solo4114]

I think all of this ultimately boils down to problems that originate from outside of the entertainment industry, and which permeate our culture across the board.

It's not "bad writers." As I understand it, films go through a ton of rewrites and producer/studio interference (e.g., "We have some notes...") in most cases, especially when they are bigger budget affairs. Beyond just conforming to a "house style," you end up with films designed by committee and not "written" by any one person at all, even if they get a writing credit. I suspect there are quite a lot of genuinely good writers but their work ends up sliced, diced, and reprocessed into pablum by the people running the studios and producing the films. Thus, their original vision ends up distorted by banality. And that's before you get to what would otherwise be the normal part of the process where directors, set designers, costume designers, actors, editors, DPs, etc., etc., etc. are all realizing a writer's vision.

In a sense, I don't even fully blame the studio heads. I mean, yes, they suck, but they're figureheads. You swap one out and another will take their place. David Zaslav may be awful, but if he was fired tomorrow, chances are the new head of Warner Discovery would be equally awful and you'd have a brand new boogeyman.

Maybe the problem is less these individuals, and more the economic forces driving the systems. What I see is less AI or studio execs who are the problem, and far more that the investors are the problem. And I don't just mean your tiny investors like us little people. You own Disney or Apple stock? That's nice. You don't even rate 0.25 of a percent of the company's ownership, most likely. No, I'm talking about the mega-rich people who use these companies as vehicles to grow their wealth and who don't really care about any of the end products into which they invest. It's all just a way for them to make ever more money, year over year. And they always, always, always have to be growing their money more than they did. It's not enough to just make money. They always have to make more. And if they don't, then that's "lost" money to them.

These are the people who are really driving the entertainment industry and demanding that it continue to grow. So, you end up with every studio having its own siloed streaming service. And then you end up with studios merging and then selling off this or that property, etc., etc. The execs just march to their tune, because they know if they don't, they'll just end up fired and replaced by someone else who will.

The problem posed by AI is just another part of this larger issue. I don't fear AI in and of itself. That's like saying "I fear industrialization." It'll be disruptive, but new forms of economic activity will arise and people will find ways to make a living in the wake of AI. AI, ultimately, is a tool. Nothing more. So, no, I don't fear AI.

I fear the people who will use AI. The people who will control the AI. I fear the ever-escalating concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, controlling more and more, and acreting more and more power unto themselves, and them lording it over the rest of us. I fear them using AI as a force multiplier to keep the rest of us dependent upon them and subservient to them and their whims. I fear their detachment from and disdain for "normal" society.

In short, while a lot of folks spend their time worrying about Skynet taking over, I worry a lot more about the rise of something like a new version of Le Ancien Regime that is itself powered and kept in power by AI.


As for what's going wrong in Hollywood, I think, again, it all ties back to this same issue.

Because of the drive towards ever-increasing profits, mostly run by people who are fundamentally uncreative, you end up with a lot of "Do what those other guys did that made money." That leads to "cinematic universes," and endless sequels, and "legacy sequels" resurrecting old "uncapitalized" IP, and boring, predictable, formulaic storytelling that is ultimately just...bland.

You know what I expect an AI-written film to be like? I expect it, when ultimately refined, to be a LOT like The Rise of Skywalker. On the surface, it'll be, you know, fine, I guess. It'll have plenty of writing problems, but the actual in-theater experience (ha assuming we still have theaters) will be vaguely pleasant. There may be emotional notes that you dig and others where you feel sad and it'll be constructed as a decent roller-coaster. But it will lack soul. It will not survive 5 minutes of actual scrutiny and critical thinking. I walked out of that film saying "That was great! I hated it!" And that really did capture how I felt. Like, just the rollercoaster ride of it was fine, but the whole thing just felt...soulless and full of wasted potential and storylines that were immediately undone 5 seconds later and so on and so forth. The moments that produced an emotional reaction were all meta-engineered, meaning that they were based on familiar "positioning" of characters and typical beats that you expect in this type of story and musical cues, rather than anything truly inherent to the story that had been told or to the characters themselves as they'd been depicted.

That's what I suspect a "good" AI-designed movie will be. It will be able to ape the surface-level aspects of what makes for an entertaining movie, but it won't know how to tell a meaningful story or, more importantly, why. It won't know why any of the good stuff is good and works. Because it can't feel anything. An AI has never felt fear or heartbreak or joy or laughter or anything. It can regurgitate the structure of a joke, but it doesn't understand humor because it's never laughed. AIs will make movies like that. Movies that mimic the stuff you know and like. Movies that maybe even succeed in that mimicry. But they will also be movies that ultimately are disposable and fast forgotten because they aren't based on lived experience.

 

[Cephus]

I think all of this ultimately boils down to problems that originate from outside of the entertainment industry, and which permeate our culture across the board.

It's not "bad writers." As I understand it, films go through a ton of rewrites and producer/studio interference (e.g., "We have some notes...") in most cases, especially when they are bigger budget affairs. Beyond just conforming to a "house style," you end up with films designed by committee and not "written" by any one person at all, even if they get a writing credit. I suspect there are quite a lot of genuinely good writers but their work ends up sliced, diced, and reprocessed into pablum by the people running the studios and producing the films. Thus, their original vision ends up distorted by banality. And that's before you get to what would otherwise be the normal part of the process where directors, set designers, costume designers, actors, editors, DPs, etc., etc., etc. are all realizing a writer's vision.

Except it is bad writers. They are failing to write things that appeal to a paying audience. It is also bad directors, who are failing to produce movies that appeal to a paying audience. It is also bad studios, who are ultimately putting out bad product. It is their jobs, collectively, to make stuff that people want to see and the box office tells the story that all of them are failing. Some may have less direct control over the end product, I'm not going to blame the caterers for all the bad movies, but anyone in a creative position deserves at least some of the blame. Anyone who continues to work in a field, knowing that their "vision" is going to be neutered, maybe they should take stock of their professional life choices.

You can't even really say "it's the culture!" I agree that a lot of it is, but these are still people making conscious decisions to pander to the culture. Sorry, the people embracing the culture are not interested in seeing movies, any more than they were interested in reading comic books. Pandering to non-customers is a fool's errand. The people who are willing to turn out in droves are not the ones that embrace modern culture. "Modern audiences" are useless. Stop making movies for them! You can only get away with utter failure for so long!

In a sense, I don't even fully blame the studio heads. I mean, yes, they suck, but they're figureheads. You swap one out and another will take their place. David Zaslav may be awful, but if he was fired tomorrow, chances are the new head of Warner Discovery would be equally awful and you'd have a brand new boogeyman.

He's not awful. He's doing the job that he was hired to do. Warner was more than $50 billion in debt when he showed up. Now, they have repaid at least some part of that debt. Most of the movies that have been coming out, they were from before he had any control. I figur ehe knows they suck. I figure he knows that Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2 are going to fail. It's already money lost. If it were me, I'd take the tax writeoff and put them in a box somewhere, never to be seen, but it's not me in control.

Maybe the problem is less these individuals, and more the economic forces driving the systems. What I see is less AI or studio execs who are the problem, and far more that the investors are the problem. And I don't just mean your tiny investors like us little people. You own Disney or Apple stock? That's nice. You don't even rate 0.25 of a percent of the company's ownership, most likely. No, I'm talking about the mega-rich people who use these companies as vehicles to grow their wealth and who don't really care about any of the end products into which they invest. It's all just a way for them to make ever more money, year over year. And they always, always, always have to be growing their money more than they did. It's not enough to just make money. They always have to make more. And if they don't, then that's "lost" money to them.

Oh, I agree, but the studios have just gone along with it. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to spend $200+ million on a movie. That is a choice and they are making the wrong choice. Maybe they need to tell some investors to go pound sand. The people in marketing ought to know who pays to see the movies, right? At least I'd hope so, since that's their job. Market research is a thing. We come back around to who is taking those checks and who is supposed to be in charge. Those people need to be held accountable. "I'm only doing what I was told" only gets you so far.

These are the people who are really driving the entertainment industry and demanding that it continue to grow. So, you end up with every studio having its own siloed streaming service. And then you end up with studios merging and then selling off this or that property, etc., etc. The execs just march to their tune, because they know if they don't, they'll just end up fired and replaced by someone else who will.

Then maybe the entire Hollywood system needs to change. It clearly isn't working. It's to people like Zaslav that we need to turn, people who understand the financial side and are willing to do whatever it takes to get back in the black. What we have now isn't working and everyone, from the actors to the writers to the directors, they just want to continue the status quo. Sorry, it's time all of that just went away.

I fear the people who will use AI. The people who will control the AI. I fear the ever-escalating concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, controlling more and more, and acreting more and more power unto themselves, and them lording it over the rest of us. I fear them using AI as a force multiplier to keep the rest of us dependent upon them and subservient to them and their whims. I fear their detachment from and disdain for "normal" society.

But others can do the same thing. I've heard a lot of people saying that the days of the studio system are over. Today, anyone can make a movie with an investment and some talent. Rich people aren't in control of AI, although I'm sure they'd like to be, but it's going to be out there for anyone to use, whether anyone likes it or not. You can go out there and make a movie for a couple of million dollars and make a profit. These people only have power because people let them have it.

Don't do that.

 

[batguy]

I fear the people who will use AI. The people who will control the AI. I fear the ever-escalating concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, controlling more and more, and acreting more and more power unto themselves, and them lording it over the rest of us. I fear them using AI as a force multiplier to keep the rest of us dependent upon them and subservient to them and their whims. I fear their detachment from and disdain for "normal" society.

In short, while a lot of folks spend their time worrying about Skynet taking over, I worry a lot more about the rise of something like a new version of Le Ancien Regime that is itself powered and kept in power by AI.

At this point, in practical terms, I think AI has to be viewed as exactly that force-multiplier. Like, assume it until proven otherwise.

AI is designed to eat white-collar jobs like a wood chipper is designed to eat tree branches. That's the whole purpose of it. That's what it was invented & optimized to do. Whatever else it does is a side effect.

You know what I expect an AI-written film to be like? I expect it, when ultimately refined, to be a LOT like The Rise of Skywalker. On the surface, it'll be, you know, fine, I guess. It'll have plenty of writing problems, but the actual in-theater experience (ha assuming we still have theaters) will be vaguely pleasant. There may be emotional notes that you dig and others where you feel sad and it'll be constructed as a decent roller-coaster. But it will lack soul. It will not survive 5 minutes of actual scrutiny and critical thinking. I walked out of that film saying "That was great! I hated it!" And that really did capture how I felt. Like, just the rollercoaster ride of it was fine, but the whole thing just felt...soulless and full of wasted potential and storylines that were immediately undone 5 seconds later and so on and so forth. The moments that produced an emotional reaction were all meta-engineered, meaning that they were based on familiar "positioning" of characters and typical beats that you expect in this type of story and musical cues, rather than anything truly inherent to the story that had been told or to the characters themselves as they'd been depicted.

That's what I suspect a "good" AI-designed movie will be. It will be able to ape the surface-level aspects of what makes for an entertaining movie, but it won't know how to tell a meaningful story or, more importantly, why. It won't know why any of the good stuff is good and works. Because it can't feel anything. An AI has never felt fear or heartbreak or joy or laughter or anything. It can regurgitate the structure of a joke, but it doesn't understand humor because it's never laughed. AIs will make movies like that. Movies that mimic the stuff you know and like. Movies that maybe even succeed in that mimicry. But they will also be movies that ultimately are disposable and fast forgotten because they aren't based on lived experience.

I wonder if AI will learn how to mimick FEELING movies too. They might never be 100% like a human's work but they don't have to be. Human-written scripts cost thousands/millions of dollars. AI scripts are virtually free.

I think we are overconfident in humans to assume that AI cannot master our storytelling. It probably won't happen in 3 years but 10-15 years is uncharted territory. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect just to replace 97% of human writers.

 

[Solo4114]

At this point, in practical terms, I think AI has to be viewed as exactly that force-multiplier. Like, assume it until proven otherwise.

AI is designed to eat white-collar jobs like a wood chipper is designed to eat tree branches. That's the whole purpose of it. That's what it was invented & optimized to do. Whatever else it does is a side effect.

I think it depends on the white collar jobs, and I think it also depends on what part of the job the AI replaces. That said, as you note, it will improve over time, and that'll create other issues. But that spins us out into scifi and politics, depending on how far you go with it.

I wonder if AI will learn how to mimick FEELING movies too. They might never be 100% like a human's work but they don't have to be. Human-written scripts cost thousands/millions of dollars. AI scripts are virtually free.

I think we are overconfident in humans to assume that AI cannot master our storytelling. It probably won't happen in 3 years but 10-15 years is uncharted territory. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect just to replace 97% of human writers.

I don't think it will, exactly. I think it will mimic it, but imperfectly. Where I think you're right is in the "Yeah, and so what?" aspect that the people running the studios will say. So your movie has no soul. Who cares? Will it make money? Yes? Great. We're doing that, then.

The thing is, I think what this summer's surprise hits have shown is an audience appetite for the exact opposite of this. They're lukewarm on retreads and sequels and the like, and they're very into these two "new" movies that just....feel different. I don't think, at least for the next few years, that AI can replicate that. But even if it can, I don't think the studios will use it in that way if they get the chance. I think instead they'll use AI to do what they've always done and just try to recycle whatever worked before.

Because, again, at the end of the day, AI is just a tool. What matters is the person wielding it. And when that person is cut from the same cloth as every studio exec and investor who demands low risk and high reward all the time, you'll get the exact same end results you always have: more of the same s*** you've already seen. Whether it's hollow films like TROS or something else, if the AI is being used to produce the films that these people want us to see, then it will produce stuff that never, ever takes chances and that will be boring to audiences. Some of those films will make money, but I think the real issue is that AI is a financial silver bullet but not a creative one. And the suits don't get that because they don't really understand what makes movies work.

 

[cboath]

That's the beauty of it, they don't have to agree to reduce their paychecks. Union negotiations are about standards and minimums. If those numbers go up there is less money to pay the stars. Star paychecks (or percentages) are based on percieved value added to the box office. If there is less profit to go around the big stars either work for less or don't work at all.

True, but if you think they don't cut the number of jobs for everyone else due to having to pay 1 guy 10,000x more than everyone else, your deluding yourself.

<insert star here> taking 30M instead of 40M let's them hire a number of other people for other positions. Maybe it's a better supporting role, or maybe an extra effects house, more low end roles, more writers, etc.

There's no hard cap on production costs, but they aren't limitless. You need an extra scene at the end, you start looking for what you can cut to make up the difference. You pay a kings ransom for your star, you ARE going to look for things to cut to make it up to some extent. So, sure the minimums will go up, but the number of jobs available will go down.

It's not one side or the other at fault, it's both. Iger isn't doing stuff worth 50M or more a year. He's not. The Rock isn't doing anything worth 50M either. However, you're not going to get either to reduce those numbers even though it won't have a shred of an effect on the rest of their lives if they only got 40M.

From the flip side, i'd say star pay should be reduced, but backend payout should be based on sales, not profit. Take the 'hollywood books' out of the equation. Start get 15-20M or something, but the percentage is on ticket sales over 400M or so. RDJ still would have raked it in over Avengers, Rock still rakes it in on the stuff he did that was successful. Figure out a comparable thing for streaming. But, if it sucks, everyone should take the hit, not just the studio.

But much like sports, when one guy is paid a crapton more than everyone else, odds are that one guy is overpaid and hurting the ability of everyone else to get paid. And that's not just on the guy getting paid...it's also on the guy agreeing to pay it. Both sides know it takes money away from other people/aspects of the production - both don't care. That's a large part of your problem.

 

[cboath]

At this point, in practical terms, I think AI has to be viewed as exactly that force-multiplier. Like, assume it until proven otherwise.

AI is designed to eat white-collar jobs like a wood chipper is designed to eat tree branches. That's the whole purpose of it. That's what it was invented & optimized to do. Whatever else it does is a side effect.



I wonder if AI will learn how to mimick FEELING movies too. They might never be 100% like a human's work but they don't have to be. Human-written scripts cost thousands/millions of dollars. AI scripts are virtually free.

I think we are overconfident in humans to assume that AI cannot master our storytelling. It probably won't happen in 3 years but 10-15 years is uncharted territory. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect just to replace 97% of human writers.

It's a much larger aspect than that.

That applies across large range of professions. At some point, AI will get to the point of massively reducing the amount of jobs that exist. There's no way around it. There DOES come a point where there are not enough jobs because we've turned them over to AI. Wall-E isn't that far off base. Same with Trek. They've talked in multiple shows about humans evolving past the need for currency. We need to start planning for that day because AI can effectively replace everything people do at some point in the future. There will come a time when there are no jobs left for people to do, then what?

 

[Malibu139]

But much like sports, when one guy is paid a crapton more than everyone else, odds are that one guy is overpaid and hurting the ability of everyone else to get paid. And that's not just on the guy getting paid...it's also on the guy agreeing to pay it. Both sides know it takes money away from other people/aspects of the production - both don't care. That's a large part of your problem.

Lots of examples where you are correct in sports. But there are the rare instances where that guy takes less to reduce the cap in order to bring in more talent . Taking one for the team gets championships in these rare cases.

Check the salaries of some in Oppenheimer, lots of folks took way less than their norm to be in it and the results are better for it.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

I, for one, think we are about to see a true “Renaissance of Hollywood” fueled by the Barbie box office and the resultant discovery that the next great “brand recognition franchise-generator” has been discovered: Toy Brands as movies and TV shows.

The impossible dream is finally around the corner:

- The Tonka movie franchise
- The Playmobile Expanded Universe of movies
- The GoBots TV series
- The Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots Trilogy
- Silly Putty: The Motion Picture
- Teddy Ruxbin: Horror Beyond Imagination
- Hot Wheels and The Fast and the Furious crossover.
- Sit N’ Spin: The Movie
- Chutes and Ladders (starring The Rock, of course)
- Hungry Hippos (a 10 - episode series on AMC)
- Lincoln Logs vs Pick Up Stix (a drama that will bring Daniel Day Lewis out of retirement).

We are truly on the cusp of something wonderful.

Writers need not apply…

 

[Lightning]

You probably aren't far off, but at least Mattel knows that if you want real success your movie needs some depth to it even if its inspired by a toy. The fact that they allowed Robbie's barbie to be officially called "Stereotypical Barbie" shows they are willing to trust the art. Now we know they did question it, but they let it happen in the end.

 

[HeartBlade]

Every CEO I've known, and it's been quite a few, work their asses off. I've never seen one that just sits around and does nothing and gets a fat paycheck for it. When I see people whining, mostly, I figure, it's jealousy. Jealousy is not attractive.

Way to misconstrue the issue. Do CEOs deserve bigger paychecks than the rest of us? Yes. They took on the risk to start a business or climbed the ladder and worked hard to get to where they are now so thats deserved. I dont think people argue against that.

Do CEOs deserve to earn millions of dollars a year while paying their workers barely livable minimum wage (this isnt Hollywood but in general) while letting the company fall to ruin? Im hard pressed to say Iger has earned his paycheck when his very actions have run Disney into the ground (going political, mismanaging IPs, spending spree, overcommitment that has now put Disney in significant debt). Disney has lost its luster and as CEO, the fault rests on Iger.

I dont blame every CEO. There are CEOs (usually smaller business owners) who work hard and actually care for their employees and take paycuts to retain staff if the company isnt doing well (Nintendo Japan is one example). They also work hard so if the company is doing well, they should be making good money. But many of these CEOs who cut workers, deny bonuses, fumble the ball, or worse and still reward themselves with obscene amounts of money dont get my sympathy.

From the flip side, i'd say star pay should be reduced, but backend payout should be based on sales, not profit. Take the 'hollywood books' out of the equation. Start get 15-20M or something, but the percentage is on ticket sales over 400M or so. RDJ still would have raked it in over Avengers, Rock still rakes it in on the stuff he did that was successful. Figure out a comparable thing for streaming. But, if it sucks, everyone should take the hit, not just the studio.

Kind of agree except on performance. Its hard to tell what film will be a hit and what wont which can easily be seen with many great actors appearing in terrible films or great films just flopping for some reason. Some big actors do get a percentage of box office as well like Will Smith so performance based is not unheard of. Its just that movie finance can be really tricky and can easily screw people out of a paycheck if performance-based compensation is implemented (apparently its easy to manipulate figures to say a movie made a loss despite huge box office revenue, hence why actors should not request a percentage based on profit but gross).

Actor paychecks are determined by their agents so honestly, its just negotiating and the studios are willing to pay so its on them. I just think the Hollywood system of stars raking in massive paychecks for one movie is over. The money is not there anymore because there are so many other forms of entertainment (social media stars also rake in millions. That money has to come from somewhere).

 

[Cephus]

Way to misconstrue the issue. Do CEOs deserve bigger paychecks than the rest of us? Yes. They took on the risk to start a business or climbed the ladder and worked hard to get to where they are now so thats deserved. I dont think people argue against that.

Do CEOs deserve to earn millions of dollars a year while paying their workers barely livable minimum wage (this isnt Hollywood but in general) while letting the company fall to ruin? Im hard pressed to say Iger has earned his paycheck when his very actions have run Disney into the ground (going political, mismanaging IPs, spending spree, overcommitment that has now put Disney in significant debt). Disney has lost its luster and as CEO, the fault rests on Iger.

That is not your call. That is between the board of directors and the shareholders. If they decide that the CEO is worth a million dollars or a billion dollars, that's up to them. You are certainly welcome to your opinion, just keep in mind that your opinion means somewhere between jack and squat.

The amount of money that people make is based on how much they contribute to the bottom line. Companies exist to make money. If they are not making money, they are failing and will go out of business. The people most likely to get paid well are the people who directly impact the bottom line. A janitor should not expect to make as much as a top-tier salesman. None of them should expect to make as much as the corporate leaders. A lot of this is based on an outsider's view of "fair". Life isn't fair. I typically find people who hold these opinions to be those who have never worked in corporate life and who have never held high-ranking positions in a corporate structure.

I will agree that the two most recent Disney CEOs have screwed up. It's not all Iger, and in a lot of ways, I think that Chapek was a fall-guy for some of Iger's bad decisions, but it's not all their fault because they don't make every decision. Kevin Feige's decision to go woke-happy wasn't Iger's decision, for instance. CEOs don't directly run companies, they have boards to deal with and a lot of external forces that they have to fight. I'm sure that the shareholders are watching Iger's performance closely, but they certainly can't think he's doing all that bad, since they just extended his contract.

I dont blame every CEO. There are CEOs (usually smaller business owners) who work hard and actually care for their employees and take paycuts to retain staff if the company isnt doing well (Nintendo Japan is one example). They also work hard so if the company is doing well, they should be making good money. But many of these CEOs who cut workers, deny bonuses, fumble the ball, or worse and still reward themselves with obscene amounts of money dont get my sympathy.

But you're still assuming it's your call and it's not. What you personally approve of means nothing. The CEO of my company, he's an amazing guy. He takes care of everyone, but that's because he came from a sole proprietorship background where he had to. He started with a handful of people and if any of them left, it would have been detrimental to his survival. Now, he's got hundreds under him and it isn't as much of a concern, but he still does his best to keep people happy. Still, those people have to perform. It isn't a charity. You get paid based on how hard you work. If you work hard and make the company money, you get paid well. If you don't, well, you might not have a job moving forward. That's just the way the world works. Everything is based on performance, as it should be. That's where equality of opportunity trumps equality of outcome. Just showing up and punching a clock doesn't make you a valuable addition to the company. You actually have to earn it. Do so and you are rewarded. Do not and you're not.

Kind of agree except on performance. Its hard to tell what film will be a hit and what wont which can easily be seen with many great actors appearing in terrible films or great films just flopping for some reason. Some big actors do get a percentage of box office as well like Will Smith so performance based is not unheard of. Its just that movie finance can be really tricky and can easily screw people out of a paycheck if performance-based compensation is implemented (apparently its easy to manipulate figures to say a movie made a loss despite huge box office revenue, hence why actors should not request a percentage based on profit but gross).

It isn't that hard to tell, especially gauging past performance and having realistic expectations. I was saying that Indy 5 was going to flop the second that I saw what was in it and saw Disney's agenda. I'm probably right about 80-85% of the time, but I'm not alone. Tons of people say the same thing and we are usually right. I knew Elementals was going to flop. I said Flash was going to fail while everyone was saying Keaton would save the film. It's not that difficult, given Disney's recent track record and watching the big box office winners. We knew that Barbie was going to be huge. Oppenheimer was probably a bit of a surprise, but lots of people like Nolan and the fact that it rode on Barbie's coat tails so that's not so outlandish. I can tell you right now that Blue Beetle is going to flop, so will The Marvels and Aquaman 2.

Movie stars are becoming a thing of the past. I don't care who is in a movie, so long as the movie is good. Certainly, there are some actors that tend to take good roles and if they've signed on, it's probably a good indicator, but I don't really care about actors. I care about stories. I care if it will be entertaining without hitting me over head with "the message". Any message. That doesn't happen a lot these days.

Actor paychecks are determined by their agents so honestly, its just negotiating and the studios are willing to pay so its on them. I just think the Hollywood system of stars raking in massive paychecks for one movie is over. The money is not there anymore because there are so many other forms of entertainment (social media stars also rake in millions. That money has to come from somewhere).

It might have been warranted when there were actual movie stars. Today, I don't think there are. It will be over because I think movie budgets are going to have to plummet. They're just not working. It's not a matter of these big-budget monstrosities being moderate successes, they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars on almost every one. Money doesn't grow on trees. It needs to go back to "if you contribute to the success of the movie, you get paid better" and I don't know that any of them are really doing that these days. If you want to get on a picket line and whine for more money, I have to ask what these people have done to earn it. Not showing up to work, actually earning it.

Sorry, I don't see how any of them have made the studios, their employers, more successful. It might not be all their fault, but they certainly have to take some part of the blame. This is the worst time to strike because I think the general public, upon whom they rely to put pressure on the studios, I think the general public is thinking the same thing I am. The majority output of Hollywood these days is crap. Try again when you've proven you can do better.

 

[Paul Andrew]

What you personally approve of means nothing.

I wouldn't have expected it, but you touched upon one of the greatest points ever made on this board.

Just going to tuck that away forever...

 

[batguy]

A guy like Bob Iger should't be getting paid squat.

It doesn't matter how hard he works. He's a car mechanic who works hard, has lots of friends at the company, and doesn't get the cars fixed. He should have been fired YEARS AGO.

The fact that a CEO like that gets paid hundreds of millions of dollars is a symptom of a dysfunctional corporate system. I understand how it happens, I understand why it happens, and I'm saying none of that excuses it.