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--:-- David Pierce: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm David Pierce, filling in as host here on Today Explained. It's a tough time for the entertainment business, but you might not know it from, say, the Oscars, where the biggest tensions were the imagined ones between two of last year's biggest movies, Barbie and Oppenheimer.
--:-- David Pierce: I think I kind of figured out why they call it Barbenheimer and they didn't call it Op and Barbie. Why? Well, I think you guys are at the tail end of that because you were riding Barbie's coattails all summer.
--:-- David Pierce: Well, you know, the Oscars are always a moment to put the best face on things. And this year, the best face was pretty good. But there was in the ceremony a lot of stuff that you didn't hear, of course.
--:-- David Pierce: This is entertainment journalist Mark Harris. He's been paying attention to all the moments that don't get celebrated at places like the Oscars.
--:-- Mark Harris: You didn't hear about the collapse of the superhero franchise market in 2023 when four DC movies all disappointed. DC Comics suffered the flop of The Flash. And the Marvels really sort of served as an alarm bell that the Marvel Universe really is not infallible and that people are maybe a little tired of this.
--:-- David Pierce: Tune in for chapter 36 and please make sure you've seen chapters 1 through 35 first thing.
--:-- David Pierce: They stayed away from that. They stayed away from the increasing anger in Hollywood over the wild disparity between CEO salaries of guys like David Zaslav and Robert Iger, who run Discovery, Warner Brothers and Disney, and the rank and file.
--:-- Mark Harris: Non-profit group As You Sow, they annually compile a list of the most overpaid CEOs and coming in at number one, David Zaslav, the Warner Brothers boss. His cop package, nearly $250 million.
--:-- David Pierce: They largely stayed away from AI, which is something that some people see as a tool, but many more people see as a threat.
--:-- Mark Harris: Union president Fran Drescher told Al Jazeera. We don't want to be replaced by digital images of ourselves. And we don't want big business to think it's okay to think that that is a viable consideration.
--:-- David Pierce: They did not stay away from the strikes, which were a really big thing in 2023 that shut down the industry for six months. But in a way, will be a bigger thing this year in the year to come.
--:-- Mark Harris: Not just because of the threat of more strikes, which was made very clear in the Oscars, but because the ramifications of those strikes are still being felt in a product shortage and are going to be felt for a long time.
--:-- David Pierce: This long and difficult work stoppage taught us that this very strange town of ours, as pretentious and superficial as it can be, at its heart is a union town.
--:-- Mark Harris: It's not just a bunch of heavily Botoxed, Haley Beamer smoothie drinking, diabetes prescription abusing, gluten sensitive NEPO babies with perpetually shivering.
--:-- David Pierce: So it's a kind of bleak picture that you might not have gotten from the Oscars.
--:-- Mark Harris: It occurs to me big picture that you're describing this fundamental rift between kind of the people who make and consume and like movies and the people who finance those movies and there's a lot of talk about cycles in Hollywood and things get better and things get worse and things change, but is there something fundamentally broken between those two things now that feels new and might be caused by tech, whether it's the streaming services or AI or some of this stuff?
--:-- Mark Harris: Does that difference feel new to you right now?
--:-- Mark Harris: Yeah, it sort of does. I mean, there's always been something of a disconnect between, you know, the suits and the creatives before those two words were even the words that were used to describe those groups.
--:-- Mark Harris: The disconnect was still there. But one thing that's happened over many, many decades of the history of Hollywood is that the people at the very top have gotten to the top for reasons that have less and less to do with actual movies.
--:-- Mark Harris: You know, so with every step farther away from what it is actually like to make movies, and with every concurrent exponential increase in the salary of those guys at the top, there became less and less of a common language between the people who make movies and, as you said, the people who see movies and love movies and the people who pay for them.
--:-- Mark Harris: And that different than what used to be the case.
--:-- Mark Harris: And it connects to tech because when it comes to something like AI which writers and actors really feel is an existential threat suddenly you have these guys saying, well, no, we don't want to forfeit the possibility that AI could write scripts for us instead of human beings doing it.
--:-- Mark Harris: Obviously, AI can't do what writers and humans can do, But I don't know that they believe that necessarily. So we need to make it clear there needs to be a human writer in charge.
--:-- Mark Harris: And we're not trying to be gig workers just revising what AI does.
--:-- David Pierce: The strikes are over, at least for now. But the anger, and maybe even more damaging than the anger, the mistrust really persists.
--:-- Mark Harris: So you mentioned the strikes are over. We're a few months past them at this point. But it still feels like we're very much in the throes of what happened because of the strike.
--:-- Mark Harris: Well, I'm seeing it a couple of ways. One is the big contraction in production, the fact that studios and streamers are making less.
--:-- Mark Harris: Let's catch up on a busy movie weekend. Was it that box office was a historic low?
--:-- Mark Harris: We're in a place now where what would have been unthinkable 20 or 25 years ago, which is weekends with no major new releases, now kind of happens on a fairly regular basis.
--:-- Mark Harris: And there's going to be more of that. In 2023, there were 124 wide theatrical releases, meaning they opened in 1,000 plus theaters. This year, they're about 10% fewer, at least according to the schedule today.
--:-- Mark Harris: One thing that's happened is the studios rely more and more on franchises and on very expensive movies. They make fewer movies and take fewer gambles overall.
--:-- Mark Harris: So, for instance, Dune Part 2, which, you know, is a movie that people can look to and say, OK, finally, I've got a reason to go back to theaters for the first time since December.
--:-- Mark Harris: Don't try to impress anyone. Be simple. Be direct. Nothing fancy. That was my exact movie-going experience.
--:-- Mark Harris: I went to see Dune Part 2 after two, three months of not going to the theater, and I don't think I could name you a movie that came out between maybe Wonka and Dune Part 2.
--:-- Mark Harris: Right, so you're ride or die for Timothee Chalamet. Apparently. Nothing else will do. So it seems.
--:-- David Pierce: You also, in your piece, mentioned two kind of possible different ideas about movies that I thought were really interesting. One is the Robin Heimer phenomenon, which has never quite been done the same way.
--:-- Mark Harris: And I'm curious what you think we've learned from that about what could work.
--:-- Mark Harris: And the other one is Taylor Swift, for lack of a better word. Taylor Swift will save Hollywood.
--:-- Mark Harris: Can you explain kind of why each of those jumped out to you as a thing and also whether they actually do maybe portend something new and big here?
--:-- Mark Harris: Well, the Taylor Swift thing was really interesting to me. It was the 11th highest grossing movie of last year. I think it made something over $180 million domestically.
--:-- Mark Harris: It bypassed studios altogether to make a distribution deal directly with a theater chain.
--:-- Mark Harris: You know, it was, I think, a really interesting reminder that there's a generation of people that really wants to go to a movie theater.
--:-- Mark Harris: And if they are going to a movie theater for a concert or something that feels like a party or an actual movie, that may not make that much of a difference to them.
--:-- Mark Harris: And it certainly is not going to make a difference to the theaters that need people to fill their seats.
--:-- Mark Harris: And then Barbenheimer is a really tricky thing because it is sort of the ideal of how studio movies should operate.
--:-- Mark Harris: I mean you have one movie where it's the most debased possible conceit like we're going to make a movie based on a toy get in the box you Jezebel oh okay and it becomes this giant popular and critical favorite simply because it's incredibly well executed and incredibly well thought through and has a great creative team.
--:-- Mark Harris: Are we saying there's a chance that when we push that button, we destroy the world?
--:-- Mark Harris: And then you have this other movie, Oppenheimer, that is, like, in the decades-old historical tradition of how movie studios would like to see themselves.
--:-- Mark Harris: Like, we spend real money to allow real filmmakers to take real swings at ambitious subjects.
--:-- Mark Harris: And, you know, once in a long, long, long while, they will pay off with a billion dollar worldwide grocer like Oppenheimer.
--:-- Mark Harris: And then you have this magical thing where the two movies actually fueled each other in a way that neither Universal, which put out Oppenheimer, nor Warner Brothers, which put out Barbie, had planned for.
--:-- Mark Harris: How do you duplicate that? I mean, you know, in December, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and Wonka both came out and there was no like Wonkwaman moment, you know.
--:-- Mark Harris: Oh, I don't think I want to hear that.
--:-- David Pierce: As you look forward, you make the case in your piece that we've been through these kinds of boom and bust cycles in Hollywood before.
--:-- Mark Harris: And even that with a bunch of technological changes over the years, we've had these kinds of feelings where it feels like an existential crisis in Hollywood before.
--:-- Mark Harris: So my question for you is, without any of the benefit of history, which will make this obvious where it lands, does this feel like another one of those cycles? Or does this feel like we're actually in uncharted territory and everyone has to figure out what to do next?
--:-- Mark Harris: Both is the easy answer to that.
--:-- Mark Harris: I do think Hollywood is cyclical, and I think that we have lived through moments when everyone in Hollywood was saying we're doomed before.
--:-- Mark Harris: That is not new. The specific elements that are making people say we're doomed right now are pretty new, and there are a lot more of them than there have been in the past.
--:-- Mark Harris: But I do think that there's some historical evidence to say, just because everyone in Hollywood is saying we're doomed, that doesn't mean we're doomed.
--:-- Mark Harris: You know, something is going to come next.
--:-- Mark Harris: I don't think the appetite, if anything, Barbenheimer shows that the appetite for going out to the movies and seeing stories when the movies are really good is absolutely undiminished.
--:-- Mark Harris: So it really possible It's not, you know, it's not beyond reach to get a zillion people into theaters.
--:-- Mark Harris: But I think studios and streamers are really going to rue the fact that they let the strikes go on for so long as we get deeper into this year.
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--:-- David Pierce: Entertainment journalist Mark Harris. Coming up, the state of movies might be annoying to audiences, but it's downright painful for the people who make them.
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--:-- David Pierce: Today Explained is back. I'm David Pierce, filling in as host.
--:-- David Pierce: Hollywood's economic challenges are certainly frustrating for audiences, but they're especially painful for the workers who actually make the TV shows and movies that are now being produced at a slower pace than before.
--:-- David Pierce: Well, in Hollywood, it's all a gig economy. You know, whether you're Steven Spielberg or the cameraman, it's job to job.
--:-- David Pierce: So when we look at unemployment during a strike, it's people aren't getting those jobs. But does that mean those jobs will be there when they get back? Are they going to be the same jobs?
--:-- Diane Haithman: Each time it's different. So, so again, it's always those people who don't have the money to tide them over between projects who are going to feel it.
--:-- Diane Haithman: That's entertainment journalist Diane Haithman, who wrote about how the strike is especially impacting the non-Spielbergs of the industry, the people often known in the biz as below-the-line workers.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And you know, it sounds awful. It sounds like it'd be better to be above the line. But it really just means in a certain type of job, the makeup, the hair, the tech crews, all of those people, the Teamsters.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And they do get hit. You know, they're the people who all of a sudden they're driving an Uber during a strike. Yeah.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Well, it has been quantified. And one of the things that led me to do this story was receiving a report.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Our Otis College of Art and Design here does a lot of research into this aspect of what's going on in Hollywood.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Now, their estimation is during the strike that employment dropped 17 percent. And that's a lot.
--:-- Diane Haithman: How do numbers like what we're seeing now compare to kind of overall cycles? You've been covering this a while. You've seen kind of booms and bust moments.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Is this much worse and much scarier than before? Is this kind of what we see in the cycles? How does this compare?
--:-- Diane Haithman: I think what we tend to compare it to is COVID and how that shut down the industry for months and months.
--:-- Diane Haithman: The difference here, and the reason for my kind of looking at what's going on now is the report, basically their big conclusion was this contraction of the industry happened before the strikes.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Even though there was this temporary drop in employment, obviously there's going to be during a strike because things are not happening, the sense that, but the industry had already gone through this sea change.
--:-- Diane Haithman: So I thought, okay, there we go.
--:-- Diane Haithman: But what I was hearing all around me is just people saying, hey, I'm not back to work. Hey, I'm, you know, looking for a job. Hey, I'm working on a low budget video production instead of a movie because that what out there now.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And what people told me for this story was we just have to get used to the fact that we're going to be ramping up again, but not as high.
--:-- Diane Haithman: You know, that it had come to this really crazy peak. And there were some younger people in the industry who'd never seen anything else, who couldn't imagine that, okay, we're going to have to go back to what it was like in 2015, 2016, you know, which is good, but it's never going to be that crazy peak that happened with streaming.
--:-- Diane Haithman: You know, the streaming bubble has burst and we're looking somewhat at a little bit of a different Hollywood.
--:-- Diane Haithman: So these below the line workers you're talking about and talking to for these stories, what are they doing right now to make up for the loss in work and wages right now while they try to wait this out?
--:-- Diane Haithman: Well, I think some are on unemployment. It. Some were smart people who know that this is a cyclical industry and it puts some money away, but most of those below-the-line workers, if they're making less, they're probably less likely to be able to put money away.
--:-- Diane Haithman: You know, actors are chronically unemployed, right? I mean, that's something that this isn't really new, but those who had nice, neat gigs or were on a series or something like that might have lost that.
--:-- Diane Haithman: I mean, we hear horror stories, people losing houses, It's people leaving California, people driving Uber Eats, you know, as opposed to doing what they really want to be doing.
--:-- Diane Haithman: So, you know, it's just like any other crash in any other industry. The one thing I am hearing that's very encouraging is people aren't telling me I'm going to quit the business.
--:-- Diane Haithman: The kind of person who goes into this business understands that it's not a stable industry. And making things even less certain is the potential for yet another strike this summer, this time by IATSE, the union that represents a lot of these below-the-line workers.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Do you think what's happening right now is going to impact whether there's actually going to be a strike?
--:-- Diane Haithman: Well, you know, it's interesting. People say that they feel like the IATSE workers, the Teamsters, the below-the-line folks, will cave more quickly because they've been out of work for a long time, too, even though these were not their strikes.
--:-- Diane Haithman: I don't know if that's true, but I do know that probably what you're going to see is people are just going to have to wait and see because one of the producers I talked to told me that, hey, if you get started on the production and you think, okay, if IATSE strikes, I'll go do it in Canada.
--:-- Diane Haithman: You can't because, you know, there's sort of an international bond between these unions that says we won't take struck work from you.
--:-- Diane Haithman: So that whole thing of let's be very careful, let's be cautious. And that, I think, you know, what I'm hearing is going to spill over a bit into content, too, is, okay, when we do ramp up, we're not going to be as willing to take risks.
--:-- Diane Haithman: We're not going to see as many really wacky series, say, even on a Netflix, much more of what I'm hearing is that they're going to have more procedurals, which is an interesting thing, because they're seeing, hey, you know, if we could create another Dick Wolf to create all of those shows, let's do it.
--:-- Diane Haithman: It's just, again, just a little bit more of a cautious approach.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Yeah, when in doubt, make another law and order has really never failed for anybody so far.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Then the other hopeful thing is, are we going to see more lower budget productions? Just the costs of this have gotten so out of hand, people may even be getting tired of the Marvel Universe.
--:-- Diane Haithman: So maybe we don't have to have that blockbuster mentality. And that could be good. That could be good for a lot of people working, you know, if we have more smaller movies.
--:-- Diane Haithman: That's always been the hope of the independents. We heard Corey Jefferson at the Oscars make the case for that, right?
--:-- Diane Haithman: I understand that this is a risk-averse industry. I get it. $200 million movies are also a risk, you know? And it doesn't always work out, but you take the risk anyway.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And I think in a world where we go from a handful of two or three hundred million dollar movies to a beautiful glut of ten million dollar movies, the way Cord was asking for, how does that translate to these below the line workers?
--:-- Diane Haithman: Well, it would mean more work with less money, you know, a lot of this smaller stuff and some of it has been able to to at least get underway during the strikes is non-union.
--:-- Diane Haithman: So it sounds like to some extent, there's an interesting sort of middle class challenge that we're about to have where in a, you know, core Jefferson $10 million movie future, there might be lots of opportunities to get in.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And there will still be ways at the top to make money because there are always ways at the top to make money.
--:-- Diane Haithman: But the kind of work a day work that a lot of these folks have relied on for so long, that's going to continue to be a challenge.
--:-- Diane Haithman: It's going to continue to be a challenge and it already has been upended by streaming.
--:-- Diane Haithman: The days of, you know, I live here in Studio City, which is kind of TV land, you know, and a lot of people have a job on a series.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And those series aren't the same as they used to be. You know, they're not work-a-day jobs anymore where you go to the set for 22 episodes and then you take the summer off and take the kids to the beach, you know.
--:-- Diane Haithman: Careers that were built on that, on houses that were bought on that. I think that that's already becoming a bit of a challenge.
--:-- Diane Haithman: It is one of the things that the unions are looking at in terms of the contracts that they've settled on is, okay, in the old days, you did this series, you got paid for it.
--:-- Diane Haithman: And then there were reruns. You got paid for those. Now it's everything everywhere all at once. You know, your show is playing everywhere.
--:-- Diane Haithman: How do you get paid for that? How do you justify keeping somebody under contract when you're only making eight episodes and they're being paid minimum for that?
--:-- Diane Haithman: Writers' rooms, they call them mini rooms now because they're just saying, okay, let's just hire fewer writers if we have to pay them X amount.
--:-- Diane Haithman: So a lot of those games we can play, it's just instability just in general.
--:-- Diane Haithman: It's accepting more of that, I think, in your life.
--:-- David Pierce: Today's show was produced by Hadi Mawajdeh with help from Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Rob Byers, and guest-hosted by David Pierce.
--:-- David Pierce: And one more thing. Earlier this week, you heard an excerpt from a conversation that Noelle King had at South by Southwest with radio host Charlemagne Tha God.
--:-- David Pierce: And now, due to popular demand, we're getting ready to drop that whole unedited conversation with Charlemagne and political analyst Angela Rye.
--:-- David Pierce: Find it in your podcast feed on Sunday.
--:-- David Pierce: I'm David Pierce from The Verge. This is Today Explained from Vox. Thanks for listening.
