While compulsively watching The Sopranos on HBO 20 years ago, I never imagined that the network itself soon would become corporate bounty. As such it was conquered successively by AT&T, Discovery, Warners and Paramount+.
The dealmaking agonies of HBO reflect a Hollywood agenda committed more to regime change than to chasing awards. Indeed, for many studio employees the familiar rituals of Oscar week provide a comforting distraction, or at least a welcome yawn.
Data on industry employment is hard to pinpoint, but more denizens of film and TV would seem to be adrift at this moment than at any time in memory. They thus can afford the time between job searches to fill out Oscar ballots and even guarantee that they’ve actually seen the movies for which they’d voted.
Guarantees may be rare in Hollywood, but the Motion Picture Academy persistently asked its 10,000 members worldwide to vouch for the integrity of their ballots. Personal confession: I skipped lots of votes.
Voting aside, a glance at Hollywood’s corporate chess board would suggest a spectrum of issues to trigger job angst. Given a $79 billion debt load, would a restructured Warner Bros-Paramount assembly line truly be able to manufacture a professed output of 30 movies a year?
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Would realigned regimes at Paramount+ and HBO Max actually be able to nurture the creative relationships that would survive $6 billion in synergies, and satisfy 200 million subscribers?
Heralded for their resilience, entertainment apparatchiks are famously immune to identity crises, albeit a false immunity. In my own shake-and-bake Hollywood studio career, I’ve been involved with six corporate entities, consistently taking pride in my dubious adaptability. They were productive years — shows were created, careers advanced and (now and then) investors placated. To be sure, there was also a personal and creative toll affecting our work.
I recalled one rushed post-merger management meeting when titles (and careers) were tossed between lists, “active” and “abandoned,” with casual regard for history or value. At one United Artists session I reminded colleagues that they’d just shifted a James Bond movie to the junk pile. Corrections were made.
As managements relentlessly changed, visions inevitably were compromised. Movies, especially ambitious movies, uniformly took time to gestate – or disappear. At a key moment in developing The Godfather, the abrupt firing of the then-studio president plunged schedules into an ominous stall. Nurture of Hal Ashby’s Being There at Lorimar consumed years of calm negotiation over threats to rights and credits.
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Progress required patience, but patience has become an elusive commodity today when careers are more fragile and costs exponentially loftier. Insiders estimate that The Bride! at Warner Bros may result in a net loss of $90 million.
The Godfather was greenlighted at Paramount in 1971 at $7 million.
Dedicated filmmakers will have to survive crisis meetings with re-arrayed managements to earn their way to future Oscar nominations, their acceptance speeches becoming marvels of political diplomacy.