Hollywood.

As everybody knows, Hollywood is a fear-driven business. Just like most businesses. But what’s surprising about Hollywood, in comparison to, say, the car industry, is that risk is historically what makes our customers show up.

A simple analogy: if you’re a carmaker, it is probably not a good idea to release a car with only one wheel and no brakes. Not many people would buy that car. It feels unsafe. But in Hollywood, that kind of thinking can sometimes become the moneymaker of the decade.

This year I decided to read all the good biographies of the great filmmakers. I’ve plowed through Lumet, Kubrick, and Nichols, and I’m currently halfway through the remarkable conversational biography about Robert Altman. I stumbled upon a great quote last night:

“In Hollywood, if you make a big movie and it flops, it’s not your fault. But if you make a small movie, take a big swing, and it flops, it’s your fault, and the phones suddenly stop ringing.”

What he means by “big swing,” and what Hollywood usually admires as a “big swing,” is stuff like his M.A.S.H or Nashville. Movies that weren’t set up to be a success, yet somehow were, to everybody’s surprise. However, these movies could just as easily have failed miserably. Just like most of Altman’s other movies.

And so many other movies…

“Director Jail,” or “Movie Jail,” is a term coined to describe what happens when a director, (because it’s always the director’s fault) doesn’t perform well critically, financially, or, god forbid - both.

(Altman was locked up behind bars in the ’80s and couldn’t get a movie off the ground for a long time. This was after Popeye)

The stroke of a “hit” is rarely attributed to master filmmakers, or good movies for that matter. A “hit” is more often attributed to the opposite, while a “flop” can often be a masterpiece, just without recognition, and is always the artist fault.

That sentence can be helpful to read a few times. Because no, it doesn’t make much sense.

(A “flop” can of course also just be a stinker, but that’s beside the point.)

As everybody knows, and as I’ve written about before, movies that were once considered trash but are now considered masterpieces are countless. Yet the sentence for a director who “flops,” masterpiece or not, can be catastrophic.

We all know about the “lucky” directors thrown into “director jail.” The directors who already come with a bag of great movies and money, and then make a flop and never get to direct again. I suppose Todd Phillips was recently admitted behind bars after Joker 2, and the Cats director, Tom Hooper, has not returned after he forced Judi Dench into a furry CGI suit, even though both of these guys made the studios mountains of cash and directed their actors to win Oscars and reach immense fame.

I’m not too worried about Tom Hooper or Todd Phillips to be frank with you.

Todd lives in a $33 million mansion.

This story is more about some of the directors who were thrown into the gulag unjustly. And there are a few.

I recognize that there are three departments in movie jail.

Let’s start with Tony Kaye.

(For the few who know - just sit down and relax. I have a point.)

I think we can all agree that American History X is one of the top films of the ’90s. I think everybody in the industry also knows that Tony Kaye is hard to work with. In fact, so much so that when Edward Norton took over the edit, Tony Kaye sued him, the studio, and the DGA. (He lost)

The difficult part of this story was that Norton, a mega-star, wanted more screen time. Tony Kaye’s director’s cut was 95 minutes sharp, delivered on time and on budget, and tested really well. But Norton insisted that he was not portrayed ‘likable’ enough (ehhh, bro you a Nazi tho..), and the studio gave in. Kaye disowned the film, describing the released version, which was 24 minutes longer than his own cut, as a “total abuse of creativity” and “crammed with shots of everyone crying in each other’s arms.”

Not the film he wanted to make. So Tony was thrown into jail. Too hard to work with.

Tony later apologized for his behavior and took full responsibility for his actions, but it didn’t help. Tony basically never got to direct another film, and that’s our loss, really.

Another version of jail is when a new filmmaker makes something critics and audiences like, but just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, for some reason, gets the blame.

Barry Jenkins is one of those guys. Or was.

Barry’s first film is not Moonlight. Eight years before it won Best Picture at the Oscars (what a night..) he made a film called Medicine for Melancholy. It was released 2008, and as we all know, 2008 was a pretty shitty year.

Unfortunately, that caused him to remain a “promise,” but too risky and too small. In other words, there was no real proof yet that he was a profitable director.

Following Medicine for Melancholy, Barry wrote numerous bigger scripts, but nothing stuck with the studios. He picked up a job as a carpenter (nothing wrong with that) and was considered more or less a one-shot filmmaker.

Until, well, Moonlight.

(Barry is a success story. Most of these directors never get to make another film and stay carpenters. And the reason I’m not mentioning those guys is that you wouldn’t know them.)

The third example is the big-swing director.

This is personally my favorite type of director, and the one I think is most unjustly thrown into jail. And there are plenty of them in there.

I think Damien Chazelle was unfairly locked up behind bars after Babylon. Let’s be honest: Babylon is a vastly better film than most films. Tomas Alfredson after The Snowman - we all know he’s a master, and that that cut isn’t his. Martin Brest after Gigli (just Google it) Terry Gilliam after The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - one heck of a save after Heath Ledger died…

But recently, the harshest punishment seems to have gone to David Robert Mitchell for some reason.

I consider It Follows a masterpiece. I think most cinephiles do. His follow-up, Under the Silver Lake, is not a perfect film, but it’s at least a film. It’s not made for a streamer, nor for the mass audience, but it’s not bad. Not at all. It’s complex and hard to understand, but not a stinker. But in classic A24 manner, they killed it after mixed reviews in Cannes, barely releasing it.

It grossed 50k at the box office.

Let’s never work with that shitty director again!

This kind of thinking I find frustrating and hard to wrap my head around, logically, becouse we all recognize that Mitchell is one of our finest young auteurs working today. He took a swing after a huge hit (It Follows), and it didn’t land. So what? It was a small film…

Why the harsh sentence?

I get that directors like Josh Trank (Chronicle) or Patty Jenkins (Monster) are considered risky to work with after they are given a few big studio shots following their first hit, but what’s wrong with following up a hit with a personal, small film?

A THR report examines “director’s jail” and how, in an industry obsessed with the bottom line, it has become far too easy for a filmmaker to land in it.

“Now, new talent must deliver multiple successful projects in a row, sans slip-ups, before being afforded the grace (albeit only so much) to fail at the studio level,” says a top manager.

This is not great. And it’s terrible for an industry that is historically built on big, risky creative swings.

And the numbers are telling.

65% of first-time directors never make a second one. In that same analysis, only 8.6% of directors made more than five features. And if you’re a woman, or not white, those numbers are even more depressing.

In other words, the first film is not what’s hard. Statistically, the second one is near impossible. And if any of those are considered flops, then you’re in anomaly territory.

So how can this change?

I think the big agencies and managers bear most of the responsibility. They need to be the ones not only selling the flavor of the month - they need to do a better job selling “flop directors” they know can deliver.

Unfortunately, I’ve experienced this firsthand.

My first film was definitely not considered a hit. By no means. Prior to Mother, Couch, I was returning calls from the biggest studios and producers in the industry. All of this was the work of my great new agents and managers.

Let’s just say this: they are having a considerably harder time getting those people to agree to meet me post-release. It’s of course not their fault, and they are doing the legwork necessary, but what few of the studios recognize is the circumstance in which my movie was released.

It’s easy to forget, but the reason none of my actors could do any press or attend a single premiere was because of the longest strike in SAG history. They weren’t even allowed to talk about my movie. Good luck selling tickets then…

This was very much like Barry Jenkins in 2008. Bad timing.

Out of 50 films for sale the year Mother, Couch premiered at TIFF, only 12 sold. We were one of them. The other 40… I don’t know what happened to those.

I’m not saying this to shade anybody working hard to make my second film. I’m simply stating the obvious: the hard part of gaining recognition as a director is the work you do after a miss. That’s where the real work begins. And that’s more true than ever as fewer films are made, and far fewer big swings are taken.

Hollywood advertises itself as respecting artists, but in reality it wants artists who never miss. And that’s never happened. The beautiful thing about artists is that they take swings based on their gut, not the bottom line. That’s why we all love them and are fascinated by them. That’s why sometimes we get Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Green Hornet from the same artist. And that’s great.

That’s a well-balanced and beautiful world I like to live in.

What Hollywood doesn’t realize is that if it eliminates support for big swings and risky creative endeavors, only boring and soulless stories will be recognized, and that’s the end of its own industry.

That’s what in folklore they call ouroboros: a snake that eats its own tail.

So to my fellow big-swingers: Keep fucking swinging.

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For the record, I just handed in a screenplay where babies and dogs are murdered, and I had no problem with it.

I recently asked my trusted friend GPT this:

In my next screenplay I need to write extensively about the drug community in Philadelphia in the early 2000s, and in my research I find that the use of the n-word is common usage among the kids. In order to depict these kids accurately, I feel the need to write as they speak but, as a white writer, how do I spell that word out in the text?

Let me put it this way.. the answer I got back from GPT made me more confused than I was.

According to GPT, if it had its way, it would encourage me not to spell it out at all. It even suggests that I should refrain from using it because:

“The audience does not hear ‘the street.’ They hear you choosing to write it, over and over.”

It continues on by explaining that the “problem” is really a “calibration issue, rather than a permission issue.”

Eh.. What?

Gotta love an AI’s absolute wreckage of an answer sometimes.

Its final trillion dollar conclusion establishes this revelatory answer:

“Have Black Philly readers, actors, consultants, journalists, or people from the exact neighborhoods read the script specifically for language, posture, social accuracy, and where the script crosses from truthful into self-conscious. You do not need abstract permission; you need informed calibration.”

In other words, it took for granted that I would just shove it over to my producers without consultation, and go make the film…

Of course (!) I would run it by “Black Philly” before anything, but that was not my question. My question was how I should spell it out in the screenplay, before I ask for “informed calibration”.

I keep pushing…

I ask GPT:

“Alright, sure, I agree with all that, and I’m obviously not intending to ‘decorate’ the script with the use of that word unnecessarily. However, in my research, this is how the kids talk, so how should I write it? Give me a line.”

But it refuses. No matter how hard I push it, it won’t.

My argument with GPT concludes when I say:

“Well, if you can’t even write it out for me, how should I? You literally have no race…”

The problem is relatively minor, I get it. Because here’s the deal, I can obviously just ask any of my Black friends how to use this word in a creative text. And I will.. and I bet they’ll all give various intelligent answers, but I bet none of them will tell me it’s a “calibration issue” and refuse to give me an answer that’s useful.

But this had me seriously thinking…

In my research on street gangs in Philly, the community uses the slur as a safety net. This is why the old racist adage “They use it, so can I” doesn’t work. “They” can in fact use it as they like, and are using it as a cultural linguistic choice - a form of domestication of a word that carries so much historical trauma. Any informed being knows this. I get that. But that’s why it’s important to depict with accuracy and care in a film that’s intended to confront reality.

If GPT can’t acknowledge the fact that an entire community is using this word as a cultural safeguard, who can?

In other words, if non-racial mechanisms aren’t truly accepting community language, isn’t that by definition choosing a side?

Meaning: is ChatGPT white?

(Eyeroll, because I shouldn’t be surprised)

I suppose the answer is rather simple: either I spell it out, or don’t. I can of course redact it or just refrain from telling this story at all. But I won’t. It’s too good a story.

So how do I do this, post-awakening?

As we know, a few years ago this was a non-issue. Scrolling through the pilot of The Wire, the word is spelled out plainly. But that was almost 30 years ago…

Can a white writer get away with that now?

If not, fine - but how then do I depict an entire community with respect and care? Ad-lib? Script footnote? ****-system?

Seems a bit silly, doesn’t it?

I know one thing for sure - if I don’t use this slur respectfully, it’s not reality. And if I don’t acknowledge how reality sounds, then my attempt will fail and the community I’m trying to bring respect to will turn their backs - because, why shouldn’t they?

I certainly would.

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If Paramount manages to get the deal past Congress, they will not only own two of the biggest news outlets in the world (CNN, CBS), they will, as you also know - own the second and fourth largest movie library in the world. Only Disney has more titles if this merger goes through. And why wouldn’t it? But of course, that’s not all. Oracle already owns 15% of the U.S. outpost of TikTok, and is right now the biggest contractor for the expansion of data centers providing AI. Sorry, I should mention that Oracle and Paramount are not the same. (lol)

Whether I think this is the best outcome is of less importance. What matters more is that I trust David Ellison more than the snakes running Netflix. Teddy is a business major; David actually went to film school... if that matters at all anymore.

Nevertheless, the real player in this deal, kudos to him - is of course Mr. Zaslav. They don’t boo you now... take off your sunglasses next time.

(YouTube his commencement speech)

If it’s true that Zaslav knew all along that he would never sell WB to Netflix, he certainly played one of the smoothest baseball games in history. But in retrospect, it makes sense, doesn’t it?

How do you treat a spoiled child?
By not giving them any.

It can’t be the first time in Zaslav’s pretty impressive business journey that he’s had to handle billionaire nepo babies. I mean, if I have extensive experience with a few of them in my comparatively short stint in this industry, he sure must have too. And frankly, I don’t have anything against them. Listen, this business wouldn’t be able to run without them. This is a story of how David Zaslav played the biggest of the pack.

Zaslav knew as early as Barbie, his inherited project that made him famous, that he could probably sell WB, and not cheap. He knew he only had a few buyers, but one of them was vocal early on, and that was Mr. Ellison. Ever since Ellison acquired Paramount he’d expressed interest in buying WB, too. Because - more toys is better.

We all know this.

What does Zaslav do? Not giving him any.

When the deal with Netflix was “done” and the three brothers (Sarandos, Zaslav, and that other dude no one knows who is) held hands on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter a few months back, David Ellison wrote an open letter to WB shareholders. He said not only is he offering $30B more than Netflix, David Zaslav has not even invited them into the room!! (Verbatim.)

Poor little Ellison.
He really wanted WB!
He really-really wanted it, dad!!

Sarandos and that other guy even wrote all Netflix subscribers a nice little email saying they couldn’t be happier about winning the bid for WB. In their eyes, the deal was done.

But clearly no wedding vows had been promised so far.

At this point one must wonder if Zaslav felt sorry for his new buddies over at Netflix or if he had already counted all the millions he’d make. Sleepless nights? Fuck you. This is how business is made. Would I feel sorry? Absolutely not. One could even imagine David Zaslav secretly hated Netflix from the get-go. Because even he must have known that Netflix–WB is a bad, bad idea for this industry. Everybody knew that.

Zaslav, of course, argues that he began meeting resistance from the WB board. They had been in discussion with Ellison and the Saudis behind his back, and maybe that bid was worth taking into consideration? After all, it’s $30 billion more. Zaslav, of course, didn’t object when they brought this up with him. He knew Netflix would never be able to cough up another 30 to trump that bid. Nor did he want them to.

So last night, Netflix pulled out.

Is this deal done?
No.

But one thing you have to give Zaslav… well played, brother. Well fucking played.

Zaslav alone is poised to make well over $500M. In December he called his proposed cash compensation “inappropriate,” but as of last night... perhaps not so bad when you think of how much fun you can have with all that dough?

And that is how a “self-made” billionaire is made.

David Zaslav was born in Brooklyn. Middle-class family. Worked through high school. Went to law school. Did the thing most children of immigrants do - worked hard.

The Netflix–WB–Paramount deal wasn’t his first rodeo. After a few years at NBC he went to Discovery. His main objective: take it public. And he did. Cable seemed to be his thing, and he knew how to make it hot. He helped create the Oprah Winfrey Network as well as the Food Network. Discovery was no longer one boring thing; it was a major cable studio suddenly worth billions.

In 2021 it was announced that he would head the Warner–Discovery merger. One would think he must have lobbied hard, given his compensation package was $190 million. The $43 billion deal closed in 2022, and Zaslav was suddenly the loudest player in entertainment, and on track to become even louder only a few years later when he fought the unions like an old-school robber baron. He, for some reason also changed the name of HBO to MAX, then back to HBO, then GO for some reason, and then back to HBO again. Dunno about that one.

And if that wasn’t enough - David Zaslav is not in the Epstein files.

I guess there is still hope.

One could easily argue people like Zaslav are despicable beings, driven only by their own greed to enrich themselves, and that’s a fair argument. One could also argue that people like Zaslav make our industry relevant. The truth is, both Discovery and WB were rotten old tankers before he stepped in. Discovery was a cable network no one cared about, and WB had changed owners twice in a short time just to stay afloat. The stock was down to nearly zero and they struggled to attract talent.

Whatever you think of people like Zaslav, we should also stay humble. Sure, he’s doing a lot of things I don’t agree with, but at least he gives a shit.

And how do you know he gives a shit?

He gave Paul Thomas Anderson $100M+ to make One Battle After Another.
No one else did that. He knew fair and square that cash would not return. Cynics will say that was just a cheap way to win a few Oscars.

I’d say: still, he gave us a really fun movie.

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A highlight-reel presented by advertisers of want they want us to buy is, as always, presented every ten minutes or so. A reel that has been appreciated and applauded (even awarded) for decades. A reel that is historically a pretty accurate indicator of where the world stands. Whether you want it or not.

The Super Bowl ad-break is almost as anticipated as the game itself - so much so that the big newspapers cover the spots weeks ahead. This year The New York Times ran an article called “The Best Super Bowl Ads (So Far),” and it featured a list of their own favorite creative efforts by big companies trying to make us buy things. I know many of you reading this detect a slight discomfort, knowing I have also made those ads. I still would. I still am. They pay well. But I’m not here to write about the absurd (and often frightening) attention this particular ad-break gets - I’m here trying to write about what I take from it this year, and oh boy - what a transparent and accurate depiction of the times we’re living in it was.

If the Super Bowl had aired on Saturday, one could have easily mistaken it for a skit on Saturday Night Live, but it wasn’t - this was just a boring Sunday. And as we all know, Sundays rarely bring exciting things….

It’s said that nostalgia is a usual occurrence when we are dying. Everybody knows this who’s met an old person. Or a boring one. Nostalgia is used to reflect on what was great, but no longer is. Trump used nostalgia very effectively when he was elected both times. He promised to make something great again, and then again.

Not one, but five major brands used the same tactic in Sunday night’s Super Bowl. Levi’s brought us back to the 90s, and so did VW, both referencing ads they made 30 years ago. AI dot com made us all think of the early days of the internet and had us sing along to a Backstreet Boys tune. (I wonder if they knew T-Mobile would bring the old pals together in their own effort to have us buy.. internet?) Budweiser copied themselves frame by frame from an ad they made in ’94, I guess to remind us that no matter how much the world has changed since, the taste of a Budweiser hasn’t - and Dunkin’ Donuts thought it would be a cool idea to bring back all our favorite sitcom stars from the same era and have them all buy… doughnuts?

I guess.. that’s what they did back then?

Believe it or not, “nostalgia” was treated as a medical condition a few hundred years ago. You could be sent to the doctor’s office if you had what they first called “pathological homesickness.” It was treated as a mental delusion, often applied to soldiers at war. It was a real issue back in the day - a fear of longing so intense it destabilized your mind. Not great if you want to win wars.

But maybe a great tool to win elections, or sell… doughnuts?

As we all know, nostalgia was quickly romanticized by poets and artists as a form of escapism to deal with the terrible present. I get that, and boy does it work. I’m a sucker for it too!

Listen, I’m no fiend of nostalgia. Hearing my grandmother talk about her childhood (and grandpa) is lovely, but having the majority of some Fortune 500 companies remind us that it was better before all this recent shit happened feels, to say the least, less lovely.

The real issue is when companies - companies that should promise innovation - don’t even aspire for the future themselves. Or perhaps they just adjust the market according to your mood, having you look backwards and not forwards.

This is sad, and not a great trend.

As we all know - we can’t time-travel. We have no choice but to look forward. It’s unfortunately our only human option. Good thing is that the rest of the forward-looking ads had us covered this year. Because what was loud and clear from this year’s less-than-super-ad-break was that we should quit our jobs, gamble, and eat as much shit as we want!

Big Pharma has solved the issue gyms did a century ago: you can lose weight. Effortlessly. You can just live your life exactly the way you want, eat your breakfast the way you’ve always done, but with a poke in the arm, you don’t gain any. Serena Williams says so! And as you know, Serena has spent a lot of time at the gym. If Serena can’t even lose those extra pounds, you can’t either. Don’t even fucking try. Just buy our weight-loss serum, and go about your day. It’s even FDA-approved!

And while you’re at it (not trying, that is) - take the day off! Actually, quit your fucking job! There are now plenty of great tools developed by Bezos and Altman & Co. that allow you to spend all your free time on shit you actually like, such as walking through the office telling people to “just don’t do it” - just like Matthew Broderick does - I’m sorry, Ferris Bueller does (movie came out 1986, again - nostalgia).

Who cares about work when AI can do it for you? And it’s safe! Bezos says so! Even though Alexa listens and records your life, what can it actually do?

Kill you? Nah… it would never!

..at least not by all the crazy ways it suggests killing Captain America. Or is it Thor? I can’t remember. His wife doesn’t look particularly concerned anyways. Nor should you! It’s just Bezos listening in. He doesn’t care about you!

And while you’re not thinking about how an evil AI will kill you - gamble! Kendall Jenner does it! On her private jet even! Maybe if you gamble good enough you can also gamble on a private jet in the future! Even the funny guys on SNL gamble! And they’re not typical gamblers, they’re funny guys!

Again, I can feel your disdain toward my evident hypocrisy. I get it. My point is, however, slightly nuanced - in the midst of a nostalgic theme the world seems to be in, we’re treading through some deep and scary waters and should be careful. Even though nostalgia feels great when it’s presented to us - it’s also a cautionary tale that we’re collectively unsure of the future. And it’s not like we haven’t been unsure about the future before…

During the two world wars The Golden Age of Hollywood had us transported and mesmerized by countless films about the heroes of the civil war, the old west and a sanitized old south.

The problem is that today, as opposed to the time these ads are flirting with, the reality and history of our human existence is at play. The world has actually changed.

When these companies tell you to look back into a past with less worry, don’t go to the gym, gamble, and quit your job - this is because they know where we’re heading. I know this because I’ve done these ads myself. They spend billions figuring these things out. They have innovation department and marketing teams working meticulously to predict the future. It’s not a coincidence all these ads end up looking and feeling the same - the same year. It’s a calculated maneuver.

Good thing is that we still have a choice. We all do. If we just don’t buy their products, they will quickly recalibrate.

It’s that simple.

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According to an AI, it amounts to 228 distinct films. Four duplicates I watched twice.

Only because you asked. You’re welcome.

—

Conclave

Awakening

Short Cuts

Mind Game

High and Low

The Anderson Tapes

Eraserhead

One Man Up

To be or not to be.

Soundtrack of a Coup de etat

Double Indemnity

Soapdish

Saturday Night

Little Odessa

Falling in Love

Down with Love

It could happen to you

Dead Calm

Consequences of Love

Longlegs

One man up

Enemy of the state

Grand Theft Hamlet

Theif

Girl with the needle

Cinema Paradiso

Smile 2

Moneyball

Husbands and Wife’s

Watership Down

The Protagonists

Dark Water

Kuroneko

Following

Familiar Touch

Long Days Journey Into the Night

Neighboring Sounds

War Room

Nashville

Warfare

Copycat

Partenope

The Drama

Long Kiss Goodnight

Rabid

Plain Solei

Cloud

Companion

Grand Tour

Caught by the Today

Speak no Evil

Strange Days

Armand

Wild Things

Mountainhead

Phonecian Scheme

3 Women

Happiness

Primal Fear

Wild Things

Trouble in Mind

Breakfast of Champions

La Cocina

Barbarian

Night Moves

Quantum of Solace

D.E.B.S

Bully

Clean, Shaven

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Tystnaden (the Silence)

Kinds Of Kindness

Deer Hunter

The Fugitive

Jurassic Rebirth

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Bennys Video

Female Perversions

Mickey 17

The Strawberry Blonde

Scanners

Deep End

Becoming Led Zeppelin

Eddington

Code Unknown

White Ribbon

Sinners

Cache

The Piano Teacher

Funny Games 97

Miami Blues

The Shining

Time of the Wolf

Anselm

The Amateur

Basquiat Doc on Criterion

Weapons

Intentions of a murder

The Grifters

The Parallax View

Ace In The Whole

Midnight Run

Suburbia

A face in the crowd

Mallrats

So Long at The Fair

Black Swan

Pickpocket

Holiday

The Order

A place in the sun

The Graduate

Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Caught Stealing

The Other Guys

The Big Lebowski

Running on empty

Happyend

Oslo 31a Augusti

Angel Heart

Shadows and Fog

One Battle After Another

Mid 90s

Kanye West Doc..

A Streetcar Named Desire

Superman

M

This Boys Life

Jay Kelly

House Of Dynamite

Taxi Driver

Panic Room

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

The Fence

Prisoners

What Lies Beneath

Six Sense

Reifenstaal Doc

Splitsville

Let the right one in

The Snow Walker

No Other Choice

Bourne Supremacy

The Smashing Machine

The Wrestler

Lurker

Requiem for a Dream

La Grazia

American Dharma

Paprika

Pina

Roofman

Drive

Frankenstein

Man Escaped

The Perfect Neighbor

Manhattan

Hurry up tomorrow

Mr Scorsese

Carnival of Souls

The Smartest guy in the room

Springsteen

Living in oblivion

Charlie Sheen doc

Bugonia

F1

The Godfather pt 1

Erin Brockovich

Spotlight

The Post

All The Presidents Men

Die My Love

Whiplash

Deconstructing Harry

State of play

The Drowning Pool

Irreversible

Obsession

Sherlock Jr.

Italian American

Sorry, Baby

Mads

New Leaf

Downfall

Celebrity

Millennium Actress

Requiem of a Vampire

Marty Supreme

Lone Star

La Marge

Materialists

Millennium Actress

Sorcerer

All the beauty and the bloodshed

Nothing left unsaid

101 Dalmatians

Ballad of a Small Player

City of Gold

After the Hunt

Zodiac

Sea of Love

Alabama Solution

Hamnet

Shakespeare In Love

Ralf Lauren doc

The Offense

Three Days of The Condor

Louder Than Bombs

Bugsy Malone

As good as it gets

About Schmidt

Mississippi Burning

The secret agent

All That Jazz

Home Alone In New York

The Plauge

Black Hawk Down

Martin Margiela: In His Own Words

New Yorker 100 Years

Wake Up Dead Man

Megadoc

Insignificance

Tokyo Godfather

Unstoppable

Bringing up Baby

Cast Away

Air Force One

Murmur of the Heart

As I heard PTA recently blare - whomever’s complaining about movies in 2025 needs to take a seat. He’s right. What a year! Some of the best original movies I’ve seen in decades, I saw this year. We witnessed a surge in the box office and cemented that Hollywood is still creating waves when it comes to cultural impact and politics. I mean, who can argue when the president himself greenlit Brett Ratner’s Rush Hour Four! C’mon! Can’t wait…

As I know some of you don’t, you should check in with Gower Street every now and then. It’s frankly not that interesting until this time of year, when they release their Hollywood forecast (which they are usually somewhat right about) and there is some great news in there! Great news for someone like me. Not only do they predict almost pre-pandemic-level box office returns, they also seem pretty bullish on China (let’s see what Xi does with Taiwan post-Maduro kidnapping… Exciting times!).

It is true, this year will be a hell of a year for the movies. We have Nolan’s Odyssey, Denis’ third Dune, Spielberg’s return to UFOs, and Gerwig’s Narnia. I wouldn’t be too surprised if these four bring home close to a billion dollars each (obviously not Narnia, thx Netflix). We will also see a new Avengers, Spider-Man, and Toy Story. On the more independent (read: exciting) side of things, we have The Bride, The Drama, Whalefall (a book I tried to option last year), and Iñárritu’s Digger… and if that doesn’t excite you, what will?

Now.. will Congress approve a Netflix and WB merger, and will Apple stop making movies?

Let’s see…

YouTube

For people that hang out with me too much, you know this already - but I’m a huge proponent of YouTube. I think, and I spy, a version of the future led by YouTube. I think in ’26 we will see an aggressive takeover within the TV space by YouTube. We already know that they just bought the rights to air (stream?) the Academy Awards on YouTube this year, but this is just the start. Netflix’s biggest competitor when it comes to TV will be YouTube, and the first real taste of this will come in ’26.

They won’t, however, move into the movie space just yet, but with eyeballs comes responsibility, and I’ve said it before and I will say it again: YouTube will be the biggest studio on the planet within the next decade. Netflix will be reduced to Emily-in-Paris-flow-TV. YouTube won’t. YouTube is where you will turn to access news, sports, and entertainment. It’s just that Google doesn’t know who to attack first. The Academy Awards was an unlikely candidate, but what the hell.. why not?

Disney

As we all know, this is the last year Iger will be in charge of this old, rotten ship we once called home to great stories - but he’s already at work laying out the groundwork for his replacement by sucking Sam Altman’s dick. This could be good and bad. It depends on how they play it.

It’s not strange to think that a legacy animation studio like Disney would build the first AI-driven animation studio, but one can only hope there are some adults in the room when it happens. In all honesty - who would really care if Toy Story 7 is AI-generated, other than the poor animators who lose their jobs? I predict that Disney moves fast into this space in ’26 and announces a completely AI-generated feature at the end of the year.

Will it work?

That’s up to the film gods to decide. Will they try? Absolutely.

Apple

I predict ’26 will be the last year Tim Cook holds office in Cupertino. This is not great for the film industry, as he was - and is - an advocate for good movies. Even though he didn’t manage to make Apple the major studio he probably set out to do, he tried and almost succeeded. Apple, with all their wealth, did manage to collaborate with some great filmmakers and produce some pretty good movies and TV shows.

But without Tim, this won’t last.

They are already losing good minds to Ellison & Co. and will continue to do so when Tim’s gone and his replacement is in charge - a replacement that will most likely come from engineering and not the school of Steve Jobs.

Will Apple TV vanish?

Probably not now, but eventually, yes. We will see the first fractures appear this year, though. Even though Pluribus and The Studio were a success, the guy greenlighting those shows is with Paramount now.

Speaking of the devil…

Paramount, WB and Netflix

Poor David will lose the deal. I mean - most likely. Whether Trump’s mind is awake enough to care about his ol’ pal Larry, I don’t know - but most likely not. He will make it slide to Congress, who will, after some hard-boiled questions to Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, finally give in and approve the merger. I mean, why wouldn’t they? People tend to forget that Warner Brother’s have been owned by some pretty shady companies before. Netflix is, to say the least - the least shady… I mean, remember AOL?

Is this bad? You already know what I think of this. But this also creates a great opportunity for the rest of the players to step up and actually make great films - especially for the loser David and his dad, Goliath. If they had $100 billion to spend on a merger, they have $100 billion to spend on “content” (please excuse my language).

One thing is for sure - this defeat will not be taken graciously by the Ellisons and their investors. They will fight, and fight hard. One can only hope they will fight creatively, and not only politically. My prediction: Paramount will struggle, but return stronger, with a different aim - free movies. They already have Pluto (who the fuck knows what that is) and Paramount+ (..eh?). The only way to compete is free. How they do it, I don’t know - but there is a way. They know tech, and as we know - tech is usually free. They could argue: can movies be too?

A24 and the rest…

If you asked me last year, I would have said that in 2025 A24 would sell. This clearly didn’t happen. Why? Who knows. Will it happen this year? Probably not, because their slate is weaker than ever, and they still have yet to produce a movie that grosses $500M+ to show investors they can generate real returns.

Are they trying? Oh boy, do they try. Rumor has it Marty Supreme needs to bank $300M to break even. This won’t happen, of course. Even though international hasn’t kicked in yet, it’s unlikely it’s European enough to sway audiences en masse. But who knows? I certainly hope it’s successful enough to convince every major studio to come up with their own Marty… but that’s for later.

What A24 does in 2026 is clear: nothing major. They have some exciting titles coming our way - movies that will actually be great, like my friend Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama who I was fortunate to watch last summer (it’s great) - but will it gross $500M?

No.

One thing is for sure: A24 won’t sell until they have a few of those titles in their bag.

What will be exciting to track is whether Euphoria leaves HBO and ends up at Netflix after the merger - because I do think season three will create waves in the TV space.

Hell of a year for Zendaya, by the way.

Film Festivals (Cannes) and the market

I predict a Palm-d’Or hat trick by my fellow Swede - but set that aside - film festivals will decline rapidly in ’26 if nothing major changes. They’ve been, for too long, an exclusive club for hunter-gatherers like Harvey Weinstein, but movies are no longer “exclusive” and we can already see the decline in the importance of festivals.

Very few major studios go to festivals to buy titles anymore, and the big “indie” studios decide to release films outside festivals because the risk of running bad press is too great, and the truth is: press isn’t that valuable anymore when Letterboxd and real audience reactions matter more. Who cares about Critics’ Week when no one shows up when the film premieres anyways? Mubi certainly didn’t make their 25 million back on Die My Love…

There’s also the delay between release and festival premiere, which is utterly frustrating for the audience. In 2026, we’ll still see big movies, like Spielberg’s Disclosure Day - premiere at festivals (probably Cannes), but the result is that the market for independently financed films diminishes. Why premiere your film when the press won’t bother, the market won’t bother, and the festival only cares about where Tom Cruise will have lunch?

I predict that fewer films will be for sale at festivals in 2026. Festivals will become expensive red-carpet showcases for stars to show their Balenciaga’sss - not places where movies are bought. This is sad.

Unions

I doubt the Writers Guild will strike again given the volatile market - but if they do, it will happen soon. SAG will stay quiet, and negotiations will remain civil. What we learned from the last two negotiations is: was it really worth it?

Well, for Fran Drescher, it surely was. I don’t think she would have been snagged by Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme if it weren’t for that megaphone at the barricades a few years ago. She did well. She did good. Good job, Fran! You were fantastic in Marty.

Quick predictions:

• Larry and David Ellison will buy the American outpost of TikTok.

• The Charli XCX film will be better than we think.

• Digger will be the best film of the year, and Tom Cruise will win Best Actor in ‘27.

• Michael De Luca will depart WB and become president of film at Paramount.

• David Fincher’s spin-off of Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will be a sleek disaster and cement the notion that Netflix can’t produce great films, not even when they give Fincher carte blanche.

• A micro-drama will be a surprising hit among my cinephilic friends and erupt a moral dilemma - can scrollable dramas really be good? No. Please no. No!

• AI-generated porn will do a hostile takeover and reduce human-generated porn to the equivalent of jazz bars - very niche.

That’s it, folks.
Happy ’26!

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There’s a rather infamous meme - whether it’s real or fake doesn’t really matter - of Paul Thomas Anderson holding up a sign that reads: “Don’t waste your film recommendations on shitty people who don’t deserve it.”

It cements a notion that feels uncomfortably true, but one that has since spiraled completely out of control. With the rise of review aggregators such as Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd, the industry standard for what constitutes a “good” or “bad” films has been reduced to dumb votes.

Not too long ago, in a sweaty old dorm room in Berkley, Senh Duong, Patrick Lee, and Stephen Wang sat around hating on movies. They were frustrated that the internet didn’t provide a quicker, faster way to know if a movie was good or bad - so they built a service they decided to call: Rotten Tomatoes, borrowing the old theater practice we all know from The Hunchback, where audiences throw lettuce at poor stage performers as a sign of disapproval.

Cool.

Of course, they now claim this wasn’t the reference at all. Supposedly, Rotten Tomatoes comes from the movie Léolo. The three of them apparently fixated on a particular tomato scene. You know.. that infamous tomato scene in Léolo?

You don’t? Neither do I.

Today, we take instant good-or-bad ratings for granted. Most movies arrive with a number attached, often expressed as a percentage. Letterboxd and IMDb do it slightly differently - Letterboxd on a 0–5 scale, IMDb on a 1–10 scale.

The lower the score, obviously, means do not watch.

Using grades to evaluate films is as old as cinema itself. In the early 1910s, a thumbs-up or thumbs-down was common practice. Star systems, letter grades and numerical scores were introduced by newspapers to help audiences decide where to spend their attention - and their money.

And it worked… It really worked.

If a critic didn’t approve of a movie, people often followed suit and looked elsewhere. Which, in practice, is a little sad. Not so much for the poor artist - for them.

The number of films eviscerated on release that are now considered masterpieces are countless - and we love a comeback story, don’t we? As much as we love the films themselves, we also love the narrative of how our favorite movie was “killed” by critics before being rediscovered years later.

“Oh, I love Citizen Kane.”

No you didn’t. Not when it came out. You didn’t even buy a ticket.

This fetish is as old as movies…

But let me bring you back to our tomato-throwing boys in Berkley. One could argue that by democratizing the rating system - by taking power away from a chosen few critics and giving it to the people- the process becomes fairer, less corrupt. If the whole world chimes in on what to watch, you’re more likely to like or hate it in line with everyone else. And that’s good, right?

If a million flies agree to eat shit.. and democracy is great - but cinema is not an elected leader. An elected leader uses your vote to guide a proposed future. Cinema is finished work.

Voting on a movie after it exists is like voting for a leader after their term has ended. It’s useless. It only leads to endless post-term arguments.

(Alright yes, historically, voting for leaders hasn’t proven bulletproof either, but that’s for another time.)

The real issue with rating systems is that audiences instantly know whether a film is “good” or “bad” before experiencing it. And this is precisely what filmmakers try to avoid. We want films to linger. We want them to confuse you, anger you, even repel you. That’s what lasts.

In my film-geek community, it’s practically understood: if a movie has a 50% score on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s probably interesting. One of my absolute favorite films, Birth, currently holds a 41% score.

Does that make it a bad film? For some, it does.

A recent Motion Picture Association study showed that the majority of young moviegoers won’t consider buying a ticket to a film that scores below 70% on Rotten Tomatoes.

This is not good.

And it’s probably not what my dorm-room jerk-mates had in mind when they built Rotten Tomatoes. Or maybe they did? Like many other tech companies, they set out to “solve a problem” and end up creating a much bigger one.

We all love Facebook, don’t we?

Aggregator sites like Rotten Tomatoes are now actively used in film marketing. Warner Bros., for Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, proudly slapped a Certified Fresh badge on the poster of One Battle. Like it actually mattered…

But for for them I does, because they own it.

It’s not widely known that the two largest movie studios own the most ‘trusted’ review aggregator. WB and Universal share RT. Like a weird third partner in a relationship.

But why does that matter?

You could argue that it’s still “the people” deciding what’s fresh or rotten. But ownership matters. By controlling timing, framing, and cultural impact, studios can control outcomes. If a movie scores low on opening weekend, it becomes a smart corporate decision to pull marketing instead of supporting it. Conversely, high-scoring films get amplified.

And which films tend to score high?

Historically, not the ones that endure, sadly.

Ironically, films like The Shining and Once Upon a Time in America are now Certified Fresh. They were not treated that way on release. That’s the paradox of great cinema: we don’t know it’s great until years later. And the problem arise when studios start to algorithmically create movies based on what scores the highest, the fastest. This means that your stupid instant score on a review aggregator ultimately doesn’t allow those films to be made anymore.

We need to accept that real cinema is not made for instant gratification. Stop scoring films. Start talking about them instead.

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Alan Bergman essentially prints money.

He’s also Bob Iger’s likely candidate to replace him next year. And here’s why that’s not a good idea.

We all know that around 2008, Wall Street marched into Hollywood and injected enough cash to shut every major cinephile down. The people involved became incredibly rich (good for them) but movies suffered.

Alan Bergman holds a bachelor’s degree in business economics from UCLA. He joined Disney 1996 in corporate controllership, focusing on studio initiatives. He must have done well, because he became CFO a few years later. In 2005 he was promoted to President, and has essentially held that level of power ever since. He’s now the co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, overseeing the entire Disney Studio ecosystem. Including Disney+.

Alan Bergman is as much Disney as Bob Iger - it’s just that we don’t talk about him as much as we should. And we really should.. because Alan Bergman has made a critical mistake, and his mistake have had dire consequences for us who love movies.

Any MBA student would agree: keep making movies that make a lot of money. If Marvel One made a lot of money, make Marvel Two, and then Marvel Three and Four and Five... Expand it into a TV franchise while you’re at it. People love it!

But here’s why that’s a mistake: if you only make movies that make a lot of money, you force a big chunk of moviegoers out of the habit of going to the movies. You eliminate the cultural importance of cinema and start to lose the value of what a moviegoing audience in reality brings - the excitement of going to the movies.

Don’t get me wrong. I can appreciate a comic-book movie. Nolan’s made a few really good ones, Matt Reeves too, and Ryan Reynolds seems to have tapped into something fun with Deadpool. But the problem occurs when you only make these types of films, and one thing Alan Bergamn should understand as a business guy - portfolio diversification is key to sucsess.

As some of you know, Freaky Friday is one of my favorite films. I was 11 when I saw it for the first time, beginning to understand the value of magical realism. And for Disney it was a pretty big deal at the time. $20 million budget, $200 million gross. For an original, that’s not bad.

Freakier Friday, the sequel, or reboot, or whatever you want to call it - came out earlier this year. It didn’t do as well as the first one, but that’s beside the point. Because in true Bergman fashion - instead of spending money on a new, original-type Freaky Friday - it makes more sense for him to greenlight a reboot. This is classic corporate risk management. In the MBA world, this is nothing new. But does this thinking belong to Disney? And more so - what implications does that bottom-line model have for the people who love movies?

If you only make reboots, remakes, or sequels, you ultimately force a smaller and smaller population to like them.

Since 2005, Disney has produced and released roughly 400 films - about 300 of them have been reboots, remakes, or sequels.

In comparison, from 1970 to 1990, almost all Disney films were originals. Animated sequels didn’t even exist theatrically until The Rescuers Down Under (1990), and live-action sequels were extremely rare. In fact, I can only find eight during this period. Eight…

In other words: Disney has gone from 90% original films to 75% franchise films.

That’s not good news.

I bet poor ol’ Nazi-Walt is turning in his grave.

In fact, Walt himslef is quoted saying, ‘By nature I’m an experimenter. To this day, I don’t believe in sequels. I can’t follow popular cycles.’ He goes on saying “I didn’t want to waste the time I have doing a sequel; I’d rather be using that time doing something new and different.”

But business school Alan Bergman couldn’t give a flying fuck what smelly ol’ grandpa once said. They make billions now Walt! Billions!! Besides we just sold all your stupid characters to OpenAI.. Suck on that you wierd cartoonist!

Bob Iger agrees with Alan. Of course he does. Bob’s a businessman, and as a true businessman - the bottom line is more important than the product. How else can you argue the raise of your own compensation last year by 30%?

(32 million just wasn’t enough… I get that)

Maybe this type of thinking makes sense on Wall Street..

Not to me.

I think Alan Bergman’s model dilutes the cinematic experience, and in return, people who used to go to the movies no longer do. Bergman has narrowed the audience into one simple thing. He made the theatrical experience into a single-minded, corporate-safe, Comic-Con bore.

Do me a favor. Quote a line from any big franchise film… Try! Go ahead.

(’I am your father’ was an original at the time, so that doesn’t count - try another)

Pretty hard is it?

Now pick any original film.

See? Not that hard.

I picked ”You talkin’ to me?”

But I have a solution. Because… of course I do.

I encourage studios, especially mega-studios like Disney, to be prepared to lose money on original films for a few years in order to reboot the theatrical ecosystem. I encourage them to spend a healthy amount of cash on development and marketing for original films - of all types - and abandon the franchise-only model - and this isn’t just for saving theaters. It’s as much about saving themselves.

The truth is - if you make 75% reboots, remakes and sequels - you’ll soon lose everybody.

Because when has it ever been fun to see something you’ve already seen?

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Before Daniel Plainview discovered oil in the ground, people caught whales. We don’t think much of the poor (not so poor) whalers today, but without them, historically, the city you probably live in wouldn’t be one.

It’s safe to say the whaling industry ruled the world.

…but along came broke-ass Daniel Plainview and his deaf son. They say, “Isn’t it easier if we just make soap and shit from the oil in the ground rather than pulling a 45-ton sperm whale out of the water?”

People agreed.

By 1860, basically every lamp in the cities and in the home was replaced with kerosene instead of whale jizz. And when the “men of the sea” were thrown into a civil war a few years later - forced to abandon the whale ships to fight for or against Lincoln - the industry collapsed. Sure, a few weathered souls still argued whales and petroleum could co-exist, but what they didn’t see coming was the invention of something Edison called the light bulb.

…and then of course came the death of the horse, invention of the wheel blah blah blah.

By 1870, the whale industry was rendered obsolete.

Today, we don’t think much of it, nor feel especially bad for the old-timers who lost their ships and homes and incomes - but back then, it was a pretty big deal.

In the 1890s it was not uncommon to gather in a hall to watch a train arriving, projected on a screen or wall, illuminated by petroleum light - shot through images.

They called this motion capture. Later - motion pictures.

In the ’20s, old circus men understood the value of this and began building stages to mass-produce this new trend of moving pictures. They later built palaces - housing thousands of people to collectively watch it together. They added sound and color, widened the screens, multiplied the seat count - all to amuse us as much as they could with the spectacle they learned during their circus days.

Then Daniel Plainview found the first TV in a hole in Texas, or Oklahoma, or wherever the fuck he was digging.

A few months before Titanic is released, Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph launch Netflix in Silicon Valley - allegedly after Reed was furious he had to pay Blockbuster a $40 late fee for Apollo 13 (the irony couldn’t be more on point - and yes, I’ll write about the dangers of the underdog tech-bro some other time).

A decade later, Netflix launches “Watch Now” - abandons their DVD rental service entirely and overnight starts spending billions on what they now begin to call “content” (they are not in the film business, remember).

What grows to become Netflix biggest and strongest competitor is not the other “studios” or DVD rental houses - but the cinematic experience itself. They reason - if people care to take their car to buy a ticket and popcorn to watch a movie - they are not clicking on anything on our site, and that’s not good business for us.

The way they attack this problem is not by killing all the whales, excuse me - studios, at once - no - they become “theatre friendly.”

They have us believe they actually care about the theatrical experience. They even build us two real theaters! Now.. call me cynical, but this is not so much them liking you in the seat - this is to win Oscars and not lose profit - because, thank God - The Academy of Motion Pictures still has that as a criteria to win a golden dude. But of course they don’t tell you this.

Along comes 2025 and Warner Brothers shows the world, helmed by David Zaslav that people actually like going to the movies. Weapons, a movie that shouldn’t do well theatrically kills it - Sinners too - and A Minecraft Movie gross close to a billion dollars.

This was all good news for everyone but Netflix, and Reed Hastings’s new bunk-mate -Ted Sarandos.

By convincing Warner Brothers to sell their legacy studio, Zaslav had one condition - Netflix was only allowed to buy if they promised to release films in theaters. Sarandos was quick to promise, even though he knew his investors care very little about the theatrical experience. To them he said;

“I wouldn’t look at this as a change in approach for Netflix movies. I think over time the windows will evolve to be much more consumer friendly—to meet the audience where they are, quicker.”

Edison just launched the light bulb.

The whalers drop their spears.

Daniel Plainview just threw that bowling pin in Paul Dano’s face.

Within the next few months Netflix will double down on their love for the theatrical experience. You’ll hear Reed and Sarandos say shit like ‘I remember watching Casablanca in a movie theatre with my dad..’ - but don’t be fooled…

Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos are not a fans of the theatrical experience.

In fact, they just spent $83 billion to kill it.

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And as we now know, it didn’t stop there.

Self-driving cars, humanoid robots, digital companions, mega-computers, brain chips are all advancing faster than our cultural frameworks can keep up. The result is obvious - fictional narratives are less engaging when the real ones outpace them.

It wasn’t always like this. Hollywood once owned the spectacle of building things.

In the 1930s, when trust-fund baby Howard Hughes advertised that he’d made the most expensive film ever - a film that took years to finish with massive reshoots, rebuilds, and reedits - audiences were electrified. How could they not be? The sheer absurdity of the ambition was the marketing. And Hughes wasn’t the first one.

Before audiences bought tickets to Buster Keaton’s The General, they already knew he had blown his entire budget on one single scene. For It’s a Wonderful Life, the studio built a full-scale replica of Bedford Falls: 75 buildings, a working bank, 20 fully grown oak trees, and a three-block business district smothered in man-made snow. The 10,000-extra arena for Ben-Hur cost MGM eight million 1950s dollars. They shipped sand from Mexico to Italy to get the color right and they didn’t shy away from telling the audience all this before it became the mega hit it did, earning 11 Academy Awards. Titanic, as we all know, also swooped the Oscars in the 90s and was the first film in history to gross a billion dollars - much of this attributed to the ‘crazy set narrative’ we all got to know about before the film came out. Yes, they actually built that boat… google it.

These stories created the Hollywood legend we used to know and the audience, in return, often showed up for it.

The “builder story” formed an industry mythology not unlike the one Silicon Valley tells today. They even adopted the same language. If you happen to stumble upon one you’ll be quick to learn they all call themselves ‘builders’ now - because in a sense they are. They are building legendary narratives and worlds just like Hollywood used to do. And the audience seem to show up for it. How can they not when real humanoid robots just like in iRobot will soon sit in every upper-middle-class home. When self-driving cars already shuttle us around. When personal AI’s much like Kubrick’s HAL 9000 soon triage our inbox and schedule our week perfectly - and before you notice, you’ll be able to eat breakfast in space.

And these are all really cool things… ‘Things’ Hollywood used to own.

But what are we doing instead?

When news broke that Greta Gerwig is building sets “for real” for her upcoming Narnia adaptation, comments flooded the internet, applauding her for going the extra mile - doing it “The Nolan Way” (yes, Chris still build things, and yes - people seem to show up for it). But this didn’t surprise me - nor should it surprise anyone, however it seems to be completely overlooked by the studio executives. In fact, they often try to convince fimmakers to be cost-efficient and not build things.

My fellow Swede Lasse Hallström faced this when he was preparing The Nutcracker. His ambition was to build everything by hand, just like the old days, he said - but Disney wouldn’t let him.

For the past few decades, creating digital worlds rather than physical spaces created by carpenters has undoubtedly saved a lot of money for studios - but it has also made the movies weaker. On many levels. As a former actor I can attest that acting with dots in your face before a green box - is hard. This is true even for the best of them. I think we all remember the moment Sam Neill and Laura Dern kneel next to the dying Triceratops in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park from ’93. We all remember the caring touch - Lauras hand on the dinosaur - feeling it as it takes its last breaths. This is because that touch was real. As far as I know, Gareth Edwards didn’t use any ‘real Dino’s’ in his latest ‘Rebirth’ - and we can tell by the acting.

The result - the audience didn’t show up. Nor did it for Tron (..where did it go?). The latest Wicked has quickly become a meme that coined the verb ‘Netflix’. Yes, internet use that as a verb now - ‘It looks Netflix’. Google it.

Building worlds has been the rule of Hollywood for as long as our industry has existed. This is what we are. We are carpenters and we’re pretty damn good at it. But we’ve lost our mojo. We’ve lost the “crazy” we used to be known for. The ‘crazy’ that made people excited to go to the movies. The ‘crazy’ we now let the folks in Silicon Valley own. But should we be okay with that?

Shouldn’t we defend our industry from an external threat?

It seems studio executives are overlooking the core of what made our industry special. They scratch their heads wondering why people don’t show up anymore - trusting algorithms to give them an answer that makes sense but don’t realize the answer is much simpler than they think - let’s just start building things again.

Let’s go back to being crazy.

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Sinners opened wide, 3,308 theaters, grossed 48m opening weekend. Weapons opened in 3,200 theaters, made 43. One Battle, 3,600 theaters, grossed 48. That seems to be the ‘widest’ a studio can release a film right now. They cap at 50. Not because people aren’t interested in seeing it - but because there’s no more room to see it. There are literally no more seats to sell.

Sure, movies do leg out, but it’s also true that being a week late to an event film like the ones above is just less fun. You might as well wait for the stream. You’re out of sync with the conversation and the incentive to get your ass to a theater drops. Of course it does. Today the fomo window is smaller than ever. Hollywood should know this. I know this..

Now, if cinema is a real estate problem, how come there aren’t more screens but in flexible spaces? Pop-up screens? Outdoor gatherings?

Besides, if our current cultural climate is ‘immediate,’ why not find a way to double the screens opening weekend and then reduce - not the other way around?

In essence; Why not just make the ‘event’ of an ‘event film’ bigger?

Here’s a hot take. Could IMAX potentially start renting arenas and go to bed with Live Nation?

Ari seems to be the right guy for the job.

Joe Pompliano made it very clear: Ari is betting big on live. Perhaps he knows something we don’t? Maybe during the UFC events he’s talking to the AI people about things like this? It is true, if AI pushes our work weeks to four days, I doubt the result will be that we stay inside for the rest of it. Ari seems to be with me on this point.

Ari’s vision for the future is becoming hot among the minds in entertainment. Pompliano writes: ‘Pretty much every major sports investor I have talked to over the last year — streaming executives, team owners, private equity investors — believes AI will meaningfully increase the value of live sports and entertainment.’

We watch movies collectively, as we watch sports collectively, and nothing this year gives us hints that this is slowing down - what the numbers are telling us is that the audience just don’t want to be late to the party.

Why not build an infrastructure allowing thousands of people to watch The Odyssey together next year. A quick poll among my instagram followers showed that 92% were in favor of that given the tech would work.

Note; Remember, The Roxy had 6000 seats in its heyday. Radio City had even more…

Is this a sign we’re heading back to golden era of cinema?

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My concern: Is this how you treat Ed Berger? :(

Ed, as we know, is not a bad director. He not only gave us Conclave and All Quiet, he also gave us Patrick Melrose, which was, for someone who despises TV, not bad. That aside, let me talk about what’s going on here.

Ed, as we know, after All Quiet, became a star in Scott Stuber’s eyes. It’s the type of film Netflix prides themselves on making. But let’s be clear, they don’t make these films. Their international team sometimes does, but Stuber never does. Mainland Netflix wouldn’t know what to do with that script. International does, rarely, but sometimes manages to produce great stuff, like The Hater, that no one saw unfortunately. Anyway, after or right before Conclave, one can imagine Ed came to Stuber and said he’d like to make Ballad. Without thinking much about it, Mainland Netflix and Stuber said yes. Of course they did. Did they read the script? Probably not. But what could go wrong? Ed had given them one banger after another two years straight. Knowing Ed, Ballad seems like the perfect film for him. It’s hectic, absurd, sweaty, fun… but good? Who cares? Now, if Ed got to do his version or not we will never know - but he made a version, and that’s the version hidden behind an actual search on Netflix. I tried scrolling to find it as an exercise, but found nothing. I literally hit the bottom of Netflix, and for people who’s been down there, it’s a dark place. Really really dark.

Ballad premiered at Telluride and then later TIFF. Critics didn’t love it, nor did the audience, but instead of using Netflix as a vessel to approach its audience (because I’m sure there is one) - it decided not to. Because it’s simply too risky. It’s better for everybody involved to throw that extra cash at Frankenstein to make sure Guillermo gets his Oscar nom. For Ed.. screw him!

Here’s my point: When movies are made out-of-algorithm - Netflix won’t have your back. Not even if you’ve given them a bunch of Oscars.

Note: Yes, do watch The Hater. Completely out-of-algorithm, too long, too dark, too foreign - but oh-so-good.

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