We are witnessing one of the most devastating declines we have ever seen. The events surrounding Hollywood are baffling.
It was about this time the writers and actors were on strike. Not long after that, agreements were reached where people thought the unions got a good deal.
Since that time, the reality of the world hit them. Hollywood is in steep decline. It is not going to slow anytime soon. A few major studios were already swallowed up, with more in the way.
Workers in all aspects of the industry are feeling it.
Here are headlines from the Los Angeles times from the passed couple days:
Many thought there would be a repeat from 15 years ago.
At that time, the strikes caused an uptick in business for reality television shows. Not this time.
But around the time writers walked out again in 2023, something strange happened.
“I thought because of the strikes there might be an uptick in reality TV because most of my jobs haven’t been union,” said Celeste Diamos, a TV editor who has worked on “House Hunters,” “Property Brothers” and “The D’Amelio Show.”
From April through June, reality TV production in the greater Los Angeles area plummeted by 57% compared with the same period last year and 50% compared with the five-year average, according to FilmLA, a nonprofit organization that tracks on-location shoot days and filming permits in the region. (The five-year average excludes three months in 2020 when production shut down because of COVID-19.)
That is quite a hit.
While many will offer up a variety of reasons for it, I believe it is fallout from the fragmentation of entertainment. The industry never adapted to the fact that fragmentation was taking place. Studios kept operating like it was the 1990s, without regard to how things were emerging at the edges.
This is not a local issue either:
“People have asked us ... ‘Are we losing it to Georgia?’ or ‘Are we losing it to New York?’” he added. “Well, they’re all screaming the same thing. They’re all seeing a loss of production. It’s global. It is national, and it is also local.”
There still seems to be a resistance to what is really taking place. The industry is not going to return to "normal". It is changed forever.
At the same time, jobs are going away in a major way. We already see many leaving the industry due to the shutdown.
Which brings up the next major disruption.
Part of the dispute during the strikes, aside from money, was the threat of artificial intelligence.
Here we saw the believe that unions had won. They got contracts that promised not to use AI costing people their jobs.
Of course, this only applies to what is contracted with. Many of the studios have global operations. Thus, in addition to cancelling projects, the also have shifted development to other areas.
Even within the ranks, there is a deep divide taking place.
The challenge is that, no matter who this unfolds, there are entities outside which are not going to be affected. Their interest is from the start. They are new relatively new entrants in the game.
However, this is not the major threat.
What is the Hollywood killer is the move from many to one. Presently. video is consumed by many. This is true for YouTube, a Hollywood feature film, or a television program. It is the realm that Hollywood dominated for many decades, both with film and television.
That is not the future.
Generative AI has a different idea. Prompting and the idea of video creation is going to provide the ability for individualized content.
This means that some video can be individualized. In other words, one can generate a film for the family based upon a simple storyline that is input, with a full film as the output.
Of course, this is likely a few years away but that is the direction things are heading. It is possible to do it with text and images. Audio is already possible in short clips. Video is a bit more cumbersome but it will get there.
None of this bodes well for major studios.
