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Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

latimes.com

111–120 of 188 posts

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#111
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it in perspective for you: Hollywood the actors and writers are on strike because Hollywood, the money making machinery decided to replace them with a product from SV. I don’t care for Hollywood and indeed it has gotten quite garbage anyway but I do support the actors and writers striking because they can. For the rest of us it remains to be seen how we’re going to handle it or whether we boil slowly.. In…

if they're being replaced, what good is a strike going to do?

This is a fight over (among many other things) who realizes the benefits of AI/streaming.

AI might mean that writers are freed from drudgery, their talents enhanced with powerful AI tools and now have a much more pleasant job that pays the same or perhaps more because they can produce more content or higher quality content. This is the Star Trek future.

AI could also mean that professional writers are barely needed. AI does the work, studio owners reap the benefit, and writers work day jobs and fight over the occasional poorly paid editing gig.

We as people will choose how AI changes the social contract. Anyone who relies on selling their labor to feed themselves and their families needs to be advocating for my first scenario, where productivity gains from AI are shared between workers, executives, and investors rather than monopolized by one or the other.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#112
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ish? If this was true, then the studios would also be having a revenue problem.

They are https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/

? That shows that covid took a huge swipe at them. Which is not really a surprise to anyone.

The numbers for this year look to almost be back to where they were? I'm not clear what the evidence you are showing is actually showing?

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#114
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extras have always gotten basically nothing, though? Quite often extras are "allowed to stand around" for filming of a scene that doesn't have a star in it for the chance of being on the big screen. Or is that no longer the case?

It's not just extras. Jet Li turned down The Matrix Reloaded because they were requiring that he also sell the rights to the martial arts moves used.

I didn't mean my point to be a complete dismissal of the concern. Only pointing out that extras have always been sorta ignored.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#115
post #5

I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…

> For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. Netflix is earning multiple billions of dollars in profit per year already, far more than they used to with DVDs. Also, I expect most people to prefer digital only streaming to any device they have at any time over having to deal with physical disks and single locations.

Yeah, I shouldn't have said "still be profitable." For that, I meant they could be in a stronger position to ignore studios.

And it is a bit mind boggling to think of 4.4 billion in profit. Wow.

Still, my point mostly stands? If the studios decide not to let Netflix stream their movies, then they don't stream their movies. This was far more hollow of a threat in the early days of streaming, but nowadays it is very conceivable that they can leverage their back catalog for someone. Such that Netflix is quickly getting to where what got everyone to sign up is at major risk of going away.

And this is far from hypothetical. It is mind boggling to me that Daredevil is no longer available on Netflix. Something they literally helped produce.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#116
post #5

I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…

If Netflix had stuck to that model they'd be dead.

Probably not. Redbox is doing fine, after all. Would they be the billion dollar company that they are? Also probably not.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#117
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/

? That shows that covid took a huge swipe at them. Which is not really a surprise to anyone. The numbers for this year look to almost be back to where they were? I'm not clear what the evidence you are showing is actually showing?

The last full year is 2022 and those numbers are about the same as 2020.

Covid was basically behind us by 2022 as far as people being overly concerned.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#118
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/

? That shows that covid took a huge swipe at them. Which is not really a surprise to anyone. The numbers for this year look to almost be back to where they were? I'm not clear what the evidence you are showing is actually showing?

Their net income trends look awful, especially taking into account inflation and the rest of the economy.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/net-inc...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-di...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PARA/paramount-glo...

Comcast, Sony, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon seem to be the other big players, and Netflix seems to be the only pure media company that one can compare numbers to, but it stands to reason they are all finding it harder to make money.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#119
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is all to say, no, SV is not the root of the problem here. In 2015, %80 of people watched network tv regularly and 50% had streaming accounts. That has flipped in the last 8 years. Total television revenue has declined 35% in that timeframe. What’s happening to television now is what happened to newspapers 10 years ago: low-cost distribution alternatives disrupted the major networks and created new business mo…

Right, the way that residuals played out for syndicated shows is ultimately a large part of the decline for the guild members. I am still a little curious on a few things in this. For one, I'm not clear on how long residuals can last in a sustainable way. Pretty much no matter how I try and simulate this payment model, it falls on needing more income from future participants. Not quite a ponzi scheme, as you are not…

> I'm not clear on how long residuals can last in a sustainable way

They were possible before, since there was much less content available at any given time. The media industry is in a bit of a death spiral it feels like, with a race to the bottom in many ways.

When broadcast tv was a bigger thing, syndicated shows were licensed to stations, who typically sold ad slots, allowing them to pay the licensing fees.

The problem is in many ways streaming platforms just really aren’t that cheap to run in the US when compared to old methods of distribution and the margin is almost entirely going to the platform, not the people making the content.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix churns out hundreds of thousands of hours of content each year at heavy, heavy losses Netflix is quite profitable, so this is clearly not true in any meaningful way.

A lot of their productions are very niche. I mean, Bojack Horseman... absolutely good show, beloved by its fans and more than worth a binge, but was it actually mainstream much outside of the Mental Health Twittersphere? The worst thing for Netflix is, for none of their original shows they managed to pull off "outside" draw: merchandise/swag outside of hoodies and coffee mugs, books, spin-offs and most importantly fa…

Doesn't squid game qualify?
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