"Hollywood Studios are dying."
The title of the article is catchy: "Hollywood Studios are dying."
The quote comes from an interview with German producer Niels Juul (« The Irishman », « Killers of the Flower Moon », « Ferrari »…), published in the French news magazine Le Point →. I feel he has a strong point about the business model of Hollywood Studios. Coming from an industry insider, it gets more weight.
As an outsider, I can see why the system is bound to fail. Like many other industries driven purely by short-term profit, there's a fair amount of greed (bloated budgets, fees, salaries, etc.) and this obsession with "reducing" risks. Even with their millions of dollars in P&A and market knowledge, Hollywood Studios still have failures. Resounding ones.
Juul says: "But to be fair, [The Studios] all have to answer to shareholders, who are only interested in increasing their stock price. Talent agents, for their part, want to earn commissions, so it's in their interest for everything to cost as much as possible. That's their model—commission. The whole system needs to be blown up.".
But what really caught my attention is a very important fact regarding producers. Juul says:
"I'm fortunate to have a career in the industry that people have respected ever since I produced Silence by Martin Scorsese, a project that had been impossible to get off the ground since 1989. No one wanted to buy it! We made it with Martin, delivering on time and on budget (bolds are my addition)—just as we later did with The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon."
For me as a producer, the most important responsibilities are to deliver on time and on budget, but also to protect the creative freedom of the director. These two aspects are strong determining factors in how to approach a film. Understanding the story, the audience, and the resources available for a film will help shape how it comes to life. It's about creating something and seeing what happens. It's about real intentionality in the development process.
