“The Painful Death of Hollywood’s Producers: No First Class, No Calls Back”
Yesterday I featured a THR article on studio deals with producers. Today a related article featuring comments and analysis by producers on the current state of the movie business. The general take seems to be this: It’s tough. Some excerpts:
“You aren’t going to get me to talk about how awful the studios are!” says one veteran producer before launching into a tirade on the subject. “The studios just don’t respect what producers do. They’d rather not have them around. … Studios have way too many executives and waste way too much money on that.”
Says another producer who ranks among the Hollywood elite: “The bigger the movies get, the more executives feel they’re producing them. I believe there are more executives being dispatched to locations than ever before. … When the executive says ‘my’ movie, it drives you crazy, and it’s happening more and more.”
With the movie business undergoing a historic realignment as DVD revenue has shriveled and new technology has not yet generated cash to take its place, the issues facing the business are squeezing the top rank of producers, including those who still have generous deals with studios — on paper. It’s trickle-up economics, and those who have long been used to having their voices respected are finding that sometimes — ouch — their calls aren’t even returned.
Some believe that life has changed forever in the movie business, while others — noting that studios are making increasingly homogeneous movies — are hoping that eventually it will become clear that audiences crave something different and that producers are the ones with the experience and skill to develop and execute original, sometimes even great, material.
As everything in Hollywood, these things go in cycles. The studios seem to bounce back and forth between wanting to be hugely hands-on with a movie’s development and production to preferring to let producers oversee the filmmaking process so they [the studios] can focus on marketing and distribution. Is this current hands-on mode just another wave of a cycle or has the economic model changed the dynamic permanently?
For more of the Hollywood reporter article, go here.
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