Hollywood May Be In Trouble...Good!

Hollywood may be in trouble, and I for one see it as a good thing.

With the current state of affairs, Hollywood is having to find alternatives to its standard practices of releasing movies. No longer is it able to gouge movie theater owners with its ridiculous profit sharing demands, which can equal as much as 100% of the box office take. You wonder why your popcorn and drink costs $30.00? That right there is why. Movie theaters make little to no money for the privilege of screening a film.

But things have changed. Movie theaters are closed. Hollywood isn't projecting films across the world right now. Instead, they're streaming them directly into your homes. This means they not only have to take the loss of box office tickets, but in all likelihood have had to rethink their profit sharing strategy. Netflix doesn't sell popcorn and sodas. Further, Netflix doesn't charge a per person fee to view a movie. One price per house means as many people as you can cram into your living room can see it. That right there is a major loss of revenue.

Let's face it, when the coronavirus is all said and done, the entertainment business is going to be permanently changed. For most theaters, the damage is done. They're not going to reopen. If they do, it's not going to be to a plethora of new releases. Who knows if people will even chance going to one.

Hollywood is on lock down with the rest of the country, production has been halted and people are just trying to survive. What does that mean for major motion pictures? Well, I'm no expert, nor a psychic, so I can't say for sure. What I can do is speculate.

As movie studios start to fire up the engines again, it's going to be slow. People will trickle back to work as quarantines end, and eventually things will get moving again. However, lost capital will be an issue. That five hundred million dollar movie that was in pre-production may be cancelled. In fact, several of them may, in lieu of maybe one or two films at a couple hundred million. What does that potentially mean? New talent!

I hope the industry uses this opportunity to give newly (cheaper) undiscovered people a chance at writing, directing, acting, etc. Hopefully gone will be the days of celebrities being paid ridiculous multi-million dollar salaries just to prance around in front of a camera. If it were to work the way I would hope, actors and actresses will once again return to scale wages, in line with those of everyone else working on the same film.

Seriously, if you want to see how idiotic salaries of celebrities have gotten, just look at Marvel's Endgame. Of the three hundred sixty-five million dollar budget, I've calculated approximately one hundred twenty million went to salaries of the forty-nine actors listed as the cast. That's roughly thirty-three percent of the budget. Why does Robert Downey Jr. need fifty million dollars to play Iron Man? Or the other high end actors need fifteen million each? That's ridiculous, and mind you, it's before their profit sharing portions get slapped on top.

Bottom line is I hope we'll see a shake up in Hollywood. No, you probably won't see actors pan handling for their next meals, but they should be taking quite a bit of a salary reduction. It will be the best way studios will be able to recover from all of this. They won't be able to come out of the gate with major blockbusters because the profits won't be there to back them.

This is a good opportunity for the world to reevaluate its priorities. Do we want to put actors and actresses on pedestals? Or do we want to finally admit that the guy that picks up your garbage every week, even during a pandemic, may be a little more important to your daily life than the guy on your television screen not even breaking a sweat as his stuntman jumps off an exploding rooftop for him?

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