The Power 101 list, ranking top power players and notable figures in Los Angeles, was a project over a year in the making, run by Chris Stone and Joel Rubin, deputy managing editor and associate editor for new initiatives, respectively. It was executed under former editor Merida, who sought to create a vehicle that would highlight the Times’ credibility and create conversation.

But Merida and owner Soon-Shiong clashed over whether the list should be a newsroom project, according to four individuals who spoke to TheWrap.

“Is this something the newsroom should be doing?” the publisher questioned. “Why is the newsroom involved and not the opinion section?” said an individual close to the project.

Merida quit the paper in January in the wake of numerous instances of Soon-Shiong meddling in the newsroom, and amid massive editorial lay-offs. The list appears to be yet another source of conflict between the two executives.

Merida “did not think it’s something an owner should be involved in,” said one of the knowledgeable individuals. The reason for Soon-Shiong’s interest was “unclear,” this person said, but added: “I don’t think an owner is typically involved in meddling in this kind of thing.”

Though the project was supposed to be published in January, it was rescheduled for publication under the aegis of interim executive editor Terry Tang. According to one of the insiders, the list does not currently have a new publication date.

LA Times spokeswoman Hillary Manning told TheWrap: “We’ve recently gone through a newsroom leadership transition. Our top editors are taking some time to review this important project, and expect to have a publication date to announce in the coming weeks.”

Newsroom staffers were concerned that the reason for suspending publication last week was connected to Soon-Shiong’s interest in the list, especially given the context of the publisher’s previous interference in newsroom decisions.

A Special Edition profile of LA Dodgers star pitcher Shohei Otani that was “summoned up at the last minute” will run instead, according to a newsroom insider.

The power list was originally supposed to be published in January, the same month that Merida and several other editors, including managing editors Sara Yasin and Shani Hilton, resigned and more than 100 editorial staffers were cut in chaotic layoffs that saw some employees laid off and reinstated soon after.

An individual familiar with the situation told TheWrap that the divide between Merida and Soon-Shiong wasn’t about which names made the cut for the list — the publisher was fine with not being on the list himself according to our source — but whether the Times should be writing it at all. 

Soon-Shiong was upset that Merida had not told him about the project, and inquired about it repeatedly, two individuals told TheWrap.

“Soon-Shiong was asking, ‘Is this something the newsroom should be doing? Shouldn’t it be in the opinion section?’” said the individual. “It’s uncommon for the owner to be interested in this. Lists are the coin of the realm. It was puzzling why the owner was trying to get involved.”

The Times regularly runs rankings by industry, such as 2023’s sponsored Top-Rated Lawyers list or February’s Top 25 High School Baseball Teams, but they are revenue-generating opportunities that come from the marketing team.

The conflict over the list underlines the ongoing tension between the owner and his editorial staff. As TheWrap reported in January, a dog bite story involving one of Soon-Shiong’s friends proved to be the final straw for Merida when the owner blocked it from running. A source told TheWrap at the time: “He doesn’t understand that the owner of a newspaper doesn’t second guess journalists’ decisions about newsworthiness.”

“Kevin Merida wanted us to cover powerful people more,” a staffer who survived the historic layoffs told TheWrap of the initial inspiration for the list. “It was one of the topics he’d mention when listing issues we should focus on.”

The list, which TheWrap has not viewed, included politicians, business leaders and athletes. “They spent a lot of resources on it,” said the staffer, who said that portraits had already been taken of the power players by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Christina House.

The project now sits with interim executive editor Tang, who was named to the position on Jan. 25. “Terry has halted publication, insisting she read everything first. Folks are mystified. The staff is upset,” said the newsroom insider.

The post LA Times’ First-Ever Power List on Hold, Subject of Publisher Clash With Former Editor | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

The grinding pace was not for the faint-hearted; my then-deputy in Canada quit suddenly at 7 a.m. in those first days; just dropped his pen and walked away. The rest of us pushed on. 

It was January 2009 and the world was in financial freefall. An intrepid venture company named Maveron (cofounded by Howard Schultz and Dan Levitan), along with my family and a handful of brave investors, backed me to the tune of a couple million dollars. I had no business experience. No management experience. No digital experience to speak of. 

But I had a feeling that this was a moment that anyone with some guts and smarts could seize. Media seemed on the precipice of radical change. Disruption meant opportunity. On the very day of our launch, the legacy publication Variety laid off 30 people. We hired one of them. 

At the time of our launch, I wrote: “A year ago I left the New York Times with a sinking feeling about what was happening to professional journalism … The entertainment and media industries are at a fateful crossroads. TheWrap will be a resource for anyone who is interested in understanding the changes in our popular culture, and navigating what has become a global industry.”

It has been a dizzying and unexpected journey. In the short and endless time of 15 years, many other media companies have risen and fallen. Some have risen to great heights, only to crash and burn. More have been bought and neglected or shuttered. Others raised many millions and spent the cash, only to shut down. 

We continue, steady and focused, through the chaos. Through the Facebook craze, the pivot to video, the chase for branded content and the content farms that Google killed. 

Through it all our mission has been simple: to create a business model to sustain journalism in the digital age. That’s it. We have succeeded in that mission. We are a thriving and growing newsroom. We create beautiful and relevant video, social and print magazines. We have an ambitious book on the horizon (stay tuned). And throughout, we have stuck to journalism. Entertainment journalism, in fact. We serve our readers, first and last. And they have stuck by us with loyalty and love. 

I wrote this in 2009, and it is still true: “Please consider this a conversation. A dialogue. We will make mistakes, and you will point them out. We will ruffle feathers, and that’s part of an honest conversation. But we hope most of all that you will participate. Write. Comment. Share. And join us in the digital age.”

Many ask me if I intend to sell this company, or if I’m tired of it. I’m not interested in selling. I’m not tired of it, not at all. Our team has never been stronger, despite the headwinds facing media, yet again. We are energized every day to pursue our mission, and know that the rewards are not just in building a business, but in serving as an essential, daily partner to those who gives us their precious time and attention. 

We intend to make it worthwhile, every day. 

Happy Birthday to us. 

The post It’s 15 Years for TheWrap – Thanks for Being Here appeared first on TheWrap.

Ideas were floated over eggs and fruit with shaved gold leaf — from building micro-communities for paid content, to enticing brands to invest more, to pressuring billionaires to pour more of their capital into indie film.

Ultimately, the group reached conclusions similar to those gathering down the hill: The business model for independent film isn’t working at the moment. 

The why is pretty clear. As streaming has taken over Hollywood as the dominant mode of entertainment viewing, it has left scraps where a robust theatrical business used to be for indie film. And it has zapped away the vestiges of a longer tail of revenue, whether DVDs or cable television rights for arthouse distributors and studio-owned labels alike. 

These days after an arthouse distributor releases a movie in theaters, it has to find a streaming platform to buy it, in order to drive additional revenue, explained independent producer Cassian Elwes, who has attended the festival for over a decade. “They used to have output deals with Cinemax or HBO. Now they have to go sell one movie at a time to streamers. So it makes them nervous to buy films, gambling whether they will ultimately be sold to SVOD [Streaming Video on Demand],” he said.

As Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg pointed out this week, the number of “independent” movies to surpass $20 million at the domestic box office in recent years is down about 30% from 2018 and 2019, according to Comscore. The three biggest independent movies of last year were the conservative “Sound of Freedom,” Taylor Swift’s concert film, “The Eras Tour,” and “Creed III” from MGM. 

The tech takeover has also created a weird distortion in the marketplace. Tech-owned streamers — Netflix, Amazon, Apple — can pay almost anything they want for a buzzy Sundance movie, regardless of the return on that investment. That makes it impossible for competitors to do a basic financial analysis on what they might bid for a film and it leaves smaller distributors competing for whatever is left.

This year, the word all across Sundance was that streamers are less interested in independent film than a few years ago, preferring to fund movie production internally or lean on movies that they’ve licensed. 

“It’s never an easy process selling a film, with all the challenges you’re continuing to see for independent films being acquired and distributed, and being successful,” said Jamie Patricof, whose film “Exhibiting Forgivenness” starring Andre Holland is playing in competition. “As a producer with a film to sell it’s no secret that the film business overall is changing and evolving. The myth of the overnight multimillion-dollar sale has been gone for a long time for most films, and I’d argue it was an unhealthy process.” 

But there are always exceptions to these rules, like “Past Lives,” a 2023 Sundance acquisition by A24 that has won awards and accolades (including a Best Picture nomination) and $22 million at the global box office. “Coda” from Sundance in 2021 went the distance to Best Picture after Apple paid a stunning $25 million. Then again, Netflix paid $20 million for “Fair Play” last year, but has not seen the film get awards traction. (And of course, there is no streaming data to be found.) 

This year, Netflix has already shelled out $17 million for “It’s What’s Inside,” a horror film in the midnight section, while “A Real Pain” written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, sold to Searchlight Pictures for $10 million on Sunday. And late Tuesday, Neon secured worldwide rights to Steven Soderbergh’s visually unique ghost story “Presence” for an undisclosed sum.

Festivals are struggling  

The pressures on the business model for independent film are squeezing festivals as well. Even Sundance, the premiere global showcase for the sector, is financially struggling, presenting fewer films than in previous years and using fewer venues. And apparently the festival is considering moving the venue from Park City as its contract comes up. 

Other festivals are facing even harsher realities. 

Elwes blamed the festivals for programming non-commercial films at a time when the movie business desperately needs to show a little leg. 

“They’re showing films that don’t have wide audience, by their very nature,” he said. “They’re socially conscious, gay cinema, etc, which is important. But you have to put commercial films in the pipeline as well.”

He continued: “That’s another problem — there used to be lots of stars here. This year there was Kristen Stewart, Pedro Pascal, that’s it. But that’s what drives the buyers here. Part of the excitement was buyers rubbing shoulders with movie stars, making them feel like they’re in the movie business, having a big glamorous weekend with stars. None of that is going on.”

As if to prove Elwes’s point, this year WME had no lounge or anchor presence at Sundance because not enough of the agency’s clients were present to make the investment worthwhile, according to knowledgeable insiders.

Another sign of the times: Decision-making executives at some studios (including Apple, I’m told) did not bother coming to Park City. They’re watching movies remotely via links, not bothering to experience the film with an audience — one of the big advantages of Sundance. 

Still, Josh Sapan, the former CEO of AMC Networks who is now acquiring films for the company’s streaming platforms, had a counter view. 

“The creative work has never been stronger, and that’s the first, second and third most important thing,” he said in a chat at the DoubleTree hotel (formerly the Yarrow), a hub of festival activity. “Changing the means of consumption is external and driven by tech. It’s in transition, of course. And it will be in transition. Streaming is disruptive. But from the system point of view, there are opportunities.”

Lack of capital

The last decade drew billionaires to independent film as low interest rates swelled bank accounts and the wealthy looked to place money in some high risk, high prestige properties: indie film.  

But that has dried up as the era of low interest rates is over, and apparently billionaires are back to seeking more reliable returns on their cash. 

Asked at the private breakfast what filmmakers needed most, the answer came back: capital. 

Where will it come from? It’s not entirely clear. And as the business model feels shaky, less-established creatives fear they will be left out of the coming solution. 

“We are not being considered, we’re not in the conversation,” said Iyabo Boyd, the founder of the advocacy group Brown Girls Doc Mafia, while chatting at the Netflix brunch for documentary filmmakers. “The trickle-down to us is pennies, half pennies, quarter pennies that everyone else is trying to get.” 

Boyd added: “It’s scary. I’m concerned that we are not including voices from people of color, and not considering the realities for a filmmaker or executive of color.” She added: “You have so much pressure just to survive.”

The post At Sundance, Indie Film Struggles to Find a Working Business Model  appeared first on TheWrap.

He did call his top editorial deputies and prepare them. But when the 67-year-old executive editor announced on Tuesday that he was stepping down after less than three years — five months before his contract was up — it came as a surprise, according to two people informed of the timing. 

The newsroom, too, was shocked. 

But perhaps they should not have been. In interviews with a half-dozen individuals close to the LA Times news operation, it became clear that Merida’s relationship with Soon-Shiong — though never close — had broken down irreparably by the end of last year over the owner’s interference in newsroom decisions, a lack of support for Merida’s independence as editorial leader and ongoing financial losses with no apparent plan to reverse them. 

Hillary Manning, the LA Times spokesperson, denied that Soon-Shiong interfered in newsroom decisions. “Patrick Soon-Shiong and the Soon-Shiong family have not interfered with newsroom decisions,” she said in an email to TheWrap. “You will never find anyone credible to dispute that.”  

But two knowledgeable individuals confirmed this was the case. In November, Soon-Shiong and his activist daughter Nika told Merida they disagreed with his decision that 20 newsroom journalists be recused from covering the Israel-Gaza war for 90 days after they signed a public statement condemning Israel. They did not demand that the recusal be rescinded, though Soon-Shiong said in an interview last week that he was “disappointed” to not be informed in advance, suggesting he might have prevented the decision at that time had he been told about it.

Soon-Shiong, a medical doctor and biotechnologist, had also disagreed with previous coverage in the health-science arena, where he conducts research, and pushed back, the individuals said. Still another incident occurred in December that involved challenging a newsroom decision that disturbed Merida, according to two individuals. “There was a disagreement over how to run the newsroom,” one of those individuals said.

Merida, who declined to be interviewed for this piece, told the LA Times last week: “I came to my decision based on a number of factors, including differences of opinion about the role of an executive editor, how journalism should be practiced and strategy going forward.” He did not give further detail. 

But others aware of the tension agreed. Soon-Shiong “likes to get involved in the journalism,” said one of the knowledgeable individuals who spoke to TheWrap. “He has a lot of very strong opinions about journalists and journalism… These are not good signs.” 

The individual added: “If you don’t listen to your executive editor then there’s no point for the executive editor to be there.” 

“There never was a ton of trust there,” said another individual with knowledge of the relationship. “You always have to teach him (Patrick) about the stuff journalists do, ethical things, things we cover and don’t…. But Patrick wasn’t trying to learn. Unlike Jeff Bezos (billionaire owner of The Washington Post) who wanted to learn.” 

For Merida, the latest incident, details of which were unclear, was the deal-breaker. He was no longer willing to live with continually having to keep his owner-boss at bay. That, combined with ongoing financial uncertainty, looming editorial cuts and the belief that Soon-Shiong’s approach to the newsroom was unlikely to change, led to a decision to leave. 

But the problems at the LA Times remain. 

An absentee owner 

If the mild-mannered Merida was frustrated, the truth remains that the billionaire publisher has showed scant interest in running the business of the $500 million asset that he bought in 2018. He preferred, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, to spend time in his research lab and working on a vaccine.

A larger lack of structure was also a problem. Soon-Shiong’s position is “executive chairman.” But the LA Times has no publisher or CEO, no clear leader whose role is to drive a business vision for the company every day. 

Instead, there is a triumvirate with Merida as executive editor, Chris Argentieri as COO and Anna Magzanyan, who is Chief of Staff to Soon-Shiong and Head of Strategy and Revenue for the LA Times, all reporting to the owner.

That leadership vacuum is key, said several who spoke to TheWrap, who note that Soon-Shiong’s true passion is science. “I don’t know that Patrick looks and says – how good are we? Are there alternate sources of revenue? Are we getting all the revenue that’s out there. What are the new ideas?” said a frustrated staffer. 

Somewhat unconventionally, he and Merida had no standing meeting. The two would communicate by phone or text when an issue arose. 

Furthermore, Merida was frustrated to not have a clear budget with which to run the newsroom. After the severe newsroom cuts that came mid-year in 2023 and continued financial losses, he did not have confidence in any budget figure for the newsroom. 

“It’s almost like giving money as needed. You don’t have something you know you can count on — and then you’re faced with unexpected cuts,” said one insider, who said that even Argentieri referred to the system as “pay as you go.” 

“It doesn’t create the kind of stability you need,” this person said. 

Meanwhile, the paper has continued to lose money while failing to meet its subscriber targets, despite cutting 74 jobs from the newsroom — 13% of the edit staff — last summer. 

Soon-Shiong has had to sink an estimated $300 million in additional cash over the last five years to keep the operation going.  One former top editor estimated the Times was losing $50 million a year, on top of Soon-Shiong paying $500 million for the asset.

Two others interviewed by TheWrap recalled Soon-Shiong saying in meetings that he had put nearly $1 billion into the LA Times. 

When Soon-Shiong made the investment, he said at the time he wanted to invest in a civic project that would support democracy and serve the community. In standing by that commitment, he spent heavily to grow the newsroom (by close to 30% in headcount), built a state-of-the-art kitchen for the Cooking section and a pricey video platform. 

Hiring Merida was a coup. The news executive previously led The Undefeated, an award-winning ESPN news unit that explored the intersection of race, culture and sports, and served as chairman of ESPN’s editorial board. Before that Merida spent 22 years at the Washington Post, where he rose to managing editor in charge of news, features and the universal news desk. Many expected him to rise to the top of that newsroom. 

But even with the arrival of Merida and three Pulitzer Prizes, including two in 2023, the revenue has not appeared. 

The LA Times began, for the first time in its century-long history, to lose money. The digital advertising did not overtake print, as was necessary in a pivot to the digital age, and while paid subscriptions rose to 550,000 — a number that includes direct sales and third-party partnerships like Apple News+ — it falls far short of Soon-Shiong’s ambition. 

“The LA Times does good journalism but it has not figured out how to become enough of a must-read to readers in Southern California,” said a former editor. 

“The LA Times needs 1 to 1.5 million in circulation just to be viable,” this person said. “And it is stuck at around 700,000.”  

The June cuts involved audience staffers, social media staffers, copy editors, photographers, videographers and some people from newsroom operations. But management consciously avoided letting go any staffers “who were actually writing stories,” as one put it. 

More layoffs are widely expected in 2024. 

Tension over Gaza

In November, three dozen LA Times journalists signed a statement condemning Israel’s incursion into Gaza in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. 

The letter condemned Israel’s bombing of Gaza and demanded that newsrooms use language like “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” to refer to the Israeli military operations in the region. It has been signed by more than 1,400 current and former journalists around the world.

After conferring with his top deputies, Merida ordered that those journalists be recused from writing about the Gaza conflict for 90 days, reminding staff of the company’s ethics and fairness policy. The policy outlines that a “fair-minded reader of the Times news coverage should not be able to discern the private opinions of those who contributed to that coverage, or to infer that the organization is promoting any agenda.”

Except for some pushback, the edict was accepted in the newsroom, and there was agreement among the top editors that the response was necessary to safeguard the paper’s credibility in covering the conflict. 

One newsroom insider called the decision “a no brainer.”

“Kevin’s decision was conventional,” said Paul Farhi, a veteran Washington Post journalist who covered media until retiring at the end of last year. “It just doesn’t comport with the views of a younger generation of journalists who feel they’re entitled to express their opinions.”  

At The New York Times, a writer who signed a similar letter, Jazmine Hughes, resigned because her doing so “was a clear violation of The Times’s policy on public protest,” as her editor put it in a memo to the staff. 

But Merida did not inform Soon-Shiong until after the decision was implemented. The billionaire and his daughter, Nika, both made clear they did not agree, according to two individuals. Nika Soon-Shiong, 30, is vocally anti-Israel. Her X social feed has a Palestinian flag in her bio, and a pinned tweet comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Cecil Rhodes, the racist founder of Rhodesia. (Nika Soon-Shiong did not respond to requests for comment made through LinkedIn and her charity, Fund For Guaranteed Income.)

“It’s highly unusual for the owner, or a family member, to be expressing viewpoints when or if she has some influence over the editorial direction of her family’s publication,” said Farhi. “Traditionally, ownership has taken its hands off on controversial issues. They don’t express direct opinions like this, except through the editorial board of their publication…. That’s why you hire an editor to run the newsroom.” 

The Soon-Shiong family comes from South Africa, and Patrick grew up under the apartheid regime. Although he is generally described as politically centrist, his views on the Israeli-Palestine conflict did not comport with Merida’s decision regarding the activist journalists. 

Ultimately, Soon-Shiong did not force Merida to reverse his decision. But clearly it was a warning sign of tensions that would continue to escalate. The 90-day recusal deadline looms in mid-February and the remaining editors will need to decide what to do next. 

Farhi said it would be problematic for the Soon-Shiongs to dictate that next step: “It’s when you cross the invisible wall to the newsroom that it becomes problematic. The newsroom is supposed to be independent – even of the publisher.”

The fallout 

“We mutually agreed that he perhaps was not the right fit,” Soon-Shiong told the LA Times in the article announcing Merida’s departure.

But despite all these difficulties and the embarrassment of Merida’s exit, the Soon-Shiong family reconfirmed in the LA Times that it has no intention of selling the paper. 

Newsroom staffers who talked to TheWrap said that Merida’s leaving was a shock, and are worried about the newspaper’s future. 

Merida “was well-liked. I liked him. Not sure he changed the game. People were shocked he was leaving,” said one staffer. “I don’t know that he ever had a well-articulated vision of who we are and what we are focusing on. People were excited when he first came. But not much has changed at the paper. We have done a lot of work but are still facing layoffs and in a tough spot.”

Few staffers had any one-on-one contact with Merida, who joined in 2021 and was initially introduced over Zoom in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Nearly the entire staff has been working remotely for almost four years. Owner Soon-Shiong instituted a stay-at-home order in March of 2020 and staffers still haven’t been told to go back to the newsroom. If they do, they are required to wear a mask in the building.

A possible return to the newsroom is currently part of contract negotiations, two staffers told TheWrap. The guild is still negotiating a new contract; the last one expired in 2022 after three years.

“Part of why people are upset is we don’t know what is coming next,” said one of the staffers, on condition of anonymity. 

The difficulty for Soon-Shiong will be recruiting another editor of Merida’s caliber.

“It’s going to be very hard to attract” a similar candidate, said one of the insiders who spoke to TheWrap. “I would be surprised if they get an outsider. There are not a lot of people inside who even want the job.”

The post Newsroom Meddling, Money Woes: How A Billionaire Owner Lost His Star Editor at the Los Angeles Times | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

The end, perhaps, of a predictable business where one cycle might be better than another, but that eventually swings back around to profits and prosperity in a reasonably balanced ecosystem. 

Yeah, not so much anymore. 

For the veterans who were here during the flush decades of the 1980s and 1990s and even into the early 21^st century, that feeling of a descending arc is unavoidable. The swashbuckling producers of the Jon Peters and Peter Guber variety are lore in the mists of time. The rags to riches tales — like David Geffen forging a letter to get a job at the William Morris agency and blazing a trail to billionairedom — seem ancient. Lawyer Bert Fields being driven by a chauffeur in his Bentley to work every day? Who does that? 

Those folks had swagger. They worked in Hollywood.

Is the swagger gone? There’s not a soul I know who doesn’t feel beat up and bruised by the vagaries of 2023: the anemic box office, the ongoing losses in streaming, the depressed stock prices for studios across the board and further down on the chain, thousands of job losses. TheWrap has written about these trends exhaustively throughout the year, and it would be nice to say that there’s a bright light over the horizon leading to dawn. There isn’t. There’s really only more uncertainty. 

Meanwhile, quarter after financial quarter brings skyhigh profits for the tech giants from Google to Amazon to Meta, seemingly impervious to high interest rates and the flopsweat of working folks whether on Main Street or at Universal CityWalk. Almost two years ago TheWrap wrote a charticle that added up to: $2.7 Trillion Apple Is Now Worth 11 Disneys.  Disney has dropped significantly in value since then.  

In so many ways it feels like a corner is being turned. 

And yet, there were plenty of reasons to call the misery of 2023 an anomaly, most notably the labor strikes that stretched on from May 2 through Nov. 8. It was a brutal experience to watch the entire system that sustains this community suffer. We saw economic hardship — supposedly for the longer term good of the whole – that impacted every aspect of production and distribution of movies and television. In the end, both the writers and the actors got historic deals — significant raises, increased streaming residuals and guarantees for the rights to their digital images.

Still, it will take time to assess whether this labor outcome becomes a re-set of the profit centers in the entertainment ecosystem, or another step on the downward slide away from economic health. It remains to be seen if the decision by guild leadership to hold out for the deals they got will end up being a win, or simply reducing the overall quantity of production because everything just got more expensive. 

What seems clear is that the studios were not bluffing in their concerns over the stresses of rising costs and lower margins (although no one can argue that the moguls themselves aren’t still insanely overpaid). Right now, the 2024 box office is set to produce lower revenue overall than in 2023, because of the lack of movies in the pipeline. Lackluster financial results and persistently low stock prices in 2023 have led the major studios to cut back significantly on their production spending. They’ve raised prices, layered in advertising. And they’re hoping that will be enough.  

It might not be. Peak TV is over. Most of the studios have started licensing their content to Netflix in a tacit acknowledgement that that upstart has won the streaming wars. And consolidation continues, with the major studios dwindling in number. Not only is Warner Bros now Warner Bros Discovery, but it may soon include Paramount and CBS. And Showtime. Five years ago each of these were vibrant brands of their own. MGM is now squarely settled at Amazon. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox entertainment is now deep in the belly of Disney. We’re all waiting for the next company to get swallowed, probably by a tech giant. 

But the big risk factor that may prove irreversible in its impact is, without a doubt, artificial intelligence. (Read our excellent 2023 series here.) The terrifying specter of creative work being reduced to a small core of do-it-yourselfers, of background actors dwindling to a handful per production, to animation work being replicated at warp speed — these loom as imminent realities, not as distant possibilities. 

The next 12 months, bringing with them the aftershocks of 2023, will be as important in setting the path to the future of Hollywood as the last 12 consequential ones. 

We will want to watch closely to what will happen at Disney, a subject of huge speculation. So many see Disney as a bellwether company for the health of the whole industry. And right now, it is struggling. What we know for certain is that CEO Bob Iger isn’t staying past 2026, and that the Marvel franchise — previously the gold standard for driving Disney’s content flywheel — is in desperate need of a creative reboot.

As for the other studios, we will watch the post-strike recovery with bated breath. The teetering number of major studios that operate independently suggests an overall remaking of the landscape. 

Netflix, profitable and confident, seems to be on the safest ground. But in the world of entertainment in 2024, no one should feel safe. 

The post With Brutal 2023 in the Books, Will Hollywood Find Its Swagger? appeared first on TheWrap.

“I’ve called some of my friends directly and said exactly this: I marched with you. I made movies about Black Lives Matter. I feel like I do everything I can — not as a Jew but as a person. It’s part of my life. And you didn’t show up on Oct. 7. I don’t understand why. And it makes me really angry,” said Bender. 

“He said he was sorry,” he went on. “He just said: ‘You’re right.’”

Like many Hollywood progressives, Bender, a self-described “super leftie” who has been active for decades in left-wing causes from Democratic races to racial equity to abortion rights, a sense of crisis has set in at the lack of support from longtime friends in the community. 

“I feel wounded,” he confessed. “I feel hurt. I feel angry.”

He’s not alone. In parlor meetings and industry restaurants, at posh valet stands and favorite Brentwood haunts, Hollywood progressive Jews — which is to say, a whole lot of people in entertainment — are struggling with a lack of visible support from longtime fellow travelers. With hordes of protestors out on the streets calling for a Free Palestine, with Palestinian supporters ripping down posters of kidnapped Israelis, Jews I spoke to felt that sympathy was going only in one direction among leftists. 

“It’s hideous,” one prominent executive said to me, reflecting sentiment I am hearing frequently. “In general we’re pariahs.”

“I get the two sides of it, I really do,” said veteran producer Mike Medavoy, whose parents fled the Nazis when he was a child, leading to his being born in Shanghai, China. “I understand how people are reacting. But that’s not the way to do it,” he said referring to calls for a cease fire in Gaza. 

“You can’t continue to let them (Hamas) do what they just did,” he continued. “I’m not calling for a cease fire. I’m calling for recognition that Hamas killed 1,200 people. That’s not somebody you say to, ‘Come on over for supper.’”

Medavoy has been involved in dozens of films over his career that deal with progressive causes, like “Dances With Wolves” and “The People vs Larry Flynt,” and some that reflected on the folly of war from “Apocalypse Now” to “Platoon” to “Coming Home.”

Combined with his personal history, this has given him a different perspective on the violence of Hamas, he said. Antisemitism is a real thing, and a dangerous one.

“If students at universities don’t understand this, then teachers have failed,” Medavoy said. “The world has failed. Or something is really wrong.”

The disconnect over Israel between progressive Jews in Hollywood and the broader progressive movement has gone from being a minor difference of opinion to an enormous crisis of confidence among longtime friends. Why haven’t women’s groups decried the use of rape against Israeli women on Oct. 7, they ask? Why haven’t Black and brown people spoken out against atrocities? How could LGBTQ groups support a regime that would murder them for expressing their own gender identities? 

The discordance has extended to support for movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo.

As feminist Nicole Lampert recently wrote in a blog post titled “MeToo Unless You are a Jew”: “The response among the majority of groups committed to ending violence against women and girls (VAWG) was threefold: to keep quiet, to disbelieve the victims, or to insinuate they deserved their fate. In the words of 140 American “prominent feminist scholars,” to stand in solidarity with Israeli women is to give in to ‘colonial feminism.’”

BLM took a similarly anti-Israel position, despite a great deal of support from left-wing Jewish groups.

“The fantasy that liberal Hollywood Jewish people told themselves was that getting behind BLM was an extension of the civil rights movement, instead of reading the fine print in the BLM charter about Palestine,” said producer Matti Leshem, who often embraces progressive causes but eschewed BLM.

(The BLM platform written in 2016 includes a section calling out Israel for “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” and states: “Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people.”)

The betrayal must cut even deeper at an organization like the Anti-Defamation League, which was created to fight antisemitism and that had supported Black Lives Matter and even the #MeToo movement.  

At the time of the BLM manifesto, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tried to walk a middle path, writing that while he agreed with the majority of BLM’s document, the characterization of of Israel was “one-sided” and “unfair”.

Today there has been no word from BLM on the Hamas attack. 

A spokesman for the ADL declined to comment for this piece.

Leshem was present at a Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles last weekend featuring Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff where these feelings rose to the surface yet again. In the question and answer portion of the event, a young Jewish woman lamented that she did not know what to tell her children about Israel and Hamas. 

“She said something like, ‘Why can’t we all just love each other,’” Leshem recalled, exasperated. “Our problem is not right wing antisemitism. Our problem is left wing antisemitism.

“You see the causes you naturally gravitate toward as a Jew, and most of those causes have been perverted by a neo-Marxist agenda which sees the world only in terms of oppressed and oppressors,” he said. “That’s the problem. If you only see the world that way, you cannot understand the world. 

“From there you get to – ‘Israelis are colonial white oppressors, oppressing our dark brethren.’ It’s nonsense,” he added. “In order to be a responsible member of society, you have to be able to hold opposing views in your head… Our responsibility as storytellers is always to be able to do that. To hold that paradox in our head, but also to tell the truth unequivalocally. But truth is very fungible. That’s a huge problem.” 

Whether that’s true or not, it is certainly a widespread emotion, and the consequences to relationships and future choices remain to be seen. 

Bender can’t say whether it will end friendships. 

“I ask myself that question,” he said. “I feel isolated. Scared.” He took a beat. “You have to work stuff out. You have to move through it. I’m definitely upset at people.”

The post Hollywood Progressives Face Crisis Over Left-Wing Support for Gaza: ‘You Didn’t Show Up on Oct. 7’ appeared first on TheWrap.

There were no babies. No beheaded babies. No burnt babies in the oven. 

The Israeli army decided to keep the worst of the images of Hamas massacring Israeli civilians out of its screening presented in Los Angeles on Wednesday — a compilation of video from victims’ cellphones, terrorists’ bodycams, kibbutz security cameras, city CCTV, first responder phones and intercepted conversations. 

It was bad enough without them. You know without my saying so how horrible it was. Perhaps the nightmare of 1,400 people slaughtered on Oct. 7 has been digging a dark hole in your psyche, as it has mine.

The real-time images of “Bearing Witness” were very much the stuff of a horror movie — a woman in pink pajamas cowering under a desk, shot at close range. An attempted beheading of a corpse with a garden hoe. Two little boys on a kibbutz, roughly age eight or nine, who race into their safe room with their father, only to see a hand emerge from around a corner and lob a grenade inside. The father is killed. The boys were shown running out screaming, back into their home, captured from the distant vantage point of a security camera. 

There was an ominous moment when a dozen women soldiers — out of uniform — gather in a corner of an unidentified room, talking in panicked tones, one of them recording on her phone. Far across the room, a Hamas terrorist appears with his machine gun. The video ends suddenly. We do not know what happened to the women. 

Some of this footage has already been on social media — images of bodies littering the road near Sderot, video of young people stampeding across a desert plain as they flee the grounds of a music festival, audio of the plaintive cries of a first responder (“They’re dead, all dead”) as he discovers piles of young bodies. 

And as the IDF representative at Wednesday’s screening mentioned, these images were drawn from fewer than 150 of the dead. We hear audio of a Hamas commander telling his fighters to send a corpse back to Gaza City so the crowd can do what it wants with it. You see bleeding hostages dumped like burlap sacks into the back of a pickup truck. You see many, many people burned into charred, unrecognizable remains.  

What really stuck with me were some of the less obvious moments, like the jubilation of the Hamas terrorists, flashing broad smiles and stabbing the air with their guns after shooting civilians in their cars.

A dash cam recording of one such killing doesn’t show the driver, simply the car going from normal, to cracked windshield, to destroyed windshield, to the car slowly veering off the road into another car. That other car’s passenger already lies dead in the road. 

A terrorist penetrates the walkway beside the simple housing on a kibbutz. A shaggy black dog stops and looks at the camera. Pow, pow, pow. The dog crumples. 

In another clip, a terrorist walks over to civilians, already dead beside their cars. He goes to shoot them again, for good measure. “Don’t shoot,” says a colleague off camera, as if to say, “save your bullets.” 

What sticks with me, burned into my brain, is an intercepted audio conversation between a terrorist, calling home from the attack, and his parents. He says: “Mom, I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands!” He repeats this over and over, excited by his achievement. The word “Jews” is what I hear. Also: “with my bare hands.” 

“Is Dad there?” he asks. His mother in the background says, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” (This is neither an exaggeration nor ironic embellishment. That was the conversation.) 

As the screening proceeded, you could hear the chants of pro-Palestinian protestors outside the Museum of Tolerance on Pico Avenue. What was their issue, exactly? That it was somehow controversial to show up and see the footage of recent atrocities? That it was a crime against the Palestinian cause to acknowledge the existence of acts that can only be described as savagery beyond the pale of human decency? 

The choice to watch this footage should not be political. I did so as a journalist. And I did so as a Jew, to bear witness and understand the facts.

The current images throughout the media, of Palestinian suffering in the wake of Israel’s air strikes and incursions, are also not far from my mind. I won’t look away. 

But I am glad not to see images of beheaded babies. Very glad. 

People reacted to the screening in different ways. Some left before it started. Others were openly weeping. And after it was over, several were angry that the IDF did not show more. “Where were the beheaded babies?” one man shouted as he stormed out of the auditorium. “Show the rapes!” said another person, also walking out, angry. 

Later, I learned that a fistfight broke out on the sidewalk outside the museum. 

What, exactly, are we fighting about? 

The post The Footage of the Oct. 7 Hamas Massacre: a Real-Life Horror Movie That I Hated   appeared first on TheWrap.

According to an individual with knowledge of their thinking, the studios believe that if they can’t reach a deal in the next week with the Screen Actors Guild, which has been on strike since July 14, then no new production will be able to start before 2024. 

If that is the case, the studios further believe, then the fall television season is lost, and new movies won’t be able to come out until next summer. In this scenario, early November would be the drop-dead date to salvage any ability to put television or movies into production. Once the calendar hits Thanksgiving, it is unlikely any project would begin production, pushing off everything to the new year, this individual said, and killing the studios’ incentive to push for a deal. 

All that puts significant pressure on the talks going on this week. 

The CEOs from four of the major entertainment conglomerates – Disney’s Bob Iger, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav and NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley – will meet anew on Thursday with SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and their legal teams in an effort to reach a contract. 

The negotiations restarted this week on Tuesday after the CEOs walked away two weeks ago over a new demand that SAG-AFTRA receive a $1-per-subscription fee from streaming divisions on top of raises and other benefits that had been negotiated between the two sides. The studios considered that proposal, along with two previous ones seeking a percentage of all streaming revenue, as a non-starter. 

Meanwhile the CEOs, who are negotiating on behalf of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), presented their counter-offer to the guild on Tuesday. 

The guild decided to skip further bargaining on Wednesday so they could discuss the offer. 

An insider familiar with the studio side of talks said there was some surprise among the AMPTP ranks when the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee requested the delay, but they are taking it as a hopeful sign that there will be progress when the two sides do meet again.

Tuesday’s meeting was the first since Oct. 11, when the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios in contract talks, abruptly walked away from talks. The primary disagreement behind that decision concerned SAG-AFTRA’s proposed streaming revenue-sharing plan, which AMPTP leaders characterized as a “levy” on streaming services. 

SAG-AFTRA estimated its proposal to average to about 57 cents per streaming subscriber, with that revenue being paid to the guild who would in turn distribute it to performers whose work appears on the streaming service. The AMPTP, which says the fee in the actors’ union proposal actually was a $1-per-subscription fee, rejected the proposal in a statement released on Oct. 11, calling it an “untenable economic burden.”

The AMPTP is pushing for a viewership bonus model similar to the one agreed to with the WGA and had believed when talks first resumed that it would have been sufficient to reach a deal with the actors guild. But SAG-AFTRA believes that the revenue-sharing plan is a better model to ensure increased pay for performers throughout the union’s membership for the work they do on streaming films and TV shows.

A SAG-AFTRA representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Witching Hour: Studios to Devote Another Week to Resolve SAG Strike or Give Up Until January | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

That inability to formally denounce the massacre of 1,400 Israelis by Hamas – men, women, children, babies and elderly – two weeks after the event infuriated some members of the guild, most prominently “24” and “Homeland” co-creator Howard Gordon, Joel Fields (“The Americans”) and Jonathan Prince (“American Dreams”), according to multiple individuals who spoke to TheWrap. 

Some 75 guild members met over Zoom on Friday afternoon to share their frustrations about the matter. And since the guild’s decision to say nothing, several said it was beyond comprehension that their board could not do something all the other Hollywood guilds and major companies had already done — make a simple declaration denouncing the massacre of innocent civilians in the most brutal of ways, even while also recognizing Palestinian suffering.

“It’s shocking,” David Kohan, co-creator of “Will and Grace,” said in an interview with TheWrap. “To me, it’s either cowardice or something worse.”

“I want to know how come that is,” said Matti Leshem, another guild member. “I don’t want to draw conclusions about the board of the Writers Guild, but for me that’s the question: Why can’t they thread that needle?” 

He added: “It’s a moral question. You’re either pro that, or against that. And if you’re not against what Hamas did, you’re pro-terror. You’re pro-raping women and burning babies.”

When reached by TheWrap, one board member declined to go into detail, but reflected the internal strife in saying only: “I’m too exhausted and frustrated from all this. Nothing to say.” 

A spokesperson for the guild declined to comment on Sunday. 

The difficulty seems to be among guild members who sympathize primarily with the Palestinian plight, or who do not agree with showing any support to Israel. Their views mirror those of the progressive left, which has shown support on campuses across the country for Palestinians and against Israel, and among activists like The Squad in Congress, who have called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. 

That view was reflected in an open letter posted on Medium on Saturday and signed by 267 members of the WGA, SAG-AFTRA and the DGA. The letter accused “high profile members” of the WGA of exerting pressure to issue statements supporting Israel.

“We must tread carefully when endorsing any government’s actions, especially when said government has been accused of carrying out human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide,” the letter read. 

“As storytellers, the narratives we craft matter, and the language we use has consequences,” the letter continued. “This is especially true in a moment where many of us who stand against genocide cannot even take that bare minimum position publicly without fear of being doxxed or blacklisted.” 

The signatories did not use their names, only initials and guild affiliation. TheWrap could find no guild members willing to speak on behalf of that view. 

Reached by TheWrap on Sunday, showrunner Gordon called the letter “a gross distortion” of what was being asked. “No one ever asked for that,” referring to an endorsement of Israel, he said.

He added: “Words like ‘genocide’ are being thrown around. All that was ever asked for by me or anyone else was merely acknowledging the horror.”

The letter provided no specific examples of signatories or others being blacklisted or doxxed for opposing Israel. 

Like other Jewish progressives who have been reeling from an antisemitic backlash to the war in Gaza, those in the Writers Guild who have supported causes, from LGBTQ rights to Black Lives Matter, said they were wounded by the lack of support from their guild. 

“I’ve always been a progressive,” Kohan said. “But the facts matter. The truth of the situation and the history matters. The actual context matters. If you don’t have the moral backbone to condemn an act of mass slaughter on civilians, women and elderly, does that make you pro-slaughter?”

In an interview with TheWrap before the controversy took root at the Writers Guild, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, urged Hollywood organizations to denounce Hamas’s actions as a moral imperative.  

“The people creating the content are king,” he noted. “The brands and stories that come out of Hollywood have extraordinary power, as do the people behind them.”  

He went on: “In this world that seems complicated, there are moments that are not complicated at all. This is one of them.”

But this moment has been extremely complicated inside the guild, which represents the heart of Hollywood storytelling.  

“The Board of Directors has worked exhaustively to consider the great diversity of opinions among our members on this issue, and determine how best to address this as a Guild,” said Stiehm, without providing any further detail. 

She added: “Like the membership itself, the Board’s viewpoints are varied, and we found consensus out of reach. For these reasons, we have decided not to comment publicly.” 

Asked to respond to why a statement was necessary, Kohan said: “because all the other guilds have done it. And your reluctance to do it is now taking a stance. By not doing it, you’re taking a stance.”

“In a vacuum, maybe you wouldn’t take a stand. But not taking a stand is very much taking a stand.” 

Gordon added: “To be characterized as taking a side in this conflict is factually and irresponsibly wrong. I would hope the guild leadership, if they’re not going to make a statement of sympathy for the victims of the terror attack, would at least disabuse anyone of that misapprehension.” 

And, he added: “I’d like a toning down of the rhetoric, which isn’t helpful. I’d like to call for calm, even internally. We will never be understood if we’re yelling.”

The post Inside the Writers Guild’s Tortured Debate Over Denouncing Hamas Violence in Israel | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

Instead, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher touched a frayed nerve with the CEOs, principally Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, according to multiple insiders who spoke to TheWrap. 

The guild had returned to the negotiating room at SAG headquarters in West Hollywood with a new ask: Instead of demanding a 1% levy on all streaming revenue, the guild was demanding a flat $1 per subscriber, per year fee. 

This was an unusual first-dollar revenue share regardless of profit or any individual contributions to the success of any show, much less a company. The money would go to the guild itself rather than individual actors on any show — and the union would decide how to distribute. 

The CEOs had already rejected the idea of revenue sharing in principle as untenable for their business model. But in their view, it was back. 

“On what basis would you do that?” Zaslav pressed. 

Drescher deflected. “Think how much better actors’ lives will be,” she said. 

And she said what the CEOs took to be a threat: that if she did not get this benefit for her members, it would be back to the strike lines for all. SAG-AFTRA has been on the picket lines since the strike began, but the threat seemed to indicate a robust showing along the lines of the vociferous presence of WGA members throughout the summer.

This subscriber proposal made no sense to CEOs Zaslav, Sarandos, Disney CEO Bob Iger and NBCUniversal’s Studio Group chairman Donna Langley. They felt they had already offered significant raises to actors in their negotiations up to that point, and that a flat levy to the guild on their subscription revenue was, as Sarandos later put it, a bridge too far. 

They also worried they’d need to give a similar deal to other guilds, which would cost even more in a portion of the industry – streaming – where most studios are losing money. 

It was an economic model they could not accept. 

After they left the negotiating room, Sarandos called his peers to circle up: the studio heads agreed that they were done talking. 

“We’re not a socialist country,” said an individual on the studio side. “We said, ‘This is crazy.’ It made no sense.” 

TheWrap spoke to insiders on both sides of the negotiating table, and both agreed that the breakdown was over this deal point, even though there had been constructive negotiations between the principals for days that was supposed to lead to what both sides had hoped would be “closeout proposals.” 

It wasn’t to be. 

Negotiations were scheduled for the following day, Thursday, Oct. 12. Instead, within a couple of hours, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the eight companies that represent the major studios, issued a statement that they were suspending talks because the gap between the two sides was “too great” to bridge. 

And in a move that mirrored one that backfired in August in talks with the WGA, the AMPTP released the details of their proposal to SAG-AFTRA to the public. The move was perceived as a gesture aimed at circumventing guild leadership and prompted accusations of bullying. 

In an interview with TheWrap on Thursday, SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said the new proposal that became a sticking point was their attempt to offer something different after the guild realized that the studios were “never ever going to agree to anything that involved attachment to their revenue stream.”

“Our committee did some soul searching and came up with a revised proposal not attached to revenue stream, but attached to viewers and subscribers. I thought it was going to be more palatable to them,” he said, adding that he “fully expected” them to accept the new model.

In their statement issued on Wednesday evening, the studios said the cost of this levy would amount to an additional $800 million a year. Crabtree-Ireland countered that characterization and said the new proposal actually comes to 57 cents per subscriber, not $1, after removing non-SAG shows (like reality and international content) from the equation.

On the studio side, an insider disputed that these nuances were presented in the negotiating room, insisting that the stated fee would be $1 per subscriber per year. 

“They have either intentionally or non-intentionally misconstrued the cost of the proposal,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “I told them how and why [Wednesday] night and they decided to leak that incorrect valuation in their press release. The correct valuation is about $500 million – a little bit less than 57 cents per subscriber per year. Less than a postage stamp per year per subscriber is not that much of an ask.”

Drescher also expressed surprise that the studios cut off negotiations.

“It really came as a shock to me because what does that exactly mean and why would you walk away from the table? It’s not like we’re asking for anything that’s so outrageous,” Drescher said to NBC on Friday. 

A spokesperson for SAG-AFTRA declined further comment on Sunday. 

A spokesperson for the AMPTP declined to comment for this story.   

Either way, the tension between Drescher and the CEOs– much more so, it appears, than with Crabtree-Ireland – inserts a personal element that now needs to be overcome. 

“She’s holding up the whole industry,” said the insider on the studio side. “We left. I don’t know if we’re coming back anytime soon.” 

For all of TheWrap’s Hollywood strike coverage, click here.

The post Inside the Breakdown of SAG-AFTRA and Studio Talks – A Threat Leads to a Walkout | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.