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> But Hollywood is a strange business. Certain decisions get made based on the buzzwords or slogans going around the corporate offices that day. If it sounds go

> But Hollywood is a strange business. Certain decisions get made based on the buzzwords or slogans going around the corporate offices that day. If it sounds good, and it appears to help the bottom line, even a myth can become common sense. That's not strange at all. It's not rational, exactly, but it's business as usual.

mrweasel 1y ago
Movies always part business, and part art, but I think that for Hollywood studios the business part has grown, and the art bit has been pushed aside. Hollywood doesn't really do small movies, be it hand drawn or not. The article mentions that Nobody is done at a $10 million budget, I don't think that's really interesting for corporate Hollywood. Sure if it becomes massively successful, it's great, if not it was a lot of work for very little or no profit. That's fine for smaller studios, but if you expect all your movies to gross $1 billion, then trying to do it with a $10 million budget seems unrealistic. The smaller studios and independent movie makers can have their little project, and if they happen to make something good, Hollywood can just buy them and have them make a squeal at 10x the budget and milk the fans.
- throwup238 1y ago
  > Hollywood doesn't really do small movies, be it hand drawn or not. The article mentions that Nobody is done at a $10 million budget, I don't think that's really interesting for corporate Hollywood. Sure if it becomes massively successful, it's great, if not it was a lot of work for very little or no profit. That's fine for smaller studios, but if you expect all your movies to gross $1 billion, then trying to do it with a $10 million budget seems unrealistic. There’s also the issue of Hollywood accounting. The people and studios funding the movies don’t see an all or nothing P&L because they own the companies actually producing the film (that’s how the zero net profit accounting is legally implemented in the industry). An EP like Spielberg putting down $10 million might see $8 million of that back before the film even releases because the project will use their studio for VFX or to shoot part of the movie. That leaves the costs that are spent outside the industry like advertising and marketing. If you have to spend $100 million on marketing anyway, it just doesn’t make sense to worry about production losses on a $10 million vs $100 million movie.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    Hollywood accounting refers to businesses screwing each other out of compensation with loosely defined terms in business contracts. For the purposes of reporting financial figures to the SEC or calculating tax liabilities, the businesses still have to follow GAAP and other property methods of accounting. If a business like Disney or Sony contracts with Spielberg, they aren't going to be fooled by him contracting out to his other businesses, they are going to know that is part of the terms. And surely, by this point, all the actors and other contractors are sophisticated enough to know the game also. Even the wikipedia page for Hollywood accounting cites actors telling everyone to only settle for percentage of gross. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
    - throwup238 1y ago
      Second sentence of that Wikipedia page: > Expenditures can be inflated to reduce or eliminate the reported profit of the project, thereby reducing the amount which the corporation must pay in _taxes_ and royalties or other profit-sharing agreements, as these are based on net profit. First and foremost it’s a tax dodge because nobody falls for points net anymore unless they’re brand new to the industry and people dropping millions to finance a movie are rarely that uninformed. But that’s the why. I’m describing the how: Hollywood accounting is GAAP accounting where the financiers direct a significant fraction of the capital towards businesses they have an ownership stake in. They have both control over the client and how much the vendor charges, driving profit in the topline organization to zero and sending it downstream. The people/studios financing the films are okay with it because they own the downstream vendors. Neither the studios nor Spielberg are under any illusions about how this works - they structure it that way on purpose. They can’t just zero out their profit and say too bad to the taxman and all the contracts on net profit. No judge would let that slide if it came to a lawsuit (and it frequently does). None of this is a mystery to anyone who has worked on the financial side of the industry but because of how that money moves around within a production, it creates economic incentives that favor expensive productions rather than smaller budget ones, at least within Hollywood.
      - 1y ago
- jonhohle 1y ago
  It’s cyclical. People will stop seeing movies because they’re repetitive and dull. Who really wants to see the avengers again? Then some unexpected hit will pop up out of nowhere and make a ton of money and studios will fund all kinds of off the wall things trying to create a new success formula. Along the way we’ll get a lot of fun movies again, but eventually they’ll figure out what is getting people into theaters and beat that concept until it’s dead. Repeat.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  Ironically, continuing to produce movies that are not worth seeing will ensure they'll shrink until we're back to doing small movies.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
rwmj 1y ago
The quote applies equally to the software industry.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  At least in software there’s corners of the industry where cooler minds prevail and proven methods don’t get binned because they’re not compliant with whatever happens to be getting hyped up that month.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    That's true, but the same applies to movies as well. Indie films exist, and for good or bad they have a lot more soul than the Hollywood blockbusters. The big name Hollywood stuff is the movie equivalent of AAA games (which also suck these days, for the most part).

mrweasel 1y ago

Movies always part business, and part art, but I think that for Hollywood studios the business part has grown, and the art bit has been pushed aside. Hollywood doesn't really do small movies, be it hand drawn or not. The article mentions that Nobody is done at a $10 million budget, I don't think that's really interesting for corporate Hollywood. Sure if it becomes massively successful, it's great, if not it was a lot of work for very little or no profit. That's fine for smaller studios, but if you expect all your movies to gross $1 billion, then trying to do it with a $10 million budget seems unrealistic. The smaller studios and independent movie makers can have their little project, and if they happen to make something good, Hollywood can just buy them and have them make a squeal at 10x the budget and milk the fans.

throwup238 1y ago
> Hollywood doesn't really do small movies, be it hand drawn or not. The article mentions that Nobody is done at a $10 million budget, I don't think that's really interesting for corporate Hollywood. Sure if it becomes massively successful, it's great, if not it was a lot of work for very little or no profit. That's fine for smaller studios, but if you expect all your movies to gross $1 billion, then trying to do it with a $10 million budget seems unrealistic. There’s also the issue of Hollywood accounting. The people and studios funding the movies don’t see an all or nothing P&L because they own the companies actually producing the film (that’s how the zero net profit accounting is legally implemented in the industry). An EP like Spielberg putting down $10 million might see $8 million of that back before the film even releases because the project will use their studio for VFX or to shoot part of the movie. That leaves the costs that are spent outside the industry like advertising and marketing. If you have to spend $100 million on marketing anyway, it just doesn’t make sense to worry about production losses on a $10 million vs $100 million movie.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Hollywood accounting refers to businesses screwing each other out of compensation with loosely defined terms in business contracts. For the purposes of reporting financial figures to the SEC or calculating tax liabilities, the businesses still have to follow GAAP and other property methods of accounting. If a business like Disney or Sony contracts with Spielberg, they aren't going to be fooled by him contracting out to his other businesses, they are going to know that is part of the terms. And surely, by this point, all the actors and other contractors are sophisticated enough to know the game also. Even the wikipedia page for Hollywood accounting cites actors telling everyone to only settle for percentage of gross. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
  - throwup238 1y ago
    Second sentence of that Wikipedia page: > Expenditures can be inflated to reduce or eliminate the reported profit of the project, thereby reducing the amount which the corporation must pay in _taxes_ and royalties or other profit-sharing agreements, as these are based on net profit. First and foremost it’s a tax dodge because nobody falls for points net anymore unless they’re brand new to the industry and people dropping millions to finance a movie are rarely that uninformed. But that’s the why. I’m describing the how: Hollywood accounting is GAAP accounting where the financiers direct a significant fraction of the capital towards businesses they have an ownership stake in. They have both control over the client and how much the vendor charges, driving profit in the topline organization to zero and sending it downstream. The people/studios financing the films are okay with it because they own the downstream vendors. Neither the studios nor Spielberg are under any illusions about how this works - they structure it that way on purpose. They can’t just zero out their profit and say too bad to the taxman and all the contracts on net profit. No judge would let that slide if it came to a lawsuit (and it frequently does). None of this is a mystery to anyone who has worked on the financial side of the industry but because of how that money moves around within a production, it creates economic incentives that favor expensive productions rather than smaller budget ones, at least within Hollywood.
    - 1y ago
jonhohle 1y ago
It’s cyclical. People will stop seeing movies because they’re repetitive and dull. Who really wants to see the avengers again? Then some unexpected hit will pop up out of nowhere and make a ton of money and studios will fund all kinds of off the wall things trying to create a new success formula. Along the way we’ll get a lot of fun movies again, but eventually they’ll figure out what is getting people into theaters and beat that concept until it’s dead. Repeat.
MangoToupe 1y ago
Ironically, continuing to produce movies that are not worth seeing will ensure they'll shrink until we're back to doing small movies.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

rwmj 1y ago

The quote applies equally to the software industry.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago
At least in software there’s corners of the industry where cooler minds prevail and proven methods don’t get binned because they’re not compliant with whatever happens to be getting hyped up that month.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  That's true, but the same applies to movies as well. Indie films exist, and for good or bad they have a lot more soul than the Hollywood blockbusters. The big name Hollywood stuff is the movie equivalent of AAA games (which also suck these days, for the most part).