Runaway production, tax incentives and Hollywood strikes took the spotlight in London on Wednesday during a session focused on “Sunset Boulevard: What does Tinseltown have to do to recapture its former glory?”
That was the title of a Wednesday panel discussion at Content London that brought out such speakers as Frank Spotnitz, CEO and founder of Big Light Productions (The X-Files, The Man in the High Castle and more). Joining him were AGC Studios chief content officer Lourdes Diaz, Lloyd Segan, partner at Piller/Segan, and Blink49’s Tara Long, global president of unscripted television at the Fifth Season-backed company.
Spotnitz was asked about California governor Gavin Newsom’s increase in tax incentives to a cap of $750 million annually to combat runaway production.
“The decline has been going on for at least 30 years,” Spotnitz said. “People who live and work in Los Angeles have seen their jobs go away, and they’ve had to be separated from their families for months at a time. And the truth is that the state of California has failed them, has failed to protect the industry. And even now, with Governor Newsom’s increase in the tax incentives, [even though] it’s the third-largest in the country, they’re still not solving the problem.”
A Content London panel on Dec. 3 included Frank Spotnitz, CEO and founder of Big Light Productions, AGC Studios chief content officer Lourdes Diaz, Piller/Segan’s Lloyd Segan, and Blink49’s Tara Long.
Courtesy of Georg Szalai
He added: “I appreciate the effort, but really, if you want to protect California, you’ve got to be competitive, and they clearly have not been competitive enough, and still aren’t. So I think a lot of the blame has to go to the government in California, the state government California, but I would also say that there needs to be sort of a shift in mindset by everybody, including my own guild and the other guilds.”
After all, “we are not a growth industry right now,” Spotnitz highlighted. “We are an industry where revenues are in decline and costs are going up, and that is not a winning combination. And when I go back to L.A. now, it feels like Detroit in the 1980s. It is grim, and we all need to work together to figure out how to make more great stuff, but for less money.”
Spotnitz and the other panelists discussed the dual hit from COVID and the Hollywood strikes. “During the pandemic, everyone spent like drunken sailors,” Spotnitz argued. “It was absolutely absurd [to see] the amount of money that was wasted on shows that weren’t very good, that were not going to have any shelf life. There’s just been a lot of irrational trend-following.”
His conclusion: “There’s plenty of blame to go around the government, the industry, and I would say, the guilds as well.”
Diaz said the California incentive doesn’t go far enough. “Don’t cap it,” she said. “California is the fifth economy in the world. Why cap it?”
The next question concerned President Donald Trump’s Hollywood task force, namely: “Are they the right people for the job?” One of the panelists urged Long, a Canadian, to answer.
“I think it’s just a bark with no bite,” she obliged. “I think it would be really hard to track where IP comes from. If they shoot Harry Potter in L.A., but it’s IP from somewhere else, I think there’d be a lot of gray, and it would turn into the bigger headache.”
Long offered more food for thought and concern: “Not to be doom and gloom, but I think we are Blackberries. We are Blockbuster,” she said. “Hollywood’s always changed quickly, and I think with technology, now it’s changing faster, and we have to innovate and figure out [new] ways.”
Long pointed to the Blink49- and MrBeast-produced Beast Games, highlighting that MrBeast was in charge of it rather than a network executive. “I don’t think many, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, A-listers could go into a network and get the type of deal that he did, to go and make that show with the money and the commitment and the controls.”
What if another strike was to hit Hollywood? “When the guilds negotiated last time, I think they were negotiating looking backwards at everything that they left on the table in the previous negotiation,” Diaz suggested. “And while that was Peak TV and Peak Netflix, where everyone and all the vertically integrated companies were producing for growth, not for value, by the time it came to negotiate again,” the tides had changed. “All of those companies had a bunch of stakeholders who wanted to now take that back and make it for value. So production has come down. Peak TV is over. The audience is maturing, and we need to find other ways to incentivize our crews and our talent to make things there.”
Segan offered on the dual strikes: “I’m not suggesting for a minute that writers or actors shouldn’t be remunerated appropriately and thoughtfully, but timing is everything. … Well, it was not a good time to do that” dual work stoppage.
What if the upcoming guild negotiations led to another strike? “I think it would be detrimental to the business. I think it would have a proliferation effect,” Segan warned.
Segan and Spotnitz on Wednesday described Hollywood as a spirit or a state of mind more than a location.
And Segan mostly focused on the opportunities amid all the worries and disruption though, mentioning, among other things, “ideation.” MrBeast coming from YouTube and then transitioning to TV may also be a sign of opportunity, he said. “Stories can come from anywhere. I’m not a pessimist. We are innovators. We pivot.”
Segan also picked up on Spotnitz’s Detroit comparison, arguing that as a result of global competition for the auto industry, U.S. cars have become better and more competitive. “The auto industry became more innovative,” he concluded. Segan’s conclusion: “It’s about recalibration. How do you go about doing something?“
Segan also referenced the Warner Bros. Discovery auction process, offering: “None of us want to see Warner Bros. devoured. That would be devastating, devastating emotionally, and on every level possible. But something is going to happen with that company, and so we’re going to have to live with whatever the consequences are.“
Spotnitz on Wednesday discussed AI as an opportunity, drawing positive feedback from his fellow panelists. “It may even help the industry create more jobs for more people. Each production has fewer jobs, but there may be far more productions,” he suggested. “But I just think we as storytellers should be engaging with this, rather than just saying, ‘No, no, no!’”
Echoed Diaz: “There’s a lot to learn from AI, and a lot to learn with AI. So I think there’s a lot of benefits. We have to know what we’re putting into the AI, because AI doesn’t have taste, right?”
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