I do not think many realize how fast the media and entertainment landscape is changing. When you take a look around the motion picture industry you soon realize that a mass dragon of change has gripped this industry, and no one is immune to this change. All factors of this business are radically shifting, and this change has been hyper accelerated by the pandemic. Many industry prognosticators are claiming that exhibition is returning to normal, well the new normal does not exist and the old normal was not so hot.

At one time the agents held sway. Since the heady agency time of Michael Ovitz, even going back to the formative days of Lew Wasserman, they had the ability to package movies, build economically beneficial pairings for which they received a fat fee plus a percentage. Starting with the Writer’s Guild pushback, where it became common opinion that the packaging efforts really were a detriment to independent artists and in mass writers terminated their agency and there was a resulting seismic shift in agency land. There was further erosion when the streaming outlets decided that the packaging fees demanded by the agencies were too burdensome. So in a two year period agency had been diminished to the point where their existence was being questioned. Many agencies are turning their focus to video gaming, influencers, and YouTube celebrities. The days of Irving “Swifty” Lazar and Lew Wasserman have come to an end. The agencies are finding that the stars of the new experiential economy come and go very quickly and there is only a short time span from which to build from. While they still have a cadre of performers, they are finding themselves diminished as the top draws are making deals directly with the streamers.

The studios are in a deep state of turmoil. Unless you have a direct tie to a streaming service like Universal or Disney then you are finding yourself somewhat rudderless. There are numerous reports that studios like Paramount are quickly selling off movies which were originally intended for the big screen to streamers. Paramount has sold five movies to one streamer or another, including The Lovebirds (to Netflix), Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (to Netflix) and Michael B. Jordan’s Without Remorse (to Amazon). In a more than perplexing move Disney is in final talks with Netflix to buy the Amy Adams thriller The Woman in the Window. Now Disney, as we all know, does own its own streamer service, they just think this movie does not have a place on it.

Sony sold Tom Hanks’ $50 million World War II U-boat thriller Greyhound to Apple TV for $70 million. Sony also unloaded Seth Rogen’s American Pickle to HBO Max. This fire sale started when Warner Bros. sold Andy Serkis’ commercially dubious Mowgli to Netflix, getting some cash for what they thought was a commercial bomb.

There seems to be consensus in Studio land that the market for non-event movies is not on a big screen, the internal thinking also is that even after the vaccine for COVID comes into being, audiences will stay away from theatrical showings of non-major marquee movies. The actions of the studios seem to be making this a self-fulfilling prophecy. For theaters this line of thinking is more than dangerous.

Stars. I grew up with icons like Raquel Welch, John Wayne, Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood and others. Over the course of the 2010s, those lovely people at the studios, you know that wacky lot at Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Fox, Universal and Paramount decided to stop focusing on movie stars, breaking a tradition that had lasted for a hundred years and began with the first Tarzan Elmo Lincoln. I firmly believe that focusing on a concept, like a Marvel movie and ignoring the iconic Movie Star destroyed a lot of the empathy and idolizing which was a foundation of the movies. This blitzkrieg towards CGI, de-humanized a lot of was once the movies and instead make this present form story telling a replicable and bland exercise.

The development folks at the studios decided to tell audiences that movie stars were not important. They are telling us that John Wayne’s walk, Humphrey Bogart’s sneer, Eddie Murphy’s laugh, the smirk of Burt Reynolds and as celebrated in song Bette’s Davis’s eyes are not important. By removing movie stars, they are removing the charisma of the movies. A chance for the audience to reflect on a character and find connection with that character. Movies in the past were built upon human characteristics and conflict within a set story structure. Unless Hollywood movies move away from its present course, movies are going to diminish and will become caricatures of a brilliant past.

I am of the firm belief that Hollywood is a diminishing Tower of Babel. No one knows where anything is going, and they seem to have lost any sense of connectedness with their audience. Why the theaters are not making movies away from the studios is beyond me. I take solace that in the past when studios stumbled others rose to fill the vacuum. I look back at folks like Samuel Z. Arkoff, Robert Lippert, Charles Pierce and others.

And as I have always stated I think the new theatrical reality will rise through the drive-ins.