Understanding the film business / Awards

[jo]

The controversial Variety article on the troubles at Marvel.


variety.com/2023/film/features/marvel-jonathan-majors-problem-the-marvels-reshoots-kang-1235774940/


Btw, the reporter Tatiana Seigel was the same reporter who wrote the article on Scott Rudin's behavior as a producer and employer.

Jo

[jo]

From Deadline --

HOME
BUSINESS
BREAKING NEWS
SAG-AFTRA & Studio CEOs End Tonight’s Talks With No Deal; More Negotiations In Works For Tuesday – Update
By Dominic Patten, Anthony D'Alessandro

November 6, 2023 10:29pm
SAG-AFTRA, AMPTPSTORY ARC
SAG-AFTRA, AMPTP
Getty

2nd UPDATE, EXCLUSIVE, 10:29 PM: SAG-AFTRA and the studios have finally called it a night on the latest talks in search of a new three-year contract.

In the past 30 minutes or so, the actors union and the AMPTP ended a long bargaining session that started this afternoon. The thinking is they will resume negotiations on Tuesday, the 117th day of the strike. However, at this late hour, no definite time has been set yet.

Tonight’s meeting was a virtual get-together, with the CEO Gang of Four joining AMPTP boss Carol Lombardini and SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, among others. Netflix‘s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley, Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Disney’s Bob Iger have all been participating in talks directly on and off since the latest round of negotiations began on October 24. The latter two of that quartet may be feeling a bit more pressure than usual with their respective companies’ quarterly earnings reports out later this week.

Still, all seem aware of what’s at stake for the industry as a whole, we’re told.

“This was a productive session, some work still required before there’s a deal,” a studio insider told Deadline tonight of the gathering, which followed the guild’s response earlier in the day to the studios’ so-called “best, last and final offer” of last week. “There’s still some serious daylight between us, at least as of right now,” the insider added.


David Zaslav, Ted Sarandos, Donna Langley & Bob Iger
Getty
As has been the case for months, AI remains one of the major issues that divides the two sides. The studios are looking to seal the deal with what one source called “an expanded version of what the WGA agreed to,” while the guild wants project-specific protections on scans of performers and re-use of their likenesses. Well-positioned sources on both sides admit that part of the problem is coming up with effective guardrails for a technology that is evolving in leaps and bounds.

[jo]

The writers are now writing stories.

Who will tell the stories?

I wonder - will the studios start using their foreign affiliates or subsidiaries...and restart the movies elsewhere, say in the UK or Australia -- where English-speaking actors and crew can make the movies?

(Example: Les Miserables was filmed under the auspices of the UK production unit Working Title and filmed in England. It was released by Universal Studios, which has an agreement with Working Title. That was why most of the background & support players came from England and many from the West End.


Is Hollywood going to be moribund, or start to die?


Jo

[jo]

STrike is over

From Deadline.com --

The Strike Is Over! SAG-AFTRA & Studios Reach Deal On New Three-Year Contract

By Dominic Patten, Anthony D'Alessandro

November 8, 2023 4:39pm
Hollywood strikes impact red carpetsSTORY ARC
Getty

After 118 days of the actors guild being out on strike, SAG-AFTRA and the studios have reached a tentative deal on a new contract that could see Hollywood up and running again within weeks.

The strike will be over as of 12:01 am PT November 9, we hear. Culminating a very dramatic day of studio earnings results and deadlines, the actors guild’s 17-member negotiating committee unanimously voted to recommend a tentative agreement to the SAG-AFTRA board.

Coming just less than a month after Writers Guild members overwhelmingly ratified their own agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, SAG-AFTRA’s deal is the culmination of the latest round of renewed negotiations that began October 24. Indicating the seriousness and stakes of the negotiations, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Disney’s Bob Iger, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav frequently directly participated in the talks.

The tentative agreement follows the studios responding on November 3 to the guild’s last comprehensive counter with a self-described “historic” package. That was succeeded less than 24 hours later by an expanded group of studio leaders — including execs from Paramount, Amazon, Apple and more — joining the Gang of Four to brief SAG-AFTRA on the AMPTP’s new offer, which was said to include big gains in wages and bonuses as well as sweeping AI protections.

“We didn’t just come toward you, we came all the way to you,” Sarandos told guild leaders Saturday before SAG-AFTRA brass began digging into the fine print. Further talks between the two sides began earlier this week as the guild poured over the studios’ latest set of proposals.


Now, if all goes as planned, eligible members of the 160,000-strong actors guild will vote soon to ratify the new agreement. Also, if things move like they did with the WGA in late September, we could see SAG-AFTRA end its strike before the ratification vote is completed to get people back to work sooner and production restarted quickly.

Exposing many of the shifts and divisions in the industry over the past decade, today’s tentative agreement comes at the end of a long road filled with diversions and potholes.

Overall, the six months of Hollywood strikes is estimated to have cost the Southern California economy more than $6.5 billion and 45,000 entertainment industry jobs after production ground to a halt with the WGA hitting the picket lines in early May and SAG-AFTRA following in mid-July. On an individual level, the labor action garnered passionate unity among guild members. At the same time, a fact not lost on the studios and their strategy, many guild members have suffered crippling financial hardship, as have below-the-line workers, going months without work.



After calling the strike July 14, it took the guild and the studio CEOs’ Gang of Four around 80 days before their first official face-to-face talks at SAG-AFTRA headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard. For all the optimism and momentum coming out of the completed WGA deal, those new deliberations between SAG-AFTRA and the studios that began October 2 blew apart on October 11, with the AMPTP leaving negotiations early after the guild tabled an alternative to its contentious revenue-sharing proposal. A few hours later, expecting more scheduled talks the next day, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland received a call saying deliberations were “suspended.”

“Last night, they introduced a levy on subscribers on top of [other] areas,” Sarandos said the next day at an industry conference, calling the proposal a “bridge too far” and blaming the guild for the talks ending. Later, SAG-AFTRA accused the studios of “bully tactics” and using the “same failed strategy they tried to inflict on the WGA.”

On October 18, after Netflix stated in its Q3 earnings report that talks were “ongoing” and Sarandos said the guild “really broke our momentum” towards a deal, Crabtree-Ireland called BS. “The best way to reach a deal and end this strike is for him and the other CEOs to end their walkout from the bargaining table and resume negotiations,” the SAG-AFTRA national director and chief negotiator told Deadline. “We have been and remain ready to continue talks – every day.”

After an appreciated but DOA bid by George Clooney and other A-listers to intervene in getting talks restarted, it looked like the actors strike would pass the 100-day milestone with no end in sight. Then, on October 21 , after Drescher hit out at the “AMPTPs strategy of non-negotiation” and “a blatant propaganda attempt to discredit union leadership and divide our solidarity,” Bob Iger made a call to Crabtree-Ireland and asked to start a new round of talks.



Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Fran Drescher, Ted Sarandos, Bob Iger, David Zaslav & Donna Langley
At 3 p.m. PT on the strike’s 100th day, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP put out a joint statement that they were heading back to the bargaining table on October 24 at the guild’s headquarters. That first day of negotiations between the parties was “not great,” according to a well-positioned source. As the studios put forth a new offer they hoped would end the stalemate over “success-based compensation,” the guild proved unmoved, but also open to further discussion.

Although the parties had agreed to meet on October 25, the guild asked that morning to take the day to go over the studios’ proposal of increased bonuses based on the success of streaming shows and movies and a further rise in minimum rates. “It’s a step in the right direction and the negotiating committee is taking the time to do a deep review,” a guild source told Deadline.

The two sides sat down again face-to-face around noon on October 26 with Crabtree-Ireland telling Deadline he was “cautiously optimistic” about deliberations with the studios. The guild slide across the table a self-described “comprehensive counter” that attempted to move the two sides closer together, sources said. As open letters from both supportive and impatient guild members flew around town, the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee were back in active talks on October 27. With both sides taking October 30 to be “working independently,” virtual deliberations bled into the weekend with the parties trying to bridge their differences.

On Halloween and in the early days of November, the parties met again. As the parties got “closer and closer,” as a guild source told Deadline, on issues, Crabtree-Ireland and Lombardini continued conferring directly, with breakout groups of lawyers and other specialists huddled in search of a deal – successfully we now know. Followed by two days of consultation by the guild, the November 3 delivery of the studios’ response to the guild’s latest counter and SAG-AFTRA’s November 6 counter response saw the two sides find an AI compromise and began moving things into what we now know was the final phase.

It took an unexpected strike by actors guild (who many studios execs thought were bluffing despite an overwhelming strike authorization mandate), a lot of moving pieces, guild solidarity, and some hard negotiating sessions to get there.


The actors union joined the WGA on the picket lines when it went on strike July 14, creating Hollywood’s first joint strike in more than 60 years. There were a lot of hot summer days when the labor battle remained at a stalemate.

But things shifted after Labor Day. The WGA reached a deal with the AMPTP on September 24 after five months on the picket lines and a final five intense days of deliberations that included the CEO Gang of Four for most of those last sessions. The WGA leadership approved the tentative agreement and ended the strike at 12:01 a.m. PT on September 27. WGA members ratified the deal by a wide margin October 9.

As exclusively reported by Deadline on September 26, the studios and SAG-AFTRA intended to ride the wave of the WGA deal to set meetings within a week or so on their own talks. However, as the goodwill of the WGA’s successful negotiations faded into bitter public call-outs from leaders on both sides, many feared, even with a new round of talks, the actors strike could last well into the holidays, ruining any chance at a partial broadcast networks season and hobbling the 2024 movie slate.

That catastrophe seems to have been averted now.

[jo]

From Variety --

Variety

FILM
COLUMNS
Dec 30, 2023 11:36am PT


Why the Fall of Comic-Book Movie Culture Is Inevitable
It's not just the bad sequels. It's far simpler: The fantasy heroes have been strip-mined.


By Owen Gleiberman


Comic-book movie culture didn’t just stumble this year. It face-planted, giving us one movie after another that fans didn’t much care about and that the corporations backing these films took a disquieting loss on. And that’s not how it was supposed to go. According to the Gospel of 21st-Century Hollywood, the words “comic-book film” and “box-office disappointment” are not supposed to appear in the same sentence. When they do, not just once but over and over and over again, the tea leaves are telling us something ominous and maybe definitive.

Why, in 2023, did this happen? The analysis that has mostly been offered is simple: The movie companies served up mediocre superhero product. That’s why they — and we — suffered. If it had just been one or two duds, the situation might have been explained away. But when you think back on “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and “The Flash” and “The Marvels” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” the pattern is clear. It’s not simply a Marvel thing or a DC thing. The primal thrill and popularity of comic-book movie culture took a major hit, and it may be fading away. And yet…




In the very drubbing these movies received, at the box office and in the drumbeat snark of critical reviews, you might say there’s hope. Comic-book movie culture is, after all, only as good as the movies it gives us. And this was the year that the corporations — let’s name names: Disney and Warner Bros. — failed. They made bad movies. What if they’d made good movies?

The temptation to point a finger at the producers and executives and vilify them for their shoddy product has always been there. But now it’s part of the new couch-potato rebel culture. Critics, on their reflexive high horse, mostly hate comic-book movies, and more and more they have used their reviews of them to chastise The Man. The fans would seem to be on the other side of the fence, but they have their own collective resentments and rebel fire. This year, the critics and the Comic-Con horde stood shoulder to shoulder, joining forces to look the suits in the eye and say, “You did this to us! We’re bored as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

All that said, there’s a larger reality about comic-book movie culture that we tend to ignore. So let’s state it outright: This shit is starting to fail because it is spent. Because it’s been used up. I’m not just talking about Ant-Man or the Flash. I’m talking about the characters who got us in the door in the first place, the iconic larger-than-life ones: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Thor, The Hulk, Black Panther. They were the mythic engine of this thing, and for a good long stretch we didn’t just want to see them onscreen — we craved it. We needed them to be our gods again. And they were…until they weren’t. Memo to James Gunn: Gods have a way of losing power when you stick them in reruns.





The former U.S. President George W. Bush has long been used to illustrate the maxim “He was born on third base but thinks he hit a triple.” Comic-book movie culture is sort of like that. In the old days (i.e., the first 90 years of Hollywood, up to and including the Lucas/Spielberg revolution), movies were made the old-fashioned way. They were imagined, usually out of whole cloth. Sure, there were sequels and remakes, there were literary adaptations highbrow and low, and “Star Wars,” in 1977, riffed on the pulp sci-fi serials of the ’40s and ’50s (though the vast majority of the audience for George Lucas’s film had never seen those serials). So yes, Hollywood has always been a great big recycling machine.

But there’s a difference between imitation and IP. In 1978, when Hollywood gave us “Superman,” it was pinging off a magical comic-book character who sprung deep from the well of American pop identity. Who didn’t love Superman? And 11 years later, when Tim Burton’s “Batman” premiered (producing the real sea change in the industry — I’ll never forget the franchise frenzy that blanketed theaters the day that movie opened), it was like a deliverance. Unlike “Star Wars,” the Batman pedigree already occupied a place deep in the hearts of moviegoers. It spoke to comic-book fans, to everyone who’d grown up with the late-’60s TV series (still the greatest thing ever, by the way), not to mention the “Dark Knight” and “Killing Joke” graphic-novel generation. You could certainly say that Burton delivered — in the gothic Wagnerian sweep, the palm-buzzer demonism of Jack Nicholson’s performance. But in another sense you could say that the 1989 “Batman” was born on home plate and everyone in Hollywood thought it was a home run.

I sound like I’m shortchanging the awesome craftmanship that goes into a movie like “Batman,” or that has gone into so many of the Marvel and DC films. I am not. I have great respect for that craft, sometimes a reverence for it, to the point that I’ve given a passing grade to more than my share of the comic-book movies (like “Captain Marvel” or “The Expendables”) that Critics Weren’t Supposed to Like. But here’s the real point. The mass attachment to comic-book movie culture has always been steeped in our connection to its most legendary characters. They were the pure-cut cocaine of all IP. And for a while that created a fantasy moviegoing high.

Here and there, the films may continue to do that. I adored “The Batman” — though tellingly, even though it was a great movie that became a huge hit, it seemed to have no cultural impact. And “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” as much as I hated it, demonstrated the sheer power of that character, the more of them on screen the better. This year, the darkly bedazzling aesthetic and commercial triumph of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” pointed toward what may be the future of the superhero-movie form — the mutating majesty of animation. And though I’ve been talking here about the old-school characters, there’s no doubt that the “Deadpool” films, with their transcendent naughtiness and ultraviolence, are a franchise phenomenon all their own. Like most industry watchers, I’m anticipating that the third “Deadpool” film, when it’s released this coming July, will be a commercial monster.




So no, comic-book movie culture isn’t on life support…yet. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, was certainly right when he acknowledged — in an act of damage control — that the MCU had spread itself too thin, diluting its appeal with spin-off TV series and a general sense of the multiverse as something that was becoming homework even for fans. Yet what’s the solution? There’s no real way to put the genie of too-much-product overkill back in the bottle. Because the only way to “solve” that problem is with more product. James Gunn, in his role as the executive guru (along with Peter Safran) of DC Studios, now ready to wipe the slate clean and launch a new universe of DC storytelling, wants to fix it all with quality control. He’s basically saying, “Fuck those Zack Snyder movies. My Superman will be boss!” Yes, except that his Superman is going to feel like it’s about the 12th Superman.

The executives, sitting in their Death Star suites, were full of excuses this year. “The movie got rushed into production.” “We overextended ourselves.” And no one can blame them for the personal and legal implosion of Jonathan Majors. At the same time, the critical-rebel establishment, speaking more than ever for fans, saw blood in the water, and with it the opportunity to help kill off the comic-book movie culture it has come to regard as an existential threat to cinema.




But if that culture is now entering the early stages of its death throes, it will actually be for an honorable reason. Comic-book movies were never going to die because an “Ant-Man” or “Captain Marvel” sequel was bad. The only reason they were going to die is that they had served their purpose. They made us dream of men and women in capes who could fly and who seemed indestructible, because all of that made us feel good. But then it stopped making us feel so good, because we had already been there and dreamed that. And it was time, perhaps, to get back to reality.

We'll see how the Deadpool&Wolverine movie fares?

JO

[jo]

From The Hollywood Reporter --

Bob Iger Pushes Back on Marvel Fatigue, but Says Disney Quietly Canceled Movies
The Disney CEO was interviewed at a Morgan Stanley conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, where he called the Nelson Peltz-led proxy fight a "distraction" for the company.


BY ALEX WEPRIN

Plus Icon

MARCH 5, 2024 11:13AM
Bob Iger
Disney CEO Bob Iger VALERIE MACON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Disney CEO Bob Iger is pursuing a major overhaul of the company’s film output.

In the midst of something of a strike-induced box office drought and after a challenging year for Disney’s film slate, the executive said Tuesday that “we’re doing a lot” to turn around Disney’s feature film business, which “hit on hard times that needed addressing.”

Iger, speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley in San Francisco on Tuesday, was pressed about what he is doing to turn the film business around.


“You have to kill things you no longer believe in, and that’s not easy in this business, because either you’ve gotten started, you have some sunk costs, or it’s a relationship with either your employees or with the creative community,” Iger said. “It’s not an easy thing, but you got to make those tough calls. We’ve actually made those tough calls. We’ve not been that public about it, but we’ve killed a few projects already that we just didn’t feel were strong enough.”

Iger added that he has been “spending a lot of time with the creators, watching these films, giving detailed notes in these films, engaging in a respectful process that results in improvement.”

And he pushed back on the idea of superhero or franchise fatigue, saying that it was “not an accident” that Marvel’s first 33 films generated just under $30 billion at the box office.

“A lot of people think it’s audience fatigue, it’s not audience fatigue. They want great films. And if you build it great, they will come and there are countless examples of that. Some are ours and some are others’. Oppenheimer is a perfect example of that. Just a fantastic film,” Iger said. “Focus is really important. We reduced the output of Marvel, both number of films they make and the number of TV shows, and that really becomes critical, but I feel good about the team. I feel good about the IP we’re making. I talked about a lot of the projects. We look years ahead, really. And it’s iterative.

“Not only do you look at the films you’re making, you you look at every part of that process, who the directors are, who’s being cast, reading scripts, I personally watch films three to five times with the team and just create a culture of excellence and respect, which is really important with the creative community,” he added. “And again, the track record speaks for itself.”

On a related note, Iger also touted Disney’s 2024 film slate, calling the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes “one of the better films in the franchise,” the upcoming Inside Out and Moana sequels, and also the big Marvel release of the year, Deadpool & Wolverine, which Iger predicted “will be one of the more successful Marvel movies we’ve had in a long time.”

Iger’s comments come amid a pivotal moment for Disney, with a pair of activist shareholders — Nelson Peltz’s Trian and Blackwells Capital — each seeking board seats.

During Disney’s last earnings call, Iger announced a slew of projects and deals hoping to push back against the activists, including a partnership and $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games that will bring Disney franchise IP to the Fortnite universe; a surprise Moana sequel, which will hit theaters this year; a deal to bring Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie to Disney+ next month; and a fall 2025 launch date for ESPN’s direct-to-consumer flagship service.

At the Morgan Stanley conference, Iger said that “this campaign is, in a way, designed to distract us, to take our eye off all those balls that we talked about.

“It’s that simple. And I am working really hard to not let this distract me,” he added. “Because when I get distracted, everybody who works for me gets distracted. And that’s not a good thing.”

[jo]

From New York Times --

What to Watch

Hollywood’s New Fantasy: A Magical, Colorblind Past
Films and TV shows keep reimagining history as a multiracial dream world. Is that really a step forward?

Share full article


929
By Kabir Chibber
March 31, 2024
Updated 5:52 p.m. ET
Image
Credit...Photo illustration by Ricardo Tomás

Not long ago, in the cinema, I found myself trying to focus on Timothée Chalamet’s charming portrayal of a young Willy Wonka, arriving penniless in a new city. What drew my attention instead was the population he encountered there. The first person to greet him was a joyful British Indian. Soon we met a cute orphan sidekick, played by a Black American actor, and the chief of police, played by a biracial American. The vaguely Mitteleuropean city Wonka had come to — Viennese shops, Italian architecture, English language — was a happy melting pot: All races seemed to coexist without race meaning anything. The story was set in a fantastical past, but its cast looked like a utopian 21st-century London, with actors of British and Caribbean and Asian backgrounds all stirred together. The Oompa-​Loompas, described by Roald Dahl as a pygmy people found “in the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before,” were played by Hugh Grant.

Image
Calah Lane, left, and Timothée Chalamet in a scene from “Wonka.”Credit...Warner Bros. Pictures


Across the arts, we now see so many worlds that never existed. David Copperfield is played by Dev Patel. Marvel’s Norse pantheon includes a Black deity. The hit Netflix series “Bridgerton” depicts a version of Regency England ruled by a Black queen and an anachronistically multiracial royal court.

When you see these examples gathered, they’re often followed by some complaint of a world gone mad with inclusion. In Britain, for instance, there was some outrage when the protagonist of an otherwise faithful Agatha Christie adaptation was revised to be a Nigerian immigrant. But the problem, for viewers, isn’t wokeness run amok; it’s the incoherence of the world we are watching. We see an African man solving crimes in a rural English village of the 1950s, as the sun sets on the empire — yet his race is barely mentioned or considered and never makes any material difference in his experience.



You might call this kind of defiantly ahistorical setting the Magical Multiracial Past. The bones of the world are familiar. There is only one change: Every race exists, cheerfully and seemingly as equals, in the same place at the same time. History becomes an emoji, its flesh tone changing as needed.

And yet something is off, something that makes these stories impossible to get lost in. You can never fully envision the Magical Multiracial Past without having to mentally take apart the entire scaffolding of world history. “Bridgerton” is set before Britain abolished slavery, an institution that apparently exists, largely unmentioned, in the world of the show. What, precisely, are the rules of a world in which a Black queen reigns over a British Empire that sanctions the enslavement of Black people?

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Regé-Jean Page and Phoebe Dynevor in Bridgerton.Credit...Netflix


Included, But Erased
The impulse behind such choices surely comes from a good place. Storytellers are struggling with how to approach a historically white canon and a set of well-worn genres (like the period costume drama) whose characters would, in reality, be almost exclusively white. They are wary of simply omitting all the other ethnicities that are part of the modern, multiracial West, either as performers or, potentially, as viewers. Neither do they want to tell stories in which nonwhite people must always appear as servants, or victims, or issues.

The Magical Multiracial Past is one optimistic solution to this conundrum. We want to include everyone in our storytelling, but we are not always prepared to change the kinds of stories we tell. So we simply suspend disbelief; we imagine that everyone who is currently a part of our Anglophone culture has been there, a valued and equal participant, all along.





Thus have all of us, from around the globe, been retconned into the history of the West. Now we can watch ourselves speak languages we did not speak in rooms where we were unlikely to have been welcome. We are included, but our actual history is erased. We seldom see the stories of nonwhite people who, like my ancestors, lived on their home soil, or the complex stories of nonwhite people in the West in centuries past. The world’s history is reduced from many to one.

Some feel that this sort of wishful casting can help model how a multiethnic society should function. But whom, precisely, does it benefit? It is convenient that the Magical Multiracial Past allows white viewers to watch white protagonists move through history without anyone having to think uncomfortable thoughts; indeed, the people of the Magical Multiracial Past get along better than we do in the present. I don’t think this is principally for the benefit of those of us who aren’t white. I think instead of a line from James Baldwin: “A great deal of one’s energy,” he once wrote, “is expended in reassuring white Americans that they do not see what they see.”

And maybe this is why, while I struggle to cope with these revised pasts intellectually, I also think they tend to fail emotionally, deep down in the places a good story is meant to reach. The tales are often boring, marked by a well-meaning blandness — by an avoidance of uncomfortable truths.


Image
Dev Patel in a scene from the film “The Personal History of David Copperfield.”Credit...20th Century/Searchlight Pictures
Seeing the Canon Afresh


There are alternatives to this fantasy. One obvious option is that, rather than trying to fit the modern world into the canon, we could expand the canon itself. It’s not difficult to tell stories from more parts of the world. In literature, the writer Marlon James has worked to make his Dark Star trilogy, inspired by ancient African folklore, avoid becoming a “European fantasy novel in brown face.” Children’s entertainment offers stories like Disney’s “Moana,” immersed in Polynesian culture, and “Iwájú,” set in a future Lagos. All sorts of films find ways to acknowledge nonwhite people in Western history or to dramatize their histories elsewhere.

Or we can see the canon afresh. You can keep the cowboy but tear it to shreds, as Mel Brooks did with the story of a Black sheriff in “Blazing Saddles.” Or you can rebuild it, as Quentin Tarantino did in “Django Unchained” by making the hero a former slave. (Tarantino called the cruel slave owners of his film a “grotesque parody of European aristocracy,” a far more interesting take on the concept of royalty, in my view, than pretending to be a royal myself.) There is also humor here. A good joke in “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” is rooted in an unacknowledged truth of time-travel stories: It’s mostly people who look like Marty McFly who want to go all that far into American history.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming of things that never were, but we shouldn’t use that power to pretend bad things didn’t happen. Personally, I’m drawn to a good counterfactual. I find myself thinking often about a 1995 film called “White Man’s Burden.” Written and directed by Desmond Nakano, a third-generation Japanese American, the movie places John Travolta in an alternate America in which Black people hold all the power and white people live in drug-filled ghettos. It opens with a lavish, all-Black dinner party at which the head of the table muses about whether white people are, as a race, beyond saving — a reversal heightened by the fact that this bad guy is played, with tremendous charisma, by the civil rights icon Harry Belafonte.

Art should explore our shared history and try to make sense of it. Consider the recent uproar over Google’s artificial-​intelligence model, so trained to produce “colorblind” images that it would offer the ridiculous: the founding fathers as Native American men, racially diverse Nazis. Google’s trillion-dollar team of scientists tried to solve the problems of racism by ignoring them and thereby found their own way to the Magical Multiracial Past. It’s striking to think that humans working in the arts have been making the same choices. The past is messy, and depicting it can be unsettling. But understanding that is what separates us from robots.

Kabir Chibber is a writer and filmmaker based in New York. He last wrote for the magazine about the prophetic power of the film “Demolition Man.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 2024, Page 9 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Shady Past. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
REA

[jo]

www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bob-iger-cnbc-nelson-peltz-response-1235866344/

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BUSINESS NEWS

Bob Iger On “Woke” Disney Criticism: “A Lot of People Don’t Even Understand Really What It Means”
The CEO also talked about succession planning in a wide-ranging CNBC interview.


BY ALEX WEPRIN


APRIL 4, 2024 7:31AM
Bob Iger
Disney CEO Bob Iger MICHAEL BLACKSHIRE / LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

With the Nelson Peltz proxy fight in the rearview mirror, Disney CEO Bob Iger says that he is now free to focus on moving the company forward, with succession being a top priority.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNBC Thursday morning, Iger said that in meeting with shareholders over the last few months, succession was a key issue, and he sought to reassure the Street that he was focused on the problem.

“The board engaged in a succession process the moment I came back, and they’re taking it very, very seriously. I don’t think it has changed because of the activism battle at all,” Iger told CNBC’s David Faber. “They established this as their number one priority from the moment I came back, they formed a committee right away, they’ve been meeting regularly, they’re going to meet even more regularly going forward because I’m not going to be here forever.”


He also suggested that while his contract runs through 2026, his successor will be announced “at the right time,” hinting that a name could emerge sooner.

“I think it’s really important to have a good transition process, you know, this is a big complicated company,” Iger added. “And not only is it important to choose the right person, but it’s really important to give that person all the opportunity in the world to be successful in the job, and the board’s very focused on who the person is and when the decision should be made, and essentially, how the handover of sorts will take place.”

He also addressed the proxy fight, with Faber pressing him on whether Peltz’s crusade was a personal one given the backing of former Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter.

“If you’re asking whether it’s personal on their side, you probably should ask him, he probably would say no. I think there probably was, to some extent, a degree of personal animus that was on the table here,” Iger replied.

And when asked whether it was true that he was prepared to step down from Disney’s board should Peltz win a seat, Iger said that “his presence on the board, we believed, could be distracting and that might have made it very, very difficult for us to do our jobs the way we feel they need to be done.”





Iger also brushed aside questions about Elon Musk’s trolling of the company, telling Faber that “there’s no relevance to the Walt Disney Company or to me.”

“People have been coming after me and the company for years,” he added. “I don’t get distracted by those things.”

But Iger did seem to acknowledge that critiques of Disney’s content as being “woke” may have a certain degree of merit, though he added “the term woke is thrown around rather liberally, no pun intended in that regard. I think a lot of people don’t even understand really what it means.”

“I think the noise is sort of quieted down. I’ve been preaching this for a long time at the company before I left and since I came back then our number one goal is to entertain,” Iger added. “The bottom line is that infusing messaging as a sort of a number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we’re up to. They need to be entertaining, and where the Disney company can have a positive impact on the world whether it’s you know, fostering acceptance and understanding of people of all different types, great.

“But generally speaking, we need to be an entertainment first company … And understanding that look, we’re trying to reach a very, very diverse audience. And on one hand in order to do that, what you do, the stories you tell, have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach, but that audience because they are so diverse, really, first and foremost, they want to be entertained, and sometimes they can’t be turned off by certain things. And we just have to be more sensitive to the interest of a broad audience. It’s not easy, you know, so that he can’t please everybody all the time, right?”






And the CEO also gave an update on Disney’s streaming efforts, saying that Disney will be “launching our first real foray into password sharing” in June, with a full rollout planned for September.

And when asked whether Disney’s goal is to solidify itself as the number two in streaming, Iger said “I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily the goal,” but still heaped praise on the competitor.

“Netflix is the gold standard in streaming. They’ve done a phenomenal job in a lot of different directions,” he said. “I actually have very, very high regard for what they’ve accomplished. If we can only accomplish what they’ve accomplished, that would be great.”

And with regard to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the settlement over the Disney World oversight board, Iger described the deal as a “win-win.”

“We call it a win-win. This is a good thing for the state of Florida and a good thing for the Walt Disney Company,” Iger said. “This gives us an opportunity to engage more effectively and more deeply with the oversight board, which has also been reconstituted to some extent, and make the kind of investments that we need to make in that business not only to grow our business, but to grow in terms of the state of Florida create more jobs, more revenue for the state of Florida.”

And when asked whether this means that there will be no more public fights between Ron DeSantis and the company, Iger replied: “I would hope not but I can’t I can’t speak for Governor DeSantis in that regard.”

[jo]

I think maybe Bob Iger should really try to fully understand and appreciate that the XMen franchise was the first solid direction towards addressing current social prejudices and the characters they portrayed are those who were not generally accepted. Attempts in the franchise were made to show how integration can be made. Kevin Feige may have been a comicbook nerd and was involved in the first XMen movie ( but only for publicity and not in the creative process) could also learn from how the franchise was developed in relation to the statement first declared in the first movie! This refers to the recognition of these people blessed with a mutation issue but shunned by society. Acceptance of what they are/were was the goal -- not simply making the character work as a mutant in either gender or whatever race should not be his creative contribution? He probably means well - but he would know how the comic book creators intended for their characters to be accepted not just by comicbook readers or film adaptation fans but society in general.

But if the reports are true about changing the essential characters such as introduced in the comic books (like changing the gender of the unique XMan or XWoman for the sake of showing that the job can be done by either gender or any race ) - that would be disowning the artistic integrity that the creators infused into these characters. If this is being done also simply to open up employment opportunities to the widest possible sectors -- that should only be secondary to artistic integrity.

XMen-3 may have been one of the most unwieldy story-telling in the franchise - but its initial objective of showing the many different characters with unusual abilities did well. Maybe if it had not been rushed and waited for Bryan Singer (whose X-1 & X-2 were both very well-received) to come back to the franchise, maybe it would have been a very good illustration of how the mutants fared - positively or even negatively.


Jo

[mamaleh]

www.pressrundown.com/entertainment/bob-iger-acknowledges-disneys-woke-era-ending-amidst-criticism

Ellen

[jo]

Bob Iger shares the new direction of Marvel, etc., in its recent earnings call --

as reported by Variety :

Variety

May 7, 2024 6:13am PT
Marvel Will Release No More Than Three Movies and Two Shows Per Year, Bob Iger Says

By Jennifer Maas


Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company is shrinking the MCU with a new mission to drop the number of Marvel TV series to two a year and the film output to no more than three movies per year.

Iger said this is part of Disney’s overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality, a strategy “that’s particularly true with Marvel.”

“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three,” the Disney CEO said during the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday. “And we’re working hard on what that path is.”


Iger says Marvel has “a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to more ‘Avengers,’ which we’re extremely excited about,” adding: “Overall, I feel great about the slate. It’s something that I’ve committed to spending more and more time on. The team is one that I have tremendous confidence in and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels that we’re doing, is second to none.”



The announcement is at odds with the most recent release calendar distributed by Disney, which has four films from Marvel Studios slated for 2025 — “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Thunderbolts,” “The Fantastic Four,” and “Blade” — and four more Marvel movies slated for 2026, including the fifth “Avengers” movie. Marvel is releasing a single film in 2024, “Deadpool & Wolverine.” (Historically, the only time Marvel has released more than three movies in a year was in 2021, after the studio sat out 2020 due to the pandemic: “Black Widow,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Eternals” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” — the latter of which was a co-production with Sony Pictures.)


On the TV side, Iger says that a portion of the upcoming series, a slate that includes the Kathryn Hahn-led “WandaVision” spinoff “Agatha,” set for release are “a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume.”

While Iger has previously stated plans to reduce Marvel franchise output, he’s not previously been this direct in terms of exactly how many titles Disney plans to release for both TV and film each year.


Later in the call, Iger fielded a question about Disney’s focus on sequels and originals, noting that the focus is currently more on franchise films: “We’re gonna balance sequels with originals. Specifically in animation, we had gone through a period where our original films and animation, both Disney and Pixar, were dominating. We’re now swinging back a bit to lean on sequels.”

Iger cited Disney’s plans for the next “Toy Story” movie and this summer’s release of “Inside Out 2” and said these films have an increased value because known IP costs less to market.

For Marvel, Iger pointed to new movie “Thunderbolts” coming in 2025 alongside sequels “Deadpool & Wolverine” this summer and “Captain America: Brave New World” next year. “It’ll just be a balance, which we think is is right,” Iger said.

[jo]

Statement from Bob Iger on his DEI agenda for Disney --

per this broadcast from Mike Zeroh.




Psst: Hugh/Ryan/Shawn -- GET OUT OF THE PLACE!


Jo

[jo]

May 7, 2024 10:36:34 GMT -5 jo said:

Bob Iger shares the new direction of Marvel, etc., in its recent earnings call --

as reported by Variety :

Variety

May 7, 2024 6:13am PT
Marvel Will Release No More Than Three Movies and Two Shows Per Year, Bob Iger Says

By Jennifer Maas


Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company is shrinking the MCU with a new mission to drop the number of Marvel TV series to two a year and the film output to no more than three movies per year.

Iger said this is part of Disney’s overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality, a strategy “that’s particularly true with Marvel.”

“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three,” the Disney CEO said during the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday. “And we’re working hard on what that path is.”


Iger says Marvel has “a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to more ‘Avengers,’ which we’re extremely excited about,” adding: “Overall, I feel great about the slate. It’s something that I’ve committed to spending more and more time on. The team is one that I have tremendous confidence in and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels that we’re doing, is second to none.”



The announcement is at odds with the most recent release calendar distributed by Disney, which has four films from Marvel Studios slated for 2025 — “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Thunderbolts,” “The Fantastic Four,” and “Blade” — and four more Marvel movies slated for 2026, including the fifth “Avengers” movie. Marvel is releasing a single film in 2024, “Deadpool & Wolverine.” (Historically, the only time Marvel has released more than three movies in a year was in 2021, after the studio sat out 2020 due to the pandemic: “Black Widow,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Eternals” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” — the latter of which was a co-production with Sony Pictures.)


On the TV side, Iger says that a portion of the upcoming series, a slate that includes the Kathryn Hahn-led “WandaVision” spinoff “Agatha,” set for release are “a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume.”

While Iger has previously stated plans to reduce Marvel franchise output, he’s not previously been this direct in terms of exactly how many titles Disney plans to release for both TV and film each year.


Later in the call, Iger fielded a question about Disney’s focus on sequels and originals, noting that the focus is currently more on franchise films: “We’re gonna balance sequels with originals. Specifically in animation, we had gone through a period where our original films and animation, both Disney and Pixar, were dominating. We’re now swinging back a bit to lean on sequels.”

Iger cited Disney’s plans for the next “Toy Story” movie and this summer’s release of “Inside Out 2” and said these films have an increased value because known IP costs less to market.

For Marvel, Iger pointed to new movie “Thunderbolts” coming in 2025 alongside sequels “Deadpool & Wolverine” this summer and “Captain America: Brave New World” next year. “It’ll just be a balance, which we think is is right,” Iger said.

After this earnings call, where Disney reported quarterly loss --

Walt Disney experienced a decline in market value on May 8, 2024. The company reported its quarterly results, which included a loss in the latest three-month period. As a result, Disney’s stock slid, making it the worst performer in the blue-chip Dow industrials. The stock was recently off about 8%1. The closing price for Disney’s stock on that day was $86.75 per share, resulting in the company’s market capitalization shedding about $24 billion in value to stand at $158.15 billion2. Despite beating adjusted earnings per share expectations, the company reported a net loss of $20 million due to goodwill impairment charges

[jo]

This is the full report from Wall Street Journal --

WSJ Logo
Disney’s Kingdom Loses Some Post-Covid Magic


Disappointing earnings forecast for theme parks raises questions about demand trends for key profit source
By
Dan Gallagher
Follow
May 7, 2024 12:48 pm ET


A parade this year at Disney California Adventure park in Anaheim, Calif. PHOTO: JEFF GRITCHEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Good thing for Disney DIS -9.51%decrease; red down pointing triangle that tourists don’t operate on Nelson Peltz’s timeline.

Disney delivered a mixed fiscal second-quarter report Tuesday morning, barely a month after defeating a proxy challenge from the famed investor activist who had sharply criticized the company’s performance of late. The results themselves contained several positive points, including a surprising and first-ever operating profit from the entertainment portion of the company’s streaming segment and a pickup in revenue growth at the domestic ESPN business.

But Disney also said in its earnings release that operating income for its Experiences segment, which consists mainly of theme parks, will be flat in the June quarter. That disappointed analysts who had projected a 12% gain year-over-year in operating income for that segment, according to consensus forecasts from FactSet. In the company’s conference call, Disney Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston noted that “some normalization of post-Covid demand” was a factor in the forecast.


Disney’s shares sank about 10% in Tuesday trading. The outlook on parks raises worries about slowing demand in a business that Disney badly needs to keep strong. Cord-cutting has shrunk the company’s cable-TV empire, while its theatrical movie business is facing an array of challenges ranging from the lingering effects of last year’s crippling Hollywood strikes to the weakening of its high profile Marvel and “Star Wars” franchises. The transition to streaming also has been costly, with the direct-to-consumer segment racking up more than $1 billion in trailing 12-month operating losses, notwithstanding the latest quarter’s surprise earnings.


Theme parks are thus now a key source of stable revenue. They also make an outsize contribution to Disney’s bottom line. The segment benefited greatly from a spike in demand starting in late 2021 as Covid-era travel restrictions eased and consumers were flush with extra spending funds. Combined revenue from domestic and international theme parks accounted for 52% of the company’s total operating profit over the 12-month period ended with the March quarter despite bringing in only a third of the company’s revenue in that time.

So naturally concerns about theme parks tend to weigh heavily on Disney’s investors. The stock’s drop on Tuesday is shaping up to be the worst single-day loss since November 2022, when a disastrous earnings report sparked a selloff of more than 13% and ultimately cost then Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek his job.


Disappointing theme park earnings played a role in that report as well; operating earnings for the parks segment fell 27% short of Wall Street’s targets back then. Returning CEO Bob Iger noted in his first earnings call three months later that “I’m very, very bullish about our parks, and not just because of the COVID recovery.” The company later announced plans for $60 billion in capital expenditures on parks, cruise lines and resorts over the next decade. The investment will be timely; Universal is opening a major new theme park near Disney’s flagship property in Florida next year.

Iger said Tuesday that one-time costs such as pre-opening expenses for its new Disney Treasure and Adventure cruise ships are the biggest factor weighing on near-term earnings for the parks segment, with bookings showing “healthy growth in the business.” But Disney’s stock came into Tuesday’s report rather hot, with a year-to-date gain of 29% that was well ahead of any of its peers, including Netflix NFLX 1.51%increase; green up pointing triangle. The stock’s strong performance helped the company beat back Peltz’s criticisms but it also left little room for error in the latest results.

The Magic Kingdom will need to show it can keep the treasure flowing in.

Cited from the above --

Cord-cutting has shrunk the company’s cable-TV empire, while its theatrical movie business is facing an array of challenges ranging from the lingering effects of last year’s crippling Hollywood strikes to the weakening of its high profile Marvel and “Star Wars” franchises.

It becomes even more imperative for Marvel which is limiting its film release in 2024 to only Deadpool & Wolverine to allow a wider rein for the creatives to complete the movie...and not to interfere with its final processes. It is rumored that the reshoots will undo some of the creative decisions and put in Disney's viewpoint instead. The R-rated 2 Deadpool movies and the R-rated LOGAN all did very well at the box office - -and since both Ryan & Hugh are back for the Disney movie, why not give them the benefit of the doubt? Or are Iger & Feige too hardheaded to recognize that they may not have a monopoly of making audience-pleasing movies?

Jo

[jo]

I posted these on "X"

JoAB
@joab46466753
Disney stock fell significantly due to earnings call reporting net loss for qtr.WSJournal cites part of reasons as"theatrical movie business facing array of challenges -from lingering effects of last year’s H'wood strikes to weakening of high profile Marvel & StarWars franchises 1/2


Replying to @joab46466753
JoAB
@joab46466753

Maybe even more imperative to allow the creatives (writers&director&actors) of sole Marvel film release (Deadpool&Wolverine) more leeway in completing the movie? The 2 Deadpool films & Logan, all R-rated, were very successful at the box office -why not allow full creativity to the team?

[jo]

The Hollywood Reporter homepage

Hollywood at a Crossroads: “Everyone Is Using AI, But They Are Scared to Admit It”
Despite the recent labor actions to combat it, Hollywood has already started using artificial intelligence, presenting the industry with the existential threat that many predicted.

BY WINSTON CHO, SCOTT ROXBOROUGH
MAY 15, 2024 9:30PM
Civil War poster
A poster for 'Civil War' that was made using AI. A24

For horror fans, Late Night With the Devil marked one of the year’s most anticipated releases. Embracing an analog film filter, the found-footage flick starring David Dastmalchian reaped praise for its top-notch production design by leaning into a ’70s-era grindhouse aesthetic reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead or Death Race 2000. Following a late-night talk show host airing a Halloween special in 1977, it had all the makings of a cult hit.

But the movie may be remembered more for the controversy surrounding its use of cutaway graphics created by generative artificial intelligence tools. One image of a dancing skeleton in particular incensed some theatergoers. Leading up to its theatrical debut in March, it faced the prospect of a boycott, though that never materialized.


The movie’s directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes defended the AI usage, explaining the art was touched up by human hands. In a statement, they said, “We experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film.”

Less than a month later, five images suspected to be generated by AI teasing postapocalyptic scenes in A24’s Civil War sparked similar outrage by a segment of fans. There were a few telltale signs that the graphics were AI-created in landmark accuracy and consistency blunders: The two Chicago Marina Towers buildings in one poster are on opposite sides of the river; in another, a shot of wreckage shows a car with three doors.

In response, a reader on A24’s Instagram post wrote that the backlash to Late Night was “more than enough to make transparently clear to everyone: WE DO NOT WANT THIS.”

But in the entertainment industry, the Pandora’s box of AI has likely already been unleashed. Behind closed doors, most corners of production, from writers’ rooms to VFX departments, have embraced generative AI tools. For every project that has faced blowback for using AI in some part of the production pipeline, there are dozens more that have quietly adopted the technology.

“There are tons of people who are using AI, but they can’t admit it publicly because you still need artists for a lot of work and they’re going to turn against you,” says David Stripinis, a VFX industry veteran who has worked on Avatar, Man of Steel and Marvel titles. “Right now, it’s a PR problem more than a tech problem.”





“Producers, writers, everyone is using AI, but they are scared to admit it publicly,” agrees David Defendi, a French screenwriter and founder of Genario, a bespoke AI software system designed for film and television writers. “But it’s being used because it is a tool that gives an advantage. If you don’t use it, you’ll be at a disadvantage to those who are using AI.”

One of the reasons for the backlash to AI usage in Late Night and Civil War could be the precedent it appears to set. Hiring or commissioning a concept or graphic artist would’ve been a negligible cost for the productions involved. If companies are willing to use AI to replace such peripheral tasks — in the case of Late Night and Civil War, jobs that could have been accomplished by anyone on their production design teams — what positions are next? Writers? VFX artists?

“Most writers who have tried out AI have found it’s not a very good writer,” says David Kavanagh, executive officer of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe (FSE), a group of writers guilds and union representing more than 8,000 writers across 25 countries. “So I don’t see it replacing us yet, but the impact on other areas of the industry could be very damaging.” He points to areas like kids’ animation and soap operas, where there is a lot of “repetition of similar situations by the same set of characters,” as sectors that could be hard hit.

The displacement of labor by lower-level workers in Hollywood likely plays a part in which AI uses are seen as acceptable, and which are beyond the pale. Much of the discourse around the issue is filtered through the lens of Hollywood’s historic dual strikes last year. The utilization of AI tools in Civil War and Late Night meant artists missed out on work.

Some sectors of the industry are already threatened with extinction. “Dubbing and subtitling employment in Europe is finished,” says Kavanagh, pointing to AI technology that can produce lip-synced dubs in multiple languages, even using versions of the original actor’s performance. “It’s hard to see how they will survive this.”

In Cannes on Saturday, indie producer/distributor XYZ Films will present a sizzle reel of AI-translated trailers of international films, including Nordic sci-fi feature UFO Sweden, French comedy thriller Vincent Must Die and Korean action hit Smugglers, which showcase TrueSync dubbing technology from L.A.-based company Flawless. Flawless and XYZ are pitching the tech as a chance for hit international films to cheaply produce a high-quality English-language dub that will make them more attractive for the global market. Flawless, XYZ Films, and Tea Shop Productions plan to roll out UFO Sweden worldwide in what they are calling the first large-scale theatrical release of a fully translated film using AI.

Meanwhile, Putin, a new political biopic from Polish director Besaleel, which is being shopped to international buyers in Cannes, uses AI tech to re-create the face of Vladimir Putin over the body of an actor with a similar build to the Russian leader. Besaleel says he plans to use the same technology, developed in-house by his postproduction company AIO, to create deepfake actors to play extras and supporting roles.

“I foresee that film and TV productions will eventually employ only leading and perhaps supporting actors, while the entire world of background and minor characters will be created digitally,” he says.



In Hollywood, the specter of AI casts a daunting shadow. A study surveying 300 leaders across the entertainment industry issued in January reported that three-fourths of respondents indicated that AI tools supported the elimination, reduction or consolidation of jobs at their companies. Over the next three years, it is estimated that nearly 204,000 positions will be adversely affected. Concept artists, sound engineers, and voice actors stand at the forefront of that displacement. Visual effects and other postproduction work were also cited as particularly vulnerable.

There is also an imbalance in the resistance to AI usage in Civil War and Late Night but not, for example, Robert Zemeckis’ upcoming Miramax movie Here, which will feature a de-aged Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Their transformations were accomplished using a new generative AI-driven tool dubbed Metaphysics Live.



Deploying AI to allow actors to play younger or older versions of themselves could entrench A-list talent because they’re now suddenly eligible to play roles of all ages. Like with graphic artists who could’ve lost out on work in Late Night, a young Tom Hanks look-alike similarly could’ve missed an opportunity to be cast in a major studio movie. Why hire Sophie Nélisse to play a younger version of Melanie Lynskey’s Shauna in Yellowjackets when the production can just de-age the established star?



But where many see a threat, some see an opportunity. Like at the advent of CGI in the 1990s, when the technology entered the mainstream after the popularity of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park, some VFX artists are leaning into AI. Legal constraints put guardrails on how the technology can be used, and there is no copyright on AI-generated material, but artists can get around these issues by training open source AI systems on their own works. This bypasses some of the concerns posed by AI systems that have been trained on copyright-protected material.

“What we’ve been doing is taking the generative models to a point,” says Jim Geduldick, a VFX supervisor with credits on Masters of the Air, Robert Zemeckis’ live-action/CG Pinocchio and Avatar: The Last Airbender who has adopted AI into his workflow. “Some allow us to train on our own data too. That’s why a lot of open source models and datasets we can train ourselves are a bit more alluring. We know we own [whatever is created from] that.”

Stripinis notes, “We have a policy of not using AI in anything client-facing, because we don’t want to put ourselves on any kind of spurious legal ground.”

“We see AI as a tool and one we think will unlock creativity and opportunity, that will create jobs, not eliminate them,” says Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in Cannes, so long as guardrails are in place and copyright is protected.

Rivkin, the former CEO of The Jim Henson Co., notes that the late, great Muppets creator was always on the cutting edge of technology. “If Jim were alive today,” says Rivkin, “he’d be using AI to do amazing things, using it to enhance his storytelling.”

[/quote]

[jo]

Tom Rothman, erstwhile FOX COO and now SONY top boss -- gives his insights on the filmmaking business.

It is a very long article but very informative -- here's the link.

deadline.com/2024/05/tom-rothman-streaming-audiences-quentin-tarantino-1235920644/comment-page-2/#comments

[jo]

From Variety --

Variety

Disney Needs ‘Course Correction’ Away From Political Messaging, Says ‘Little Mermaid’ and ‘Aladdin’ Director
By Michaela Zee


Animated filmmaker John Musker — who directed such Disney films as “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin” and “Hercules” — called out the Walt Disney Company for prioritizing political messaging over story in its recent films.

“I think they need to do a course correction a bit in terms of putting the message secondary, behind entertainment and compelling story and engaging characters,” Musker told Spanish outlet El País at this year’s Animayo International Summit in Gran Canaria, Spain.

“The classic Disney films didn’t start out trying to have a message. They wanted you to get involved in the characters and the story and the world, and I think that’s still the heart of it,” Musker added. “You don’t have to exclude agendas, but you have to first create characters who you sympathize with and who are compelling.”


Musker has collaborated with fellow director Ron Clements on several Disney animated features, including “The Great Mouse Detective” (1986), “The Little Mermaid” (1989), “Aladdin” (1992), “Hercules” (1997), “Treasure Planet” (2002) and “Moana” (2016). Musker and Clements also helmed 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog,” which was met with mixed reception over the depiction of Disney’s first Black princess.

“We weren’t trying to be woke, although I understand the criticism,” Musker said of “The Princess and the Frog.”

The animated filmmaker then shared his thoughts on Disney’s live-action remakes. “Companies are always like, ‘How do we reduce our risk? They like this, right? We’ll just do it again and sell it to them in a different form,'” he said. “Or they think, ‘Well, we could make it better.’”

He specifically criticized the 2023 live-action adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” saying, “They didn’t play up the father-daughter story, and that was the heart of the movie, in a way. And the crab — you could look at live animals in a zoo and they have more expression, like with ‘The Lion King.’

“That’s one of the basic things about Disney, is the appeal,” he continued. “That’s what animation does best.”

[jo]

Jun 6, 2024 4:36:11 GMT -5 jo said:

There is a report on Hollywood Reporter on the box office slowing down, mainly due to the impact of the writers and actors strike.

One of the movies for the summer expected to revive the theatrical business in a big way... would be DEADPOOL&WOLVERINE. There was a strike-driven delay in filming, but it will still be released during the summer.


Here's the art work illustrating the role of the movie in the 2025 box office expectations --

The full story --

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/summer-box-office-2-1235915564/