Thread by @gvaughnjoy

I'm a little tipsy and explaining to a friend how Hollywood is essentially crumbling for profit and it's interesting so I'm going to make it a thread.

Strap in.

Bankruptcy Goes to Hollywood: A Thread

So Hollywood has like two options at the moment unless the government steps in (we'll get there):

1) The studios go bust or stream

2) They just call in The Rock for every movie ever and hope enough Chardonnay Moms™ pay to see him in cinemas (The Rock Solid Plan)

There are 5 major studios

1) Universal (Subsidiary of NBC Universal)
2) Paramount (Division of Paramount Global)
3) Warner Bros. (Division of Warner Bros. Discovery)
4) Disney (it's Disney)
5) Columbia (Division of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group (yes that's the real name))

These current 2022 Big Five were not the same Big Five studios as in the Studio Era. This seems odd to point out but it's important.

MGM, 20th Century Fox, RKO, WB, and Paramount were the original Big Five

(Universal, Columbia, and United Artists were the Little Three then)

So what happened? Too much to roll into a tweet but RKO went bankrupt in 1959, Disney bought 20th Century Fox ($71.3bn in 2019), Amazon bought MGM ($8.5bn in 2022).

Both of those sales should be illegal (especially MGM for $8.5bn) but I want to focus on RKO.

So what happened to RKO then?

Everything.

- HUAC (RKO director Edward Dmytryk and producer Adrian Scott were in the Hollywood Ten)
- General McCarthyism
- The post-war dip in cinema sales
- An eccentric multi-millionaire (Howard Hughes)
- Robert Mitchum's weed arrest
- SCOTUS

There's so much to unpack there but I'm skipping all of it to focus on SCOTUS because when aren't they fucking us?

SCOTUS had a very important (to film nerds and also actually literally everyone but it's overlooked constantly, so pay attention to this) decision to make in 1948:

United States v. Paramount Productions, Inc.
aka
The Paramount Accords
aka
The Paramount Decrees
aka...

The Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948

This sounds more official and like a good thing and that's why we don't use it. We want antitrust legislation. Antitrust legislation means we don't have, I don't know, Five Big corporations deciding everything we do and see and spend money on

But, V, that's Paramount, what's that have to do with RKO and what does any of this have to do with Hollywood eating itself like an ouroboros now?

Do you know what Vertical Integration means?

Vertical Integration in Hollywood, in very simple terms, is when the Studios owned their own production, distribution, and exhibition rights. This is the Studio System. They make films, market them, and screen them.

And the Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948 is what broke it.

The Paramount Accords did a bunch of things but made this illegal. They couldn't own all three and only show their own films in their own cinemas and charge extortionate exhibition fees for other studios' films anymore. This also helped independent filmmakers.

And RKO was being run by a bananas aviation tycoon who settled in the Accords early and started divorcement early and it just destroyed the company. Hughes bailed in 1952 and sold his stocks to a Chicago syndicate that had no right owning a film studio and it dissipated further.

So again, how is this relevant now?

The Paramount Accords were reversed in August 2020, set for a sunsetting period of two years which puts us at OH LAST MONTH. WHEN WB STARTED EATING ITSELF AND SHIT STARTED HITTING THE FAN IN HOLLYWOOD AND WE'RE ALL LIKE WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS

Because SCOTUS doesn't let us have anything nice like antitrust legislation or bodily autonomy or a clean environment or safety from people with war weapons or policy decisions from this century for this century

But interestingly enough, that's the exact reasoning they gave here

SCOTUS legitimately pulled the Accords because it wasn't a decision that felt relevant anymore.

You know, terminate the antitrust rules instead of revising them. Sure. Sounds like the BEST idea.

And I'll give it to them, the major studios named in the Decision don't exist anymore or in the ways they did then.

And distribution and exhibition are so different now. The Decision didn't account for streaming sites. Can't apply a 1948 decision to Netflix right?

So now studios are allowed to own everything they want again.

Which is why Disney is a growing amorphous site just acquiring properties and banging out shows for Disney+

And why Amazon can buy MGM, a MAJOR 20thc studio, for the price of Bezos' lunch hour.

And it's why Paramount+, another MAJOR 20thc studio, bided it's time and let every streaming service set up and get through the pandemic, shifting film consumption completely and entirely, until it was ready to debut it's service and pull all of its titles for itself

So now where are we?

WB eating itself.

Let's look at all the good things the Accords did. These are the "consequences" per Wikipedia's excellent summation:

We got more independent creatives, more independent picture houses, AND the weakening of the Hays Code, an extremely puritanical self-censorship policy within Hollywood.

(Bonus: Protest to the Hays Code)

https://twitter.com/gvaughnjoy/status/1443525704096919552?t=2dX5DwXEDDDkcjyoT1iz_w&s=19

WB is going the route of RKO.

Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy took over WB in July 2022 (two months ago) and while they do have much more career experience in Hollywood than Howard Hughes did, they are doing the same thing he eventually did:

- Make absurd content decisions/stifle filmmakers
- Pull films that don't fit the company's image/morals
- Strip the studio into holdings and properties
- Take tax cuts where exploitable (even nixing a full film)
- Eventually cash out on what's still profitable, bankrupt the rest

So Hollywood is eating itself because SCOTUS.

Our entertainment industry is owned by like 8 people and they just got the full green light to just abolition everything that's left of separation of spheres for economic gains.

It's more profitable and legal to just like destroy one of the oldest studios in Hollywood so they're doing it with absolutely no chagrin or hesitation or concern for what this does to art and media and culture.

If you're tired of superhero movies and don't want to see The Rock in every movie ever made from now on, think about advocating for antitrust legislation and saving WB from RKO's fate.

Films are obviously going to be for profit, it's a massive industry, but we can at least protect them a little bit with updated antitrust legislation and a refusal to take the executives' bullshit.

We need better management of the arts and cultural sectors. They're so important.

I think I'm done (for now (I'll probably get tipsy tomorrow too (I'm on holiday) and rant some more)

Also, if you were interested in any of this, it would also interest you to know that the second largest cinema chain in the world (Cineworld which owns Regal Cinemas in the US) is filing for bankruptcy right now.

They cite the pandemic and streaming but it's also the P Accords

Also, shameless plug: I co-host 2 podcasts (soon 3!)

1) @USAimpressions where we talk media, culture, politics from post-war to today open.spotify.com/episode/67KScg…

2) @JoyOfStarWars where we talk Star Wars and Am history

3) soon! @FocusHollywood where we will talk Hollywood history

Also, also, here's a bonus thread on why puritanical censorship in films is bogus and how it fuels right-wing talking points when we ask for less sex on screen:

https://twitter.com/gvaughnjoy/status/1527073416133627904?t=s8fmM4YpHbNkdrCi6kqLLw&s=19

What can we do about all this? Here's one small thing that means a lot to many people and those being screwed by the industry:

https://twitter.com/gvaughnjoy/status/1567243059846316034?t=bH8EhJUQ8oFLrNIJJxuhMQ&s=19

Clarification:

https://twitter.com/gvaughnjoy/status/1567307438633648130?t=41Qmf_ke9XMuon19pa28wA&s=19

https://twitter.com/gvaughnjoy/status/1567310627256897540?t=6A9O-V5NcGD3fJoK0RYRxQ&s=19

https://twitter.com/gvaughnjoy/status/1567470106514530305?t=zlthEj-WXX1INWjB7YEPGQ&s=19