The leadership at Lucasfilm will go down in history as the most clueless, ignorant, shortsighted and narcissistic business leaders of all time.

Here's why... (a 🧵) 👇 First, lets look at some of what Disney inherited when they bought LucasFilm in 2012...

1. Star Wars - which comprised of 6 movies, 800+ books, games and comics and a literal sea of merchandise that had generated over $30 BILLION in revenue over 35 years...

Hollywood writers used to churn out memorable, era-defining TV shows. Because they had a proven system.

A system that culminated in the “Golden Age” of TV between 1999 - 2015. (During which some of the best series off all time were made).

This is a 🧵 on how & why it worked.👇 First, there are 3 things you need to understand about TV:

1. Zero Network TV series can get made without an experienced Showrunner. ZERO.

2. There is a proven path to become a Showrunner as a writer.

3. The Showrunner is the single most powerful person in Hollywood.

Hollywood Money 101: A look at how a $65M movie can earn $655M at the box office and still LOSE tens-of-millions of dollars on paper.

How is that even possible?

Because “Hollywood Accounting” is the greatest form of legal money laundering ever invented.

And it’s why a “net profit deal” (especially for authors) is one of the biggest scams of all time.

Save this post & revisit it the next time you see the weekend box office report.

Or, follow this advice to get a sweetheart deal if you ever sell your rights to Hollywood.

Buckle up, this will be a deep dive 🧵 into how Hollywood works behind closed doors…

Let's Dive In... To truly grasp how remarkable Hollywood Accounting actually is, there are a few things you need to understand:

-- First, there are TWO sides to every major studio:

1) Production (makes the movies)

2) Distribution (markets and releases the movies)

These are two completely different entities/businesses and are designed to maximize the tax advantages, which I’ll share in a minute.

-- Secondly, movie theaters take 50% of the gross profits right out the gate.

-- Thirdly, most studios will spend an additional 75-100% of the film budget on marketing.

So if a movie has a budget of $200M… the studio will spend an additional $150-200M on ads.