Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

Hollywood is a vehicle for monoculture, which isn't something we really have anymore 

opera ballet ballet BALLET!? opera *opera* ballet. 

*Layoffs, fewer productions and slumping ticket sales have darkened the mood in an industry that once defined American cultural power.* *Thomas Buckley for Bloomberg News* A group of young assistants from WME — the talent agency representing Martin Scorsese and Ben Affleck — were debating their career choices between rounds of bourbon and line dancing on a recent evening at the Desert 5 Spot bar in Hollywood. “I got into this business because I love movies, but everyone is really worried that the movie business won’t exist anymore,” slurred one of the twentysomethings, who asked not to be identified sharing their thoughts freely. For almost as long as it’s been around, the film industry has been pronounced dead before its time. The advent of television in the 1950s, the sale of studios to conglomerates in the 1960s, and the rise of video cassettes in the 1980s and streaming in the 2010s were all thought to be the nail in the coffin. Now, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences prepares to hand out its highest awards to films and filmmakers on Sunday, the industry is once again awash in gloom. Morale has been battered by tens of thousands of layoffs, the exodus of production from California to lower-cost territories, the waning cultural relevance of cinema versus social media, declining attendance at theater chains and fears that artificial intelligence will displace traditional moviemaking. [Read the full essay here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood-s-economic-strain-can-t-be-hidden-at-the-oscars?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc3MzQwNTI0OSwiZXhwIjoxNzc0MDEwMDQ5LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUQlRZQ0ZLSVVQVVowMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.nJFaexK5a0hlnyIMpYeiJeavwTnhNelmSFpa-3uZAcA)

I don’t know how to feel about any of it. I love movies but the business side has been shady from the start. How many Harvey Weinsteins do we need? I don’t go to the movies anymore because I don’t want to pay a fortune to see a movie while annoying people text the entire time. I also don’t think movies will stop being made at any point and these kinds of articles come out every year.

Movies & sports used to be a great unifying force for US culture. That isn’t the case anymore. Hollywood, particularly movies aimed at securing an academy nomination, follow a depressingly formulaic trend. They seem to be movies for the politics and lens of people in the celebrity bubble. Glorifying their beliefs. The majority of Americans either don’t share their beliefs or don’t care about those things. People want to be entertained, they want to be lost in a story. Monotonous preaching a one sided ethos isn’t appealing to the audience. There is a reason why some of the best movies in history feature morally questionable characters doing things most people would frown on.

Maybe. Just maybe. It's the f****** price of going to a movie. A movie ticket is now like $18 for adults and $15 for kids. $81 dollars to just walk in the door for my family if 5. They'll all want popcorn and drinks too. Or, i can wait two months for it to come out on one of the streaming services and not have to deal with going in person and paying a fortune.

This is what happens when people hire their friends and kiss ass to get to the top of the corporate ladder. Hollywood used to be about art and creating stories. Now it's about sucking as much revenue out of every idea until people are sick and tired of it.

I can’t wait to stop hearing about this shit. People’s obsession with the Oscars and the lives of celebrities is so f****** sad.

I get it. Also, maybe if you didn't have to pay more for popcorn and a drink than the admission, attendance would be up a bit.

The Oscars are worthless

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Hollywood doesn't have original ideas anymore. Let's keep making the same movies over and over, because we don't have original ideas anymore. Scream 7? Seriously? Fast and furious whatever number they're on? These movies are tired and poorly thought out from the originals. How many remakes or sequels do we need to get the point across?

Ah, well. Hollywood did it to themselves.

The movies are simply shit. It’s that simple

Whenever you consolidate entertainment decisions with people who have money and zero creativity, it slowly kills that entertainment medium.

I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie in one sitting

Timothee took everything from us

Seeing movies are just so damn expensive

I stopped paying attention to the Oscar's years ago. I can't relate to any of these people.

But it's Christmas for Tinseltown!

A certain section of the internet is going to be very upset tonight if things go how they’re looking to go. I already got my popcorn ready lol

Just watching for conan

 group of young assistants from [WME ](https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0122951D:US)— the talent agency representing Martin Scorsese and Ben Affleck — were debating their career choices between rounds of bourbon and line dancing on a recent evening at the Desert 5 Spot bar in Hollywood. “I got into this business because I love movies, but everyone is really worried that the movie business won’t exist anymore,” slurred one of the twentysomethings, who asked not to be identified sharing their thoughts freely. For almost as long as it’s been around, the film industry has been pronounced dead before its time. The advent of television in the 1950s, the sale of studios to conglomerates in the 1960s, and the rise of video cassettes in the 1980s and streaming in the 2010s were all thought to be the nail in the coffin. Now, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences prepares to hand out its [highest awards](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-11/oscars-2026-can-the-academy-awards-still-captivate-a-global-audience) to films and filmmakers on Sunday, the industry is once again awash in gloom. Morale has been battered by [tens of thousands of layoffs](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-19/getting-a-job-in-hollywood-has-never-been-harder), the exodus of production from California to lower-cost territories, the waning cultural relevance of cinema versus social media, declining attendance at theater chains and fears that artificial intelligence will displace traditional moviemaking. For employees of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., which has *Sinners* and *One Battle After Another* up for best picture, this year’s Oscar race has been overshadowed by rival Paramount Skydance Corp.’s $110 billion deal to buy the company. It’s the third time Warner Bros. has been sold in less than a decade. In *Sentimental Value*, another one of the best picture nominees, Stellan Skarsgard plays an acclaimed Norwegian director whose new film is being made for Netflix Inc. When a reporter asks him if the picture will appear in theaters, Skarsgard’s character says, “Sure, where else?,” at which point his producer jumps up and says: “It’s still being negotiated.” Consumers are spending more than ever on entertainment of all sorts, but less gets “filtered down to our members in terms of employment opportunities,” *Oppenheimer* filmmaker Christopher Nolan, the president of the Directors Guild of America, said at a February press conference. With guild-member employment down 35% to 40%, he called it a “very worrying time for the industry.” Hollywood’s anxiety — the local industry’s challenges are often compared to the decline of automaking in Detroit — isn’t misplaced. The crisis has grown to such magnitude that last year, California [doubled the annual assistance](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-20/hollywood-is-getting-left-behind-in-recovering-film-tv-industry) it gives to film and TV productions to $750 million to stop them from fleeing the state. While that’s succeeded in securing the production of some big-budget films, including a new *Jumanji* from Sony Group Corp., there’s a bigger issue, as many studios are simply undertaking fewer projects. Studios are spending less on film projects since the actor and writer strikes in 2023, and some media companies are reallocating programming budgets to sports and live events. FilmLA, which tracks permits in Los Angeles County, reported a 16% decline in shooting days in 2025 and a drop of nearly half from the recent peak in 2018. # Lights, Camera, Not Much Action ProdPro, an industry data tracker, said in February that sentiment among 850 crew members surveyed about their prospects for 2026 was generally more negative than in recent years, with sound technicians and dolly grips experiencing an average of six months of downtime between productions. The decline has had a ripple effect on associated businesses. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. [seized the Radford Studio Center](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-14/goldman-to-acquire-famed-la-film-lot-after-1-1-billion-default), a famed Hollywood lot whose owners defaulted on the mortgage. Arri Group, a camera and lighting supplier, cut jobs and closed two locations in Germany. Even when films are produced and released in theaters, few draw crowds large enough to keep the industry afloat, let alone thriving. North Americans are going to the movies about half as often as they used to a decade ago, based on the number of tickets sold at cinemas in the US and Canada. At the same time, revenue from international markets such as China, long a cushion for any stateside softness, has become unpredictable, hurt by geopolitical tensions and more competition from local productions. Those pressures, as well as the impact of pandemic shutdowns, have hurt theater chains including Regal owner Cineworld, Alamo Drafthouse, Ipic, Metropolitan, CMX and Look Dine-In, which all filed for bankruptcy in the past five years. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the world’s largest cinema chain, has lost 99.7% of its value since the stock hit an all-time high in June 2021. “The bottom line is that the theater business is in a very dark and troubled place, and the reality is you need people that are investing in the entertainment business,” Rich Greenfield, a media analyst at LightShed Partners, said in a recent interview with Bloomberg TV. # Box-Office Blues David Ellison — Paramount’s chief executive officer and the son of Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison — is pledging to invest. He’s seeking to release 30 films in cinemas annually from Paramount and Warner Bros. combined once his proposed deal closes. Netflix Inc., [which dropped out](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-09/netflix-goes-from-m-a-loser-to-market-w*****-without-warner-deal) of the bidding for Warner Bros. in February, plans to increase its programming budget by about 10% to $20 billion this year. Get the Bloomberg Weekend newsletter. Big ideas and open questions in the fascinating places where finance, life and culture meet. By continuing, I agree to the [Privacy Policy](https://www.bloomberg.com/notices/) and [Terms of Service](https://www.bloomberg.com/notices/tos/). Netflix, Paramount and others are also experimenting with AI in a way that could empower new kinds of storytelling. Lionsgate Studios Corp. has partnered with startup Runway AI Inc. to lower production costs, and Walt Disney Co. has signed a deal to [license its intellectual property](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/disney-invests-1-billion-in-openai-strikes-licensing-deal) to OpenAI Inc., which developed the Sora video creation tool. Netflix is also [paying as much as $600 million](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-11/netflix-to-pay-as-much-as-600-million-for-ben-affleck-s-ai-firm) to acquire InterPositive, the AI moviemaking company founded by Affleck, Bloomberg has reported. “While we can point to current indicators like job cuts or offshoring, we can also point to exciting developments as new story forms emerge,” Holly Willis, chair of the University of Southern California’s media arts and practice division, said in an interview. For the cultural relevance of film to survive, the business needs to make inroads with younger, perpetually online generations. They’re used to accessing free content on social media platforms instead of paying for a movie ticket. Encouragingly, recent events and data show that the two are becoming complementary. In February, *Iron Lung*, a $3 million film directed by YouTube creator Mark Fischbach, took in $51 million at the box office. Better known as Markiplier, Fischbach urged his followers on social media to see the picture in cinemas. Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes [will attract new audiences](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-11/oscars-2026-can-the-academy-awards-still-captivate-a-global-audience) and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership. A still from *A Minecraft Movie.Photographer: Capital Pictures/Alamy* Signs are already emerging that feature films are seeing a resurgence among younger people. While moviegoing appeals to less than half of those born from 1965 to 2012, it is gaining traction among those born in 2013 and after, according to a report from industry tracker National Research Group. It estimated 59% of children in that age group preferred to see a film on the big screen. Those younger audiences helped make *A Minecraft Movie*, based on the popular video game of the same name, one of the highest-grossing films of 2025. There’s also evidence that younger audiences are discovering older movies when studios rerelease them in cinemas — an encouraging sign that, for all the talk and fears of its demise, the movie business will continue to exist for years to come. “This isn’t the first time that the film industry’s future has looked uncertain, but our research suggests that there’s reason to be cautiously optimistic that future generations will carry the torch forward,” said Fergus Navaratnam-Blair, an analyst and vice president at National Research Group. Like their great-great-grandparents may have done at the height of Hollywood’s Golden Age, younger generations are the most likely to watch movies on opening weekend for the same reason as their forebears, Navaratnam-Blair said: “They want to be part of the buzz and social momentum around new releases.”

I haven’t watched an award show for years.

The American propaganda machine is faltering. Oh no.. anyways.

Maybe if someone came up with an original idea once and awhile instead of endless remakes and live action cartoons, people would be more interested in seeing movies. The latest class of actors are lame imitations from the past and what passes for talent is laughable. AI will put the final nail in the coffin and the sad part is no one will even notice the difference.

Guess what, when you get to know them, celebrities are just like your annoying co workers just better looking. We need to go back to the days of them keeping quiet and doing what their PR people say.

good f*** hollywood.