Hollywood is in trouble.
The streaming boom that produced so much work over the past decade is gone, and much of what remains has gone overseas. No one knows how AI will affect the film and TV business, but there are plenty of concerns that it won’t be good. And barring any major surprises, Warner Bros., one of Hollywood’s most important film and TV studios, will be absorbed in the next year or so, which will mean further consolidation.
But don’t take that from me. Just ask Janice Min, who has spent decades caught up in Hollywood. First as an editor at The Hollywood Reporter and now as CEO of Ancler, an industry industry built for the Substack era.
That means she is not a disinterested observer at all. If the core of the film and TV industry is shrinking, that’s bad news for the advertising, subscription and event businesses she’s trying to build.
We talked about all this with Min on the Channels podcast. You can listen to the full text here. Below are edited excerpts from our conversation.
Janice Min spoke to Peter Kafka about the challenges of Hollywood. She said it had a “Detroit feel,” but that wasn’t a compliment. Florencia Tan Jun/Sports File for Web Summit (via Getty Images)
Peter Kafka: If you had to bet right now, who would win in the newly restarted Warner Bros. Discovery bidding war?
Janice Ming: Doesn’t that really depend on whether Netflix decides they’re going to step it up even more? So far, it looks like they will. But Netflix is a pretty ruthless company. Season 2 doesn’t do well, it doesn’t get as many subscribers as season 1, the show gets cancelled.. Or co-founder Reed Hastings’ famous “Keeper Test”: Performance is not good. I’m out.
And shareholders don’t like Warner Bros.’ pursuit of this. At some point they will discontinue it. They are a very down-to-earth company.
Conventional wisdom holds that Netflix really wants this deal and that Paramount needs to get it done. do you agree?
i will do it. If you’re David Ellison and you’ve assembled perhaps the most expensive leadership team in history, you’re setting yourself up to take Warner Bros. David Ellison wasn’t preparing to be the seventh biggest studio or the seventh biggest streamer.
After all, if he doesn’t have it, you’ll be left with a bag that no one else wanted. How do you win?
You have what Shari Redstone was desperately trying to get rid of.
That’s important context. This battle is very interesting to me because Warner Bros. is in such a stinky state that they are in so much debt that they are being forced to sell. There were no other results. Paramount had such a stink that Shari Redstone couldn’t get rid of her stink right away. In the end, there was only one bidder [for Paramount].
That one bidder became one of two bidders on the other. We get excited about these being huge prizes, but they’re debt-ridden, slow-moving beasts that need someone to have an emotional attachment to to make sense as a buyer.
rear Netflix won the first bidding round in Decemberthere was an immediate negative reaction from Hollywood. What is the current mood regarding Netflix vs. Paramount as future owners of WBD?
I think for most people, it’s Sophie’s choice. There are two possible negative outcomes here.
The positive side of David Ellison is that people love the fact that he loves movies.
“I love movies. You guys are making movies. I’ll make more movies. You should work with me too.”
This is not a sophisticated business discussion, but everyone here has dollar signs spinning in their eyes and everyone is looking for their own next deal. That’s why they like it. David Ellison will probably pay for what you’re making, and in some cases he may overpay. And it’s interesting that that’s going to create a lot of buyers in the market.
The flip side of that is that Hollywood is not a particularly pro-Trump industry. I don’t think they like a lot of what’s going on at Paramount right now, like the situation that happened with Stephen Colbert and James Talarico. They certainly don’t seem to like what’s going on at CBS News.
However, it basically boils down to profitability in the end. The industry is struggling. People are struggling to build careers similar to what they had 10 years ago. So people like the idea of a buyer with deep pockets, even if it’s daddy’s money.
There is a constant stream of articles and social media posts about how to do this. AI will destroy Hollywood. To what extent are those concerns reflected in everyday conversations?
The state of AI in Hollywood: Everyone is lying just a little bit. The studio is lying about usage.
Do they use it more or less?
Let’s use it more.
Companies lie about the features of their products. And for creative people, you’re lying about the fact that you’re not using it. I dare you to find a screenwriter who isn’t staring at a blank page and talking to Claude or ChatGPT at the same time.
It was clear to people working in visual effects that this was going to be a big problem, and it was already a problem. Industry with challenges.
I have a friend who sends me LinkedIn posts and they show up in my feed, and it’s so heartbreaking. Most of them are people who have worked in VFX, and they post things like, “If I don’t have a job, I’ll be homeless by next Thursday.”
It doesn’t seem like I’m exaggerating.
I guarantee you that every studio, every streamer, everything is doing this perfectly. During last year’s Oscar race, [there was a controversy about] “The Brutalist” and how technology gave Adrien Brody’s voice a Hungarian accent.
This year it’s crickets. Even the Academy, the institution that protects Hollywood’s most treasured heritage, hasn’t really taken a firm stance on AI. They basically have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. We can say with some degree of certainty that all of this year’s Best Picture nominees use AI in the production process.
What stories are people outside of Hollywood missing about your industry right now?
When I look at LA, I think it’s sunny and nice and people are happy. People are having a hard time here. Los Angeles’ unemployment rate is much higher than the national average.
When you look at a city so large and expansive, you feel a certain sense of rudderlessness. who will stop this?Even if things don’t work out, there’s definitely a Detroit vibe going on.
And you are witnessing paralysis. Hollywood used to be a place where there was a lot of protest, speaking out, and constantly fighting against so-called men. And now it’s mostly crickets, because everyone is scared.
When I watched the Grammy Awards, I was struck by the fact that musicians like Billie Eilish and Bad Bunny took to the stage and passionately spoke out against the president and ICE. And if you compare it to the Golden Globes, which were sponsored by Polymarket, no one said anything.
If you think about the way we look at young people, who are the pipeline for everything, they love this culture of rebellion and rebellion and speaking up. I worry that Hollywood has become so self-contained that it has stopped speaking to its audience.
