"Hey Jay, I hear all of Hollywood ran overseas. Is your job gone?"
Kinda. Sorta. Not really....
...fuck it. Siddown and grab a snack, this is gonna take a while.
I'm gonna start with movies.
Making movies overseas is nothing new. Ask your grandparents about spaghetti westerns sometimes. They were called that because they were produced in Italy and usually filmed in Spain, because there's a desert there that looks like the old west. What's changed is... well, a lot of things changed.
I'm gonna start with the blockbuster. Originally defined as a movie that brought in $100M in theaters. What was newsworthy in the 70's became formulaic by 9/11. It's good old fashioned capitalism: spend $10M, roll the dice, and shoot for a blockbuster once or twice a year. If you're good, you get some middle movies that cover their expenses and maybe a little profit, as few expensive stinkers as possible, and enough blockbusters to make bank.
In the 80's, video became a thing. So if it didn't make bank at the box office, it might make you some money in the long run.
This was especially true at the end of the 80's when priced-to-own became a thing.
Ever watch an old Disney tape and the commercial said "priced to own on videocassette?"
That's because videotapes used to be priced to rent. $100 a pop. Sold mostly to rental stores.
Yeah, you could tape off the TV yourself. But the quality sucked even if you were really good about starting and stopping during commercials.
Then at the end of the 80's, the studios started hearing that parents would rent the same tapes for their kids over and over. And the studios wanted that money. So they sold Batman and Dick Tracy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for $20 a tape. And they sold like hotcakes.
Problem is, you're never *really* sure what will be a hit or not. What will resonate with an audience.
Ideally, you'd find something that resonated with an audience already. That's what adapting novels are for. Jaws, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Dirty Dozen, they all had audiences built in.
Comic books? Video games? Don't be ridiculous. That wierdo German guy Uwe Boll may be able to get weird German tax incentives to make crappy video game adaptations to make money, but nobody serious does that.
But the nerd dollar was building. Building to something huge.
Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter hit theaters within a month of each other in 2001.
Both literary adaptations.
Both with prepared sequels waiting in the wings.
Now you weren't just spending $10M to make $100M.
You were spending $100M to make $1B.
And you were doing it every year for years to come.
This was the true genesis of the cinematic universe that Marvel would pick up and run away with.
And even then, there were some ugly ways of saving money. Which included filming in countries with tax breaks and looser labor laws. Not to mention old fashioned Hollywood accounting.
Both series would face lawsuits over it all.
In addition to strikebreaking and fraud, there were three big pillars that held up the CU model.
One was an explosion of use of CGI without labor protection. Lucas was doing the heavy lifting on R&D with the prequel trilogy, but VFX quickly became a trade you could practice anywhere you could put a server farm. Which led to race-to-the-bottom bids for VFX work. Yeah, some American trolls complained about crappy-looking trailers, but for the most part, the practice of lowest bidder and last minute has gone mostly unnoticed outside of cinephiles.
Two was the People's Republic of China. Yeah, you had to dance to the tune of their censors, as the CCP only allowed a certain number of foreign films per year into the country. But they had more people who went to movie theaters every week than there are people alive in the U.S.. Play it right, and your big sweeping epic made it's budget back in days or even hours, and the profit kept rolling in from there.
Third was to find your talent when they were talented, but young, unknown, and cheap. Then lock 'em in for multi-picture deals while they're still cheap. Yeah, those stars will play on their newfound name recognition and charge more for other movies, but they'll still be a smaller line item on your budget.
Thus the cinematic universe era began.
Marvel added the twist of disparate protagonists bound into a single narrative, but the pieces were there for anyone to pick up: DC superheroes, Fast & Furious, Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle earth.
The IP's start coming and they don't stop coming.
Exhibitors were forced, among other things, to upgrade to digital projection. 3D became a thing again.
But most IP's weren't Marvel.
A lot of budding CU's were stillborn after one or two entries.
Even Universal's been dancing around it's classic monsters but, while coming up with some interesting films in their own right, never actually forming what they wanted with a Dark Universe.
Then the cracks began to show.
Even Marvel was going to have a tough time keeping up after Endgame was released in 2019.
Then Covid hit in 2020.
Theaters, like all live exhibition, took it in the shorts for two years and change.
They're still not back up to 2018 numbers.
The unions signed off on COVID protocols in October of 2020. While it allowed filming to happen again, it was a huge drag on budgets, as high as 25% in some places. And they weren't lifted until the spring of 2023.
Then the streaming wars ended in mutually assured destruction, which I'll get to when I talk about TV.
I'm not even going to go into Chadwick Boseman's death or Jonathan Major's legal issues, which threw more spanners in the works.
Then a lot of expensive movies underperformed or straight-up bombed.
A lot of excuses kicked in, but nobody could deny what was happening.
This is usually when a segment of Boomer fudds start huffing and puffing about "get woke, go broke."
They can shut the fuck up and go take their blood pressure meds.
But they're not ~entirely~ wrong.
"Checkbox representation was never sufficient" is far, far more accurate.
In recent years we've seen Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Willow Ufgood of all fucking people depicted as out-of-touch, lame, useless, and above all WRONG old cishet dudes who need to get out of the way of their younger, queerer, and more femme sidekick-cum-replacements.
All of these depictions resulted in backlash at best, suffering at the box office at worst.
But one 80's action hero came back and, instead of being depicted as a washed-up old has-been, was treated like an elder statesman. Flawed, yes, but with a lot of hard-earned wisdom that the younger generation NEEDED to learn and pass on before they took up the torch.
And that movie damn near single-handedly held up the U.S. Box office in 2022.
I'm talking of course about Pete Mitchell of Top Gun: Maverick.
So yeah, the SJB's need to STFU and Hollywood needs to stop pandering to them if they actually want an American audience, but that's not the entire problem.
In other words, no, Hollywood can't afford any more Marvels, but it definitely can't afford more Quantumanias either.
Then the strikes came in 2023.
They were a long time coming.
A lot of projects didn't even start filming in early 2023, not wanting to be caught in the middle of the strike.
But the studios still weren't expecting the nasty fight they got.
Most of us knew there would be fewer opportunities going forward.
But we were satisfied in knowing the career field was at least going to exist.
The strikes ended in November.
At which point the studios finished work on unfinished projects, and then got awfully quiet.
The age of the CU high rollers is over, and nobody's quite sure what to replace it with.
"Smaller, fewer, cheaper, less" is the current mantra as far as I can tell.
Iger has already said that Disney's cutting back to releasing two Marvel movies and two series a year.
And yes, part of that involves production overseas.
Since, oh, the first Ant-man movie, about half of Marvel's oeuvre was filmed in Atlanta.
As it stands now, everything in Phase six either has been or will be filmed in London.
Taking advantage of the UK's considerable talent pool?
Partially.
But I think it's more of a below-the-line savings on crew instead of cast.
I'm not sure what gains IATSE and the Teamsters gained, or if it's significant enough to justify an overseas production. But I could see it.
Say if I was cast in a haunted house thriller.
Production could cast me and another dozen people in the states, send us to, let's say Hungary, and produce there. If Hungary had both tax incentives comparable with the states and a lower cost of living, then they'd save on the makeup artist I see, the hairdresser, the driver that takes me to set, the cook, and so on down the line.
"Smaller, fewer, cheaper, less."
I'd prefer to work a lot, and work in Atlanta.
But I'm definitely renewing my passport and keeping my skillsets sharp in the meantime.
I'll talk about the TV side of it later this week.
If I feel like it.
I got a book to finish, dammit.
Take care of yourselves out there.
Kinda. Sorta. Not really....
...fuck it. Siddown and grab a snack, this is gonna take a while.
I'm gonna start with movies.
Making movies overseas is nothing new. Ask your grandparents about spaghetti westerns sometimes. They were called that because they were produced in Italy and usually filmed in Spain, because there's a desert there that looks like the old west. What's changed is... well, a lot of things changed.
I'm gonna start with the blockbuster. Originally defined as a movie that brought in $100M in theaters. What was newsworthy in the 70's became formulaic by 9/11. It's good old fashioned capitalism: spend $10M, roll the dice, and shoot for a blockbuster once or twice a year. If you're good, you get some middle movies that cover their expenses and maybe a little profit, as few expensive stinkers as possible, and enough blockbusters to make bank.
In the 80's, video became a thing. So if it didn't make bank at the box office, it might make you some money in the long run.
This was especially true at the end of the 80's when priced-to-own became a thing.
Ever watch an old Disney tape and the commercial said "priced to own on videocassette?"
That's because videotapes used to be priced to rent. $100 a pop. Sold mostly to rental stores.
Yeah, you could tape off the TV yourself. But the quality sucked even if you were really good about starting and stopping during commercials.
Then at the end of the 80's, the studios started hearing that parents would rent the same tapes for their kids over and over. And the studios wanted that money. So they sold Batman and Dick Tracy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for $20 a tape. And they sold like hotcakes.
Problem is, you're never *really* sure what will be a hit or not. What will resonate with an audience.
Ideally, you'd find something that resonated with an audience already. That's what adapting novels are for. Jaws, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Dirty Dozen, they all had audiences built in.
Comic books? Video games? Don't be ridiculous. That wierdo German guy Uwe Boll may be able to get weird German tax incentives to make crappy video game adaptations to make money, but nobody serious does that.
But the nerd dollar was building. Building to something huge.
Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter hit theaters within a month of each other in 2001.
Both literary adaptations.
Both with prepared sequels waiting in the wings.
Now you weren't just spending $10M to make $100M.
You were spending $100M to make $1B.
And you were doing it every year for years to come.
This was the true genesis of the cinematic universe that Marvel would pick up and run away with.
And even then, there were some ugly ways of saving money. Which included filming in countries with tax breaks and looser labor laws. Not to mention old fashioned Hollywood accounting.
Both series would face lawsuits over it all.
In addition to strikebreaking and fraud, there were three big pillars that held up the CU model.
One was an explosion of use of CGI without labor protection. Lucas was doing the heavy lifting on R&D with the prequel trilogy, but VFX quickly became a trade you could practice anywhere you could put a server farm. Which led to race-to-the-bottom bids for VFX work. Yeah, some American trolls complained about crappy-looking trailers, but for the most part, the practice of lowest bidder and last minute has gone mostly unnoticed outside of cinephiles.
Two was the People's Republic of China. Yeah, you had to dance to the tune of their censors, as the CCP only allowed a certain number of foreign films per year into the country. But they had more people who went to movie theaters every week than there are people alive in the U.S.. Play it right, and your big sweeping epic made it's budget back in days or even hours, and the profit kept rolling in from there.
Third was to find your talent when they were talented, but young, unknown, and cheap. Then lock 'em in for multi-picture deals while they're still cheap. Yeah, those stars will play on their newfound name recognition and charge more for other movies, but they'll still be a smaller line item on your budget.
Thus the cinematic universe era began.
Marvel added the twist of disparate protagonists bound into a single narrative, but the pieces were there for anyone to pick up: DC superheroes, Fast & Furious, Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle earth.
The IP's start coming and they don't stop coming.
Exhibitors were forced, among other things, to upgrade to digital projection. 3D became a thing again.
But most IP's weren't Marvel.
A lot of budding CU's were stillborn after one or two entries.
Even Universal's been dancing around it's classic monsters but, while coming up with some interesting films in their own right, never actually forming what they wanted with a Dark Universe.
Then the cracks began to show.
Even Marvel was going to have a tough time keeping up after Endgame was released in 2019.
Then Covid hit in 2020.
Theaters, like all live exhibition, took it in the shorts for two years and change.
They're still not back up to 2018 numbers.
The unions signed off on COVID protocols in October of 2020. While it allowed filming to happen again, it was a huge drag on budgets, as high as 25% in some places. And they weren't lifted until the spring of 2023.
Then the streaming wars ended in mutually assured destruction, which I'll get to when I talk about TV.
I'm not even going to go into Chadwick Boseman's death or Jonathan Major's legal issues, which threw more spanners in the works.
Then a lot of expensive movies underperformed or straight-up bombed.
A lot of excuses kicked in, but nobody could deny what was happening.
This is usually when a segment of Boomer fudds start huffing and puffing about "get woke, go broke."
They can shut the fuck up and go take their blood pressure meds.
But they're not ~entirely~ wrong.
"Checkbox representation was never sufficient" is far, far more accurate.
In recent years we've seen Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Willow Ufgood of all fucking people depicted as out-of-touch, lame, useless, and above all WRONG old cishet dudes who need to get out of the way of their younger, queerer, and more femme sidekick-cum-replacements.
All of these depictions resulted in backlash at best, suffering at the box office at worst.
But one 80's action hero came back and, instead of being depicted as a washed-up old has-been, was treated like an elder statesman. Flawed, yes, but with a lot of hard-earned wisdom that the younger generation NEEDED to learn and pass on before they took up the torch.
And that movie damn near single-handedly held up the U.S. Box office in 2022.
I'm talking of course about Pete Mitchell of Top Gun: Maverick.
So yeah, the SJB's need to STFU and Hollywood needs to stop pandering to them if they actually want an American audience, but that's not the entire problem.
In other words, no, Hollywood can't afford any more Marvels, but it definitely can't afford more Quantumanias either.
Then the strikes came in 2023.
They were a long time coming.
A lot of projects didn't even start filming in early 2023, not wanting to be caught in the middle of the strike.
But the studios still weren't expecting the nasty fight they got.
Most of us knew there would be fewer opportunities going forward.
But we were satisfied in knowing the career field was at least going to exist.
The strikes ended in November.
At which point the studios finished work on unfinished projects, and then got awfully quiet.
The age of the CU high rollers is over, and nobody's quite sure what to replace it with.
"Smaller, fewer, cheaper, less" is the current mantra as far as I can tell.
Iger has already said that Disney's cutting back to releasing two Marvel movies and two series a year.
And yes, part of that involves production overseas.
Since, oh, the first Ant-man movie, about half of Marvel's oeuvre was filmed in Atlanta.
As it stands now, everything in Phase six either has been or will be filmed in London.
Taking advantage of the UK's considerable talent pool?
Partially.
But I think it's more of a below-the-line savings on crew instead of cast.
I'm not sure what gains IATSE and the Teamsters gained, or if it's significant enough to justify an overseas production. But I could see it.
Say if I was cast in a haunted house thriller.
Production could cast me and another dozen people in the states, send us to, let's say Hungary, and produce there. If Hungary had both tax incentives comparable with the states and a lower cost of living, then they'd save on the makeup artist I see, the hairdresser, the driver that takes me to set, the cook, and so on down the line.
"Smaller, fewer, cheaper, less."
I'd prefer to work a lot, and work in Atlanta.
But I'm definitely renewing my passport and keeping my skillsets sharp in the meantime.
I'll talk about the TV side of it later this week.
If I feel like it.
I got a book to finish, dammit.
Take care of yourselves out there.
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