Hollywood is dead, according to Justine Bateman. Here's what comes next

I just want the Black Mirror machine to work faster.

How does this death of Hollywood differ from all the previous deaths?

The conveyor belt analogy from this article is deserved. I feel like this has been true for a long time, like 20 years or so. Remake after remake. Yet another superhero film. Uninteresting pipelines of shows and movies that recycle existing IP but also destroy existing canon (look at Star Wars). There are exceptions - we still have some great films (like Interstellar ten years ago) and shows (like Game of Thrones). But it does feel like most of the content from traditional media is noticeably bad.

I also think though, that Hollywood has become unlikeable and polarizing for many other reasons. Some of those reasons are the political culture of Hollywood (with bias in one direction). Some of it is the moral culture (like Harvey Weinstein). But a lot of the exhaustion with Hollywood is simply that the faces of Hollywood - celebrity actors - just seem really self aggrandizing. The award shows. The unwelcome public stances on random topics. The ostentatious displays of wealth (fancy cars, mansions in exotic places, etc). The worship of celebrity that is practiced through glowing magazine interviews, coverage of personal issues (like divorces), and merchandising.

Democratization is coming for a lot of different industries, and Hollywood is one of them. The availability of high quality cheap audio and visual equipment, the over supply of talent, the low costs of techniques like CGI, the prospect of new tools like generative AI, and social media for publishing are all pulling attention away from traditional channels. I think this will be great for viewers. Independent content creators are becoming very good at what they do. It doesn’t mean the death of Hollywood entirely, but it does mean that only the very best can survive.

I also think this affects movies and TV shows differently. People have appetite for great TV shows still, and outliers like HBO will survive due to exceptional content quality. But movie theaters, as a way to market and draw viewers, are a dying concept. The industry keeps trying to evolve by offering different gimmicks (like 3D and “4D”), luxury experiences, dining experiences, and so on. But you can’t get away from the fact that it is very inconvenient to have to go to a theater, deal with noisy crowds, etc. We also all have much more awareness of how illness spreads after the pandemic. Theaters will go away, except for maybe the possibility of film festivals or other such events. That’s a big change for movies, but TV shows aren’t losing anything from the death of theaters.

AI and Tick Tuck

I wonder if she's still getting Family Ties residuals?