Why The Last Fifteen Years Of The FKATheFilmBiz Were So Sh*tty (for most of us)
10+ things you must not forget while we skate on today's thin ice
This is a quick look back on why we are in this mess.
What we called “progress” was the destruction of the optimum structure for the marriage of art and commerce. We had it. We lost it. And we won’t likely get that balance back.
In the next era, only one or the other can triumph. I am voting for art. But they have all the heavy hitters on their side, so we will see how the story of the scrappy underdog plays out this time.
This post is an examination and reminder of how the time we spent went. Here’s a clue to start though: we squandered the last fifteen years chasing the wrong thing.
Of course we all know that business favors a predictable model and that it doesn’t have a high risk tolerance. That’s the environment cinema has always operated in, even if the tendency to do so has grown more severe in recent years. In truth, we should have anticipated it. After all, most industries eventually move toward structures that reduce uncertainty, and that has certainly been the story of what we now call the FKATheFilmBusiness. Was the cost worth it though?
Arrogance & short-sightedness lead the way
The film business is led by negative attributes. It is why the FAANG companies took control and why Hollywood is now but toadies for the Tech Overlords. To be fair, it is not just Hollywood’s fault, unless you want to blame them for never learning how to advocate on their behalf, unless it is for their share of the cash. We never have enjoyed a national film policy like every other country has. We didn’t suffer through “runaway” production; it was pushed away. After creating the highest level of crew and craftspeople, we incentivized the studios to make their movies elsewhere.
Everything that follows below is a variation on this theme. It was foreseen and it could have been stopped. It wasn’t because those on top knew no one would stop them from looting the store.
Big, safe, and you’ve seen it before.
The clearest expression of that shift is the industry’s near-total pivot toward franchises and recognizable intellectual property. Risk-averse capital prefers the familiar, and large studios increasingly concentrated their resources on brands that could deliver predictable global returns. This will be even more so when they have the spectre of excessive debt (say… $79 Billion or so) hanging over their heads.
But the franchise era is only one part of the story. Over the past fifteen years, several larger forces reshaped the ecosystem around cinema. Let’s take a quick look at those too, less we forgot the details.
The Streaming Era and Cheap Money
Streaming did not simply emerge because audiences demanded it or that the technology allowed it. It was enabled by the era of cheap money. Extremely low interest rates made it possible to pour enormous capital into platforms long before they became profitable. Without that environment, the streaming boom may never have happened at the scale we witnessed.
And cheap money does not just appear. It is part of another strategy. But that’s for another conversation. But ask yourself, who was it given to? What was behind this strategy?
The ruthless demands of Shareholder Capitalism
Once the Cheap Money Era began, streaming quickly became the dominant driver of the industry. It intertwined with the broader rise of shareholder capitalism and the demand that “everything must go up.” For the entertainment business, that meant the necessity of chasing scale and global reach. Companies had to keep expanding into new markets, and the risk of closing doors to those opportunities grew increasingly significant. Incentives were put in place for their bosses to chase these goals at the expense of everything else.
The strategy was clear: build massive platforms and dominate globally.
The Collapse of the Old Economics
At the same time, the financial scaffolding that once supported the film business was quietly disappearing.
