Live Action Film In Steep Decline

According to the most recent survey by FilmLA, feature film shoot days dropped 3.3 percent in Q2 2024 compared to Q2 2023. While 3.3 percent might not seem like a big deal, realize that there was the SAG-AFTRA strike against the studios in Q3 and Q4 2023, so the film days missed then ought to be still jamming the sound stages now.

And if we pull back, FilmLA notes the days of shooting in the town are down 23.8 percent over a five-year period.

Feature films are doing much better than TV shooting over the five-year period: shoot days are down 45.8 percent.

We could argue that this predicates on film shooting occurring elsewhere.

Which is true.

But there are some other factors to take into account that makes the future in Hollywood less-than klieg-light bright.

For example, when reporting its second-quarter earnings, Paramount Global took a $5.98-billion write-down. While that is associated with its cable assets, there is something to keep in mind: this is $6-billion, a lot of money by any metric.

The company is, in the words of Chris McCarthy, a co-CEO, undertaking an effort to achieve “$2 billion of cost efficiencies identified by Skydance,” which includes the elimination of about 15 percent of its U.S. employees. And they identified the $2 billion before they announced the $6 billion write-down.

What, you may wonder, is a write down? It is essentially an expense on the income statement. Meaning that the company has essentially “spent” that much money. Which means that there is less money for it to actually spend on other things. What’s more (or less), investors are not as chuffed with companies that perform write-downs, so again, this is an impact on valuation—and in the last year Paramount stock has been down by over a third.

Meanwhile, over at Warner Bros. Discovery, its Q2 earnings announcement included a $9.1 billion write-down. Again, TV was to blame. . .but all of the negative effects translate throughout a given business.

So if you’re David Zaslav, WBD president and CEO, and you know that 12 months ago your stock was trading at some $14 and it is now about half that, are you going to be profligate or thrifty with all of your properties?

And there is another recent factor to throw into the mix. The movie Borderlands, which features two Academy Award-winning actors (Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis) and cost an estimated $110 million to produce, completely cratered. Which means that Lionsgate and its colleagues are taking a non-trivial hit. And it wasn’t that long ago that the likes of Ms. Marvel and Indiana Jones took a beating at the box office—and they weren’t cheap, either.

Meanwhile, exactly what is doing well?

Animated pictures. Movies that only use the voices of actors. For now.

Consider that the top-performing movie in the U.S. through August 10 was Inside Out 2, according to Box Office Mojo. By that date, it had $633,009,948. Second place is Deadpool & Wolverine, at $455,837,882. That’s a difference of $177,172,066. This is not to say that Deadpool & Wolverine may not reach or even exceed Inside Out 2, but there is something else to take into account.

Everyone knows who stars in Deadpool & Wolverine.

Who are the “stars” of Inside Out 2 (globally the highest-grossing animated film ever)?

Amy Poehler, perhaps best known for her performance in the Parks and Recreation television show. Joining her are actors including Tony Hale (Arrested Development and Veep), Liza Lapira (NCIS), Phyllis Smith (The Office), and Lewis Black (The Daily Show, and angry comedy stages everywhere).

So here’s another question related to Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine:

Which movie has a larger budget for actors?

In the original Inside Out, Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling voiced the characters that Hale and Lapira play in the sequel. Obviously the loss of those two particular voices didn’t have much of an impact on the box office. The 2015 domestic gross of Inside Out was $356,461,711, considerably less than the sequel.

If we return to the list of the top-10 movies so far this year, there are two more animated movies on the list—Despicable Me 4 and Kung Fu Panda 4—as well as two others that are so CGI-intensive that they are quasi-animated—Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

During the Paramount earnings call George Cheeks, the co-CEO in charge of the studio mentioned four forthcoming movies. Remember: investors are investing in the future, not the past.

So where did he start? With Sir Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2? No.

Cheeks: “And coming soon to movie theaters, we’re releasing the first animated Transformers film in nearly 40 years, starring voice cast Chris Hemsworth and Scarlett Johansson.”

(The other two films? Smile 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, so it is 50:50 actors and voice actors.)

Disney, which is raking it in with Inside Out 2, has announced its forthcoming slate includes: Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King, Elio, Zootopia 2, Toy Story 5, and Frozen 3.

So if you are running a studio and you see that animated films are making a considerable amount of money and if your studio is undertaking an austerity program, what do you do?

Furthermore, consider the voice talent. Did anyone know who Nancy Cartwright was before she started voicing Bart Simpson?

Did anyone decide they were going to take the family to see Inside Out 2 because they couldn’t wait to hear Amy Poehler? This is not to take anything away from Poehler’s talent. But it is to say that there are undoubtedly more than a few people with magnificent voices who no longer have jobs on radio who would probably not only do outstanding jobs, but would do so at a fraction of what Scarlett Johansson and Chris Hemsworth are getting from Paramount.

It all goes to the bottom line.

Which brings us back to the FilmLA numbers. Locations and sets are a considerable fraction of the cost of making a live-action movie. While software from Adobe and Autodesk, and hardware running NVIDIA chips, aren’t cheap, they can be less expensive than sets—and studios can use them to make what is evidently a very popular thing: sequels.

This is not to say that actors are soon going to be running into one another outside a California Employment Development Department office. But it is to say that given the less-than-robust financials at some of the studios, the likelihood of more animated movies is high.

And we aren’t even talking about AI.

The future is not bright for talent in Hollywood—unless that talent has something to do with 3D graphics capabilities.​