An evocative cover on the latest edition of The Hollywood Reporter has heralded a feature piece on the battles underway, or about to start, across Hollywood.
Remember the old days when just about everyone worked until they were in their mid-sixties, at the oldest, and then retired? Not anymore. A glance around the boardrooms of many Hollywood entities, and you could be forgiven for thinking you had wandered into the Shady Pines Retirement Home just before nap time.
Kathleen Kennedy is 72. Bog Iger is 74. David Zaslav is a spring chicken among his peers, and he is 65. Tom Rothman is 70. Alan Horn is 82!
Even those young whippersnappers at DC Studios are already knocking on the door of 60.
In Hollywood and a lot of the corporate world, it seems that the older generation simply doesn’t want to let go. Sooner or later, they will have to. Even the fittest check out with regularity in their 80s. So succession planning is well underway across Hollywood and, according to the report, it could be a bloodbath. The jockeying for position has begun.
This comes on the back of The Hollywood Reporter already having run an earlier story, talking about “The Big Squeeze” and explaining why everyone in Hollywood feels stuck, as top-level execs have seemed frozen in place, those in their 30s, 40s and even 50s have been lamenting the existence of a “gray ceiling” that they say has cheated them out of their big moment.
Between the pressures of the collapsing streaming subscription revenues and a struggle to get anything but recognised IP to make a splash in theaters, the industry is described as currently being chaotic. As a result, many crave some stability, including in the boardroom. This could explain why these leaders are hanging on. As Terry Press, president of strategy and communications at Amblin Partners, puts it:
“Right now, with all the chaos in the industry, stability is like a drug. You want to be around it and you want to be in business with it.”
So, as a result, those who are planning for succession are seemingly doing it from within. Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings at Netflix, Shari Redstone to David Ellison at Paramount/Skydance, and Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra to Ravi Ahuja.
The issue is that these set off Succession or Game Of Thrones style jockeying within the firms as executives ruthlessly attempt to leverage their relationships over their competitors.
The article specifically mentions Lucasfilm, where it had seemed like a done deal that former 20th Century head Emma Watts would take over from Kennedy. Now it seems that Kennedy is looking within, but there is an issue.
CCO Dave Filoni was widely tipped, but there is apparently a feeling developing that Filoni may be too concerned with lore at the expense of alienating casual viewers. The report quotes a source as saying:
“He’s the Ahsoka guy, and not the Andor guy.”
The solution being presented is perhaps that Filoni and current production head Carrie Beck take on co-studio head roles, like Gunn and Safran at DC Studios.
All across Hollywood, interesting times abound for industry watchers.
