Hollowed-out in Hollywood

This week, the media conglomerate Paramount Skydance beat the streaming giant Netflix in their fight to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, one of Hollywood’s last remaining major studios. On Thursday, Netflix said it wouldn’t match Paramount’s US$31-a-share offer—a $111 billion bid.

There’s clearly no shortage of money in Hollywood. But just as clearly, the industry is struggling.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Los Angeles County’s motion picture industry employed 142,000 people at the end of 2022; by the end of 2024, that figure had dropped to 100,000.

Last year, Paul Audley, the president of Los Angeles’s official film office, Film LA, told NBC Los Angeles that excluding the pandemic, 2024 had been “the worst year on record.” But then 2025 turned out worse. In the first quarter, on-location production in greater Los Angeles fell 22 percent compared with the year before. Production volume ran at about half its 2019 level.

What’s going on?

Andrew deWaard is an assistant professor of media and popular culture at the University of California San Diego and the author of Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture. DeWaard says Hollywood is buckling from two forces: finance and monopoly. Over time, financial firms have bought up most of the old studios, leaving the industry increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few enormous conglomerates. These private-equity firms and hedge funds have very little idea how to cultivate creative talent—they extract money while churning out unimaginative franchise films. Small studios can’t really compete, and when they do succeed, one of the giants buys them.

And yet, deWaard says, there might be more creative potential in the movie industry than ever. It’s a matter of knowing where to look …

Gustav Jönsson: Seems Hollywood’s never had more money flowing through it, but the workforce is shrinking. Why?

Andrew deWaard: Two big reasons: the rise of financialization and the spread of monopoly power.

Start with finance. Over the last 25 years, hedge funds, venture capital, and asset managers—especially private equity—have increased their influence over Hollywood. They use financial strategies that extract profit from the industry rather than grow it.