The three action heavyweights will make the movie business “stronger than ever before,” the president-elect has declared
US President-elect Donald Trump has named movie icons Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, a position apparently invented by the incoming president on Thursday.
”It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, to be Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.
“They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!” he continued, adding that the three men will serve as his “eyes and ears” inside the film industry.
It is unclear what the position, which has never existed before, will entail. However, all three actors are outspoken supporters of Trump, making them rarities in a Democrat-dominated industry.
Voight was a vocal supporter of Trump during the latter’s first term in office, and received a National Medal of Arts from then-President Trump in 2019. Gibson came out in support of Trump before November’s election, describing his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, as someone with “the IQ of a fence post.”
Stallone spoke at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after the election, praising the Republican as “a really mythical character” and “the second George Washington.”
Hollywood has been mired in a downturn since the Covid-19 pandemic, with competition from foreign countries and streaming services chipping away at profits and forcing multiple studios – including Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount, and NBCUniversal – to announce layoffs over the last year.
The number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down 40% on the same period in 2022, and fell another 5% in the third quarter of last year, according to figures from ProdPro and Film LA. The US box office take fell to $8.7 billion last year, a 3.3% drop in 2023 and a 23.5% drop from 2019, according to Variety.