The Reset: Speaking Hard Truths in an Anti-DEI Age

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Happy Sunday enterprisers,

A story that has not gotten nearly enough attention this past year is the retreat from DEI, a rollback prompted by a president that spread fear not only in Hollywood but across all industries.

We were early to point out how harmful this is, not just for Hollywood culture but to its bottom line when we posted “With DEI Rollbacks, the Business of Hollywood May Take a Hit,” written by our Raquel Calhoun.

But it’s been mostly silence. That’s why it was so refreshing to see the dialogue last Tuesday at TheWrap’s Power Women Summit, particularly a panel featuring actresses Karen Pittman, Natasha Rothwell, Olivia Munn and Uzo Aduba.

Read our story and watch the video, but here are few highlights.

— “Society has told us not to love ourselves enough, not to lean into our power, to lean into scarcity and fear”: Aduba

— “I know that I’m fighting today for what I’m gonna make. If I don’t fight on ‘The Morning Show’ or on ‘Forever’ or ‘And Just Like That,’ the next actress who comes in will have to fight even harder.”: Pittman

— “If there’s someone that is a person of color on set that’s younger than me, who said yes to [the project] because they wanted to but they also have issues and concerns that they are afraid to raise, I avail myself and I say to them, ‘Do you want to do that, baby?’”: Rothwell

 — “The one part that is stagnant is the negotiating table.”: Munn

Of course, our founder and Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman has not been silent on these issues, having carved out her own legacy as the first woman 16 years ago to create Hollywood’s first digital, independent publication covering the entertainment industry.

In an earlier WaxWord column, she took Hollywood to task for being mute this past year, especially when it comes to the #MeToo movement. “It was a movement aimed at change, meant to clear out the dark attics and scary basements where the bogeymen live and create a world that was better for our daughters,” Sharon wrote.

This past week, just ahead of the summit, she followed up with “A Woman’s Message in the Age of Trump: Find Your Joy, Know Your Value, Keep Your Powder Dry.”

She ended on this hopeful note: “Silence is not complicity – it’s a pause. So many of us are waiting, watching and keeping our powder dry. Things do not stay the same. Beneath the surface, there is movement.”

Keep reading us as we vow to stay strident in covering the changes that are afoot.

Tom Lowry
Senior Vice President/Editorial Strategy
tom.lowry@thewrap.com

1. China  Syndrome Film reporter Jeremy Fuster last week reported on the phenomenal success of “Zootopia 2,” which did more than just turn back the clock to the 2010s with its massive $271 million five-day opening in China. In just five days, “Zootopia 2” passed the entire $245 million Chinese run of “Avatar: The Way of Water” to become the highest-grossing American film in the country since the pandemic.

China had been an increasingly important market for U.S. films until COVID hit, as the chart below demonstrates. Fuster points out that the “Zootopia” formula may not be easily replicated: “The story of “Zootopia 2” in China, with its historic opening weekend, wildly successful theme park spinoff and more than 125 partnerships with Chinese and global brands, is an example of a Hollywood studio taking organic excitement around an original story and spending a decade sustaining and growing it in ways that never felt like a foreign company trying to pander to a culture it isn’t rooted in.”

2. Hybrid Streaming Models and Content Libraries We came across this LinkedIn post last week from Ashay Deshpande, the director of sales for streaming services provider Muvi who was making the case that Netflix’s adherence to a subscription-only model limits its ability to build its library.

When you look at chart below that he provided, it becomes clear that Fox-owned Tubi continues to be on a tear building its library, with as many as 60,000 titles, compared to Netflix with 7,000. Of course, the size of a library has no causality to profitability. NFLX posted profits of $2.5 billion in its last quarter, a number others didn’t touch. (Note: YouTube was not included in this chart)

During a panel last week at the Power Women Summit, entitled “Sensuality and Strength: Breaking the Mold in Female Storytelling,” it didn’t take long before Kathryn Busby, president of original programming at Starz, got hit with a tough question.

How do you balance truly authentic storytelling with commercial viability? “Something that is really authentic and really true to what it is and to a world does become commercial because the specificity is really your human experience. If you portray your human experience, we’re all human beings, so things become commercially viable” was Busby’s response.

Busby brings three decades of experience following that strategy in entertainment development. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in visual and environmental studies while serving as co-caption of track team, running the 200 and 400-meter races. But the sprint was really just beginning. After graduating and a stint in the music industry, Busby held senior development roles at Universal Television, Casey-Werner, New Line Cinema, Turner Broadcasting and then Sony Pictures Television. Four years ago, she joined Starz.

“I think the key to what makes it work at Starz is we really believe in representation … in front of the camera, behind the camera, in the boardroom, everywhere,” Busby explained to the audience Tuesday. “So when we, the people of the world, are making shows, and we’re developing shows that feature complicated female portrayals and nuanced characters, it’s because it really takes a village of people that are living that experience.”

Busby is the niece of Ghanaian-born Margaret Busby, the first Black female publisher in the UK so the literary thread is deeply rooted in Busby’s lineage.

But the role models go well beyond her aunt for Busby and include her grandmother, a doctor in Trinidad, and her mother who was able to use her job as a secretary at Pan Am to show her family the world. When she accepted Essence magazine’s honoree recognition last year for its  Black Women In Hollywood Awards, Busby reflected on these influences.

Her message throughout her career has been: Don’t believe it when you hear that Hollywood doesn’t want to hear our stories. They do.

Box Office Behavior: Hollywood’s Vanishing Middle Class, Greenlight Analytics

Inside Disney’s ‘No Drama’ Succession Race, WSJ CEO Brief

A Closer Look at Rising CEO Turnover, The Insider at The Harvard Business Review 

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