Barbenheimer might save this Sunday’s Academy Awards, Barry Hertz writes, but it can’t save an industry on the brink
This Sunday evening, Hollywood will gather to celebrate itself under a mushroom cloud of pink glitter – and it won’t take too long to feel the radioactive fallout., but both felt included only as a courtesy, with no real chance of snagging the top-tier statuettes .for best original song is as close to a shoo-in as the film has). If you want your ailing awards show to prove its worth to today’s moviegoers, this is exactly how you do it.
But the streaming debacle feels almost understandable when compared with how thewere handled. By refusing to even engage with the labour unrest for months – not to pick on Disney here, but what kind of leadership did CEO Bob Iger think he was practising when he said SAG-AFTRA was not being “realistic” the day after it was revealed his annual target bonus was raised from $1-million to $5-million? – the major studios created their own worst nightmare.
Add into this deficit of releases the very real chance that 2024 might end with one fewer studios thanks to a frenzied climate of mergers and acquisitions. Paramount is a good candidate to become absorbed, while avaricious eyes see Warner Bros. Discovery falling into the hands of Universal Pictures’ owner Comcast, and there stands to be that fewer films.
But even the glitziest Barbenheimer blowout cannot distract from that ticking sound that Hollywood must hear in the distance. Like a certain physicist, the film industry has started a chain reaction that might destroy its entire world. Bombs away.