#ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

[cbrownjc]

I hope this is true. Because it would just be so in line with deciding to be so cartoonishly evil in public right before SAG was set to go on strike as well. A union that really has the power to shut down the whole industry and make them lose astronomical amounts of money per day.

All that Deadline article probably did was make SAG more emboldened to get everything they're asking for and not extend the deadline again.

[maxwellatoms]

In one of your last answers, you said “series reboots are usually pretty gross and sad”, and I was wondering if you could expand on that? Assuming “reboot” covers any kind of continuation of a currently cancelled or finished show (and maybe that’s the wrong assumption!), from the outside looking in it feels like a pretty mixed bag. On one hand, if I love XYZ Show, it’s cool that I get more stories with these characters and another chance to support XYZ Show and its creators. On the other, it definitely feels like a lot of ideas can only get funding if they’re tied to something already, meaning creatives are having to now tie whatever cool idea they have to some reboot/relaunch/retread, which can feel pretty disheartening if you don’t want to do a reboot/relaunch/retread. Is that a similar feeling from your side of the industry?

Thank you so much for all your answers and insight!

Usually reboots and spin-offs are just cash grabs. It happens a lot in animation. In fact, I would argue that the entire industry is just one big cash grab now. In the 80s, everyone complained that cartoons were just half-hour commercials for toys. And they were right. And we're right back there, but now that you can't legally push toys all day, it's just general "IP". Mugs, posters, more spinoffs, whatever.

I was offered three show running gigs over the pandemic. All reboots that I would consider unwise to pursue because they were "of a different time" and didn't (in my opinion) have anything more to say. Two of them were properties created by notorious sex pests, so there's also that. The animation industry loves to prop up its sex pests.

I turned all of them down, partially because I didn't respect the original creators but also because none of them had anything going for them except just being "more of the same".

I don't think any of those projects survived the intervening years, so in retrospect I maybe should've taken the job. I'd probably feel a bit gross, but at least I'd have floors in my house.

The entertainment industry is in a bad spot. The whole thing. I've had I don't know how many pitch meetings in the last few years, and they all start the same way:

"Hey! Before we start, we just want to let you know that we're not actively producing anything right now. We think maybe soon, but we won't be picking anything up today..."

And then later:

"The little we are doing is IP, so if you have a new take on our IP or a new IP you're connected to that you can bring in, that'd be great."

I always wanted to make original stuff. There came a time when I'd had my fill of Billy & Mandy and wanted to do something else new and original. That never manifested, and I was constantly being offered IP to produce. I turned too many of those down, maybe, before deciding that it was probably better that I run the IPs that mean something to me rather than having some hack do it.

But now those jobs have all gone to celebrities and fallen live-action writers, who are also slowly being eaten by the system. WB was hot for Scooby stuff a few years back, so I pitched some ideas. A few of them were turned down for being "off-brand" in a variety of ways. WB has now made (I think) all of those off-brand shows (or something close) with celebrity show runners.

I was going through a whole Midlife Impostor Syndrome thing recently where I was wondering if maybe I don't just suck. Like, it's weird that for a couple of decades I'd have people calling me trying to get me to run shows, and now nobody will call me back about the possibility of a design job.

Talking to some friends and realizing that they were in a similar situation helped me feel like I wasn't alone. That was nice. Talking to some of the most talented colleagues in my industry made me made me realize that those people weren't getting jobs either. That was unnerving. Talking to complete strangers in other parts of the entertainment industry now has me thinking that the whole house of cards is coming down. That's real concerning, yo.

It's hard not to think it's purposeful, when deranged billionaires own the entirety of our media and want to shape a society where they can't be criticized. We're letting wealthy tech bros firebomb the very heart of our culture, and it's weird that no one is talking about it. Because (for now) we still have that capability.

[renthony]

Genuinely tired of people blaming the vague idea of "TV writers suck" for sub-par television instead of corporate meddling, blatant censorship, arbitrary time constraints, and other behind-the-scenes fuckery. Also really tired of "obviously it's objectively bad writing" getting used in place of "I, personally, did not like this."

Even if the writing is genuinely bad in something, you can just...watch something else. There are plenty of other shows out there with writing you might connect with more. Acting like the entire industry is full of bad writers who don't care about their work is ignorant as hell.

Writers being used as the go-to for audiences to shit on is getting really fucking old.

[voxina]

[source]

[elizabethminkel]

Since the WGA strikes began, the studios have been trying—and failing—to turn fans against the writers (and now the actors). I reported on a very strange SDCC this year, which was full of labor conversations and solidarity along the full spectrum of the fan/creator divide. As one member of SAG-AFTRA told me during an awareness-raising demonstration across from the convention center, “The people that I have met today have been all thumbs-up, V for victory, hugs. We love it, and we’re very pleasantly surprised.”

[cozylittleartblog]

The animation strike is looking more and more likely, please be ready to support creatives this summer and boycott Hollywood again if you care about animation or the human artists who make it happen.

+ indie animation youtube playlist

[realjdobypr]

Editor and SEO Researcher Dr. Jerry Doby Releases Book for Digital Journalists and Newsrooms

Excited to have released my first book...would love to know your thoughts! SEO Essentials: A Journalist's Handbook is as up to date as it gets!

For his first published book ever, editor and published SEO researcher Dr. Jerry Doby just released SEO Essentials for Online Magazines: A Journalist’s Handbook on MagCloud. This book is based on his published research paper SEO-optimized Writing: Removing the Mystery, featured in the Cognitionis Scientific Journal (2023) and sponsored by Logos University International (UNILOGOS).SEO Essentials…

[asm5129]

Honestly folks

I’m not going to go down the RWBY is doomed rabbit hole

I absolutely refuse to and you should too

It’s not helpful in any way for anyone or anything

I understand it’s expensive. I understand that there’s a hurdle to making it sustainable.

But just because they haven’t cemented something yet doesn’t mean they won’t, and it doesn’t even mean there haven’t been any options on the table.

We’re working off bits and pieces of information, far too little to confidently state anything about RWBY’s future

If RWBY gets cancelled, I’ll be heartbroken. But that hasn’t happened yet and there’s no reason to go all doomer on it.

They were able to secure the crunchyroll deal for v9 and crunchyroll has shown no signs of wanting to distance themselves from RWBY, even making a collab between their vtuber and the Ruby vtuber. Yes RT is struggling financially that’s clear but there likely negotiations we are not privy to ongoing as well.

CRWBY is scrappy and resilient, they always have been.

Who are we to preemptively claim their luck has run out?

[idpollution]

I'm honored to be joining @BatsyBunny in their charity pin collab to support folks affected by the SAG-AFTRA strike!

Here's a preview of the neon Alastor cameo pin based on "The Other Side" from The Greatest Showman~!

This line just felt right🗝️

[fansplaining]

Episode 223: The End of the Flourish Era

After nine years of collaborating on Fansplaining, Flourish and Elizabeth mark Flourish’s final regular episode by casting back to the state of fandom when they first met on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July of 2015. A decade ago, we were at the height of Hollywood’s “Geek is Chic” arc, facing the rapid mainstreaming of fandom and the beginnings of the “creator-ification” of fanworks. What’s changed for the better—and what’s gotten worse? Plus: in the ultimate ironic twist, Flourish accepts their own personal journey into lurkerdom, a truly fitting end to a podcast run that nearly ended during a fight on the subject 215 episodes ago… 🥰

Click through to our site to listen or read a full transcript!

[adelphiaxo]

its labor day, americans, remember that its a celebration of the achievements of american workers. make sure to support your local worker who is on strike, and the writer and actor strike is still happening <3

[cbrownjc]

Hello :) I was wondering if we ever got confirmation about which books Rolin is interested in focusing this adaptation on? I know that they'll probably take elements from most (if not all) VC books, but if they're aiming at 7-8 seasons with some books taking multiple seasons to adapt, they're going to have to pick and choose which books to really dig into.

I was also thinking about production. I've seen people talk about how we'll need to wait another 1.5-2 years between seasons and I kinda doubt that? I feel like we'll start speeding things up and getting a new season every year, mostly because I just can't see them go for 12+ years of production on this show. Very few shows nowadays go more than 10 years, and if they really want to do 7-8 seasons I can't see how they'll manage that with 1.5 to 2 years in between each season. I understand they're in for the long haul with the Immortal Universe but...that's very long in the modern drama landscape.

Honestly I am mostly just hoping to get new seasons more frequently and also be able to see their full vision realized because the longer it goes on the higher the chance they'll run into issues like actor availability, leadership changes that could impact renewals, budget restrictions, etc. What do you think?

Hello!

Okay, first to answer the production question. Now, while many shows rarely go past 10 years wrt production of them, that is really dependent on their Season count. Game of Thrones, for example, only ran for 8 Seasons, and production only lasted 8 years as well.

The Walking Dead ran for 11 Seasons and was produced over 12 years.

AMC has said in the past (or, at least, Rolin Jones has said that AMC has said) that they wanted 10 Seasons for IWTV. RJ, however, has been consistent in saying he has an 8 Season plan.

So whether the show continues on for at least 2 more years after Rolin's 8 Season plan is up in the air right now and we should just focus on, at most, getting 8 Seasons, Which yes, I think will take over the course of 8-9 years to film.

Because I think starting with Season 3, the wait and production times will decrease over time. Remember, the strikes threw a bit of a wrench into things. But what also did regarding Season 2 was that it's clear that Rolin and the writing staff didn't start actually writing Season 2 until AMC had officially greenlit Season 2 back in September of 2022. That is why shooting for Season 2 couldn't start in the fall of 2022, there were no scripts broken, let alone written yet!

And then, once the scripts were done, they still had to start pre-production stuff, such as location scouting, figuring out which sets needed to be built, etc.

So shooting for Season 2 could only start shooting when it did because it was the earliest they could get all that done once they were given a renewal notice.

I think things are very different when it comes to Season 3 because I think, even if the show hadn't already been quietly renewed for Season 3 before it was officially announced, RJ and the other writers were already breaking and writing the scripts for Season 3 starting either just before or while Season 2 was airing. And so given that writing time, plus the fact that they probably don't have to do as much location scouting (since many of those locations were already found in Season 2) pre-production will likely take less time.

I think filming will begin in late October, meaning we'd get an October 2025 release date. Which I think will be the standard release window going forward with each new season and why the wait will be another long one again, but that will also give the production staff and actors breathing room after they are done filming a season before going into the next one.

So for that reason, I can see production of the show lasting 9-10 years, but that is because of the extra 1/2 year gaps between the filming and airing of Season 2 and the one I feel we are going to get for Season 3.

As well as the fact that I think when they get to Queen of the Damned, that will be a true split-season like the one Breaking Bad got for its final season. That show had Season 5, Part 1, and Season 5, Part 2. Because even though this past season was called "Season 2" externally, you can see by the episode numbers that internally, what this really was was "Season 1, Part 2."

Anyway, as to the books being adapted -- and not just having elements taken from them -- Rolin has said for sure we are getting IWTV (which we just finished), The Vampire Lestat (Season 3), Queen of the Damned (which is where he spoke about it being so epic and grand a story that they will probably have to split the season in order to tell it all) and Tale of the Body Theif (which he confirmed after Season 2 was finished that they were beginning to already set up for). He also mentioned at Comic-Con in 2022 that Prince Lestat would be adapted.

Also, while RJ talked about the book The Vampire Armand being important, he's never said it would get its own separate adaptation, which honestly makes sense. Because of the way that book is told, you can just interweave elements of it when you want to focus on Armand's backstory, or even just do a stand-alone episode here and there dedicated to parts of it. It really isn't the kind of book you do a full season on IMO.

So yeah. The books that we know for sure are getting their own, full adaptations per RJ so far are IWTV, TVL, QotD, TotBT, and PL.

I can see them throwing elements of books like Memnoch, TVA, and Blood and Gold into it all, but I don't know if they'll get their own full-season adaptations. As I said, I don't think TVA will. And I don't think B&G will either, as I see it just like TVA -- you adapt elements of it during a season, maybe even full sections of it for a flashback episode or so during a season, but it doesn't get its own full stand-alone season.

The same goes for Merrick, since they already did Louis' suicide attempt and Louis seems to be moving forward from his despair and grief regarding Claudia -- so that even if Lestat did fall into his post-Memnoch coma in the show, I'm not sure this Louis would attempt to end his life again over that loss. (Even more so after this Louis also got that letter from Lestat in the past, telling Louis to please live on in the event of his death.)

I have no idea if they are seriously going to ever do Blackwood Farm or Blood Canticle. Neither book has ever been mentioned, even in passing. Plus, they kind of depend on what and where Mayfair Witches is at or has going on at the time and well, that show . . . 😅

Oh! And they might be looking to adapt the whole Prince Lestat trilogy, but I don't remember if RJ has talked about adapting the whole trilogy -- meaning the entirety of each book -- or just the full first book and then elements from the other two. (Because I do think it's clear that, if anything, we'll get the Loustat ballroom dance from Blood Communion in the final season of the show).

So yeah, I think that this is what we're looking at for the next few years, book adaptation-wise.

[maxwellatoms]

Do you have any particular sense for how it is to be (or work towards being) an indie animator right now? I'm assuming that it's nigh-impossible to follow in the shoes of someone like you, or Rebecca Sugar, or Ian JQ, or... any of my idol-esque showrunners, frankly. But it seems like there's some interest to drum up about shows like The Amazing Digital Circus or Lackadaisy or Helluva Boss. What's your input on that front?

You nailed it.

I do think there will be some original animated show creators coming out of this next generation, but the chances of a studio supporting a young creator of an original idea seems much lower than it used to. CN is making some new shorts, so something interesting may come from there. Mostly, though, I think that the new stuff will come from people who just make something because they want to make something.

That's my current, sloppy plan anyway.

Things are going to get even weirder in the future, I think, as studios continue to push to replace or overwork their existing workers. LLMs are a bad investment all-around, but we may still end up fighting them for space on the internet. Studios would love to have complete dominance over the media space, so flooding the internet with AI trash is in their best interest.

So yeah. Make something. Make it now before things get harder.

[thelaurenshippen]

open ai made a little post about how they chose their chatbot voices and two things stood out to me:

a) I am genuinely pleased and surprised that the voices come from specific real people that they hired and paid, rather than being built off of all of the data open ai has scraped. the voice for siri did one job for one company 20 years ago and now she is literally everywhere without ever being compensated by apple or even acknowledged as the voice. there's simply no way she was paid enough in that original job. whereas, open ai says "each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products." this could mean literally anything (what market rate are we going above? does continue mean they get residuals or get paid for doing more sessions?) but, christ, at least the actors are doing it with full knowledge of what their voices are being used for and can decide for themselves if the compensation is enough

b) the post talks about working with "award-winning casting directors" to get the voices. first of all, yay for paying casting directors! we love to see it. but they also say the CDs received over 400 submissions in a week and they state that like a big number and it's just...not at all. and look, without knowing the intricacies of the casting process, it's hard to know what approach the CDs took - it's very possible they were selective from the jump and 400 is a lot from the pool they were tapping. 400 would be a lot if you were going to the agencies directly and asking for names, but there's just no way in hell open ai went after big stars for this. so it would've been a pool of unknowns. in which case, 400 is laughably small. even if you're not using the big casting sites like actorsaccess, I've worked on projects with CDs and their own internal systems where we've gotten over 100 submissions for a single role. I've posted roles on casting sites and received literally thousands of submissions in just a few days

look, I have a very limited perspective on this - I am not a casting director (imo, one of the most important and undervalued jobs in hollywood) and I, in fact, hate the process of casting with a passion. but 400 just seemed like such a tiny pool to pull from and, idk, it heartens me! it's heartening to think that there's very little interest from actors and agents to be doing this kind of stuff. and absolutely no shade to the actors who did--I want actors to get their bag however they want as long as it's, like, safe sane and consensual, you know? but there's something encouraging about thinking that open ai hired some big casting agency to get their foot into the voice acting door and people didn't come running

[letter-22]

guys with people talking more and more about the entertainment industry's exploitative practices, i think we need to talk about how genloss dealt with these exact themes RIGHT after the wga strike started (and it was planned long before the strike)

showfall treats real people as disposables to deliver as much content as possible, even killing actors for real only to bring them back for the next show... and now, everyone's talking about the crunch culture of the entertainment industry working people half to death

showfall literally turns people into content-producing robots, removing their humanity and turning them into mindless drones. and then real corporations were trying to replace writers with ais and actors with deepfakes

ranboo was right on the money. more people should be talking about genloss in general but in this conversation especially