GO PRIVATE.
There will never – ever – be enough growth and margin improvement to satisfy Wall Street.
Maybe short-term the studios will get a bump by telling investors they are going to make 100 comic book movies over the next 5 years – but after that flattens out – there’s nothing left to grow on top of that.
And it’s all Wall Street’s fault. You can’t blame studio executives. They have to appease Wall Street or they’re out.
I mean, my company, Manka Bros. just announced a trilogy of films based on the board game CHECKERS!
Wall Street’s insistence for high margin growth in such a mature business is destroying creativity (again, note all the sequels and re-makes and re-hashes and re-dos) and in it, ruining any realist opportunity for growth.
To grow the way Wall Street would like, 21st Century Fox (for instance) would need to have an “Avatar” one year (and double the amount of TV production); two “Avatars” the next year (and double again the doubled amount of TV shows); four “Avatars” the following year – and so on and so on. And they would all have to preform as good or better than the first!
And the market is saturated already.
There are too many choices and studios don’t have the monopoly on content creation that they once did.
And the moguls long for those days.
Sorry, fellas, they are not coming back.
It won’t be cheap to go private – billions and billions – but there is plenty of private equity out there that would love an asset that consistently pumps out up to $1 billion in pure profit.
Without the need to top profits year after year, the content produced can be more experimental, and thus, much more interesting and exciting for the consumer.
It would even allow for the occasional down year when things just didn’t work out. Hollywood IS a cyclical business, after all.
Hollywood Studios are sacred treasures in this country (and around the world) and should not be allowed to just fade away because Wall Street wasn’t happy with the growth prospects.
We must do what we can to save these institutions and going private is the best way.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
OK – I know NBC has been on a
Old Hollywood just got another year older and closer to death.
Perhaps they will be torn down and apartments built. But apartments in those areas are for young writers and actors who move to L.A. to chase that Hollywood dream.
2. Rupert Murdoch
3. Barry Diller
4. Jeffrey Katzenberg
1. The Weinstein Brothers (Harvey and Bob) 
2. Ryan Kavanaugh – Calling him a mogul is generous (to say the least). Attempted mogul more like it. For some reason people keep giving him money. Hopefully, that stops soon and he is forced to land his helicopter not in Beverly Hills but somewhere out in Palmdale where he can live out his existence with a few other characters from “Day of the Locust.”
2. Thomas Tull (Legendary) – Even though Legendary is more of a high-end financing and production outfit than a media empire, Tull is eyeing much larger things and has the money to do it. How far he actually takes the media empire concept is the question. Is Legendary a new DreamWorks or actually something that will be successful?
3.