First in a series on how the economic downturn is affecting the Industry.
The recession officially ended more than two years ago, but for scores of displaced studio executives, character actors, directors and below-the-line workers, the suffering continues.
As the country battles entrenched unemployment, which remains at an alarming 9 percent, TheWrap is taking a hard look at how this problem has impacted the entertainment industry.
“It’s the worst it’s ever been,” Howard Suber, a professor of film who offers a popular class on breaking into the business at UCLA, told TheWrap. “There’s an oversupply of creative people ... The market is getting smaller and smaller, the films are getting bigger and bigger, but the number of films released are getting smaller.”
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Suber’s dire perspective aside, there’s good news and bad. The movie industry as a whole has contracted – with theatrical attendance sharply down, home entertainment in a fetal position and studio production on the decline.
Television production, though, is far healthier, judging by advertising buys for 2011, which have been strong. And there are indications that after a few years of persistent losses, pockets of the industry are beginning ot hire again.
First, the bad news.
In the wake of the financial downturn, the major studios slashed the number of films they were producing in 2010 by nearly 20 percent, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.
Throughout the industry, companies went into cutback mode. Studios shut down or auctioned off speciality arms such as Miramax and Paramount Vantage, eliminating scores of jobs in the process.
Also read: Hollywood Unemployed: A-List Execs Kicked to the Curb
Post-production houses such as Deluxe and Technicolor merged while smaller shops like CFI and Pacific folded, displacing hundreds of workers.
On studio lots, nearly every major studio shed jobs, particularly in their home entertainment divisions, with the likes of Sony and Warner Bros. letting hundreds of employees go in order to stay in the black. They also slashed away at producer deals and movie budgets, adding more people to the unemployment rolls.
And the butcher’s cleaver hasn’t gone back on the shelf just yet. Last month, Paramount announced that it is merging its home entertainment, licensing and digital operations, and Disney consolidated its toys arm and home entertainment into a single division, which will almost certainly lead to more staff cuts.
Studio executives tell TheWrap that more companies are likely to follow Paramount and Disney’s lead.
“It’s always been a relatively small industry, and it was always competitive, but there are many, many more people trying to get in today,” Michael Taylor, chair of USC’s Division of Film & Television Production, told TheWrap.
