NEW YORK (AP) — The studio head has traditionally been seen as a fearsome and omnipotent determine, able to ending a profession with the snap of a finger or altering lives with an impulsive greenlight. In “The Studio,” although, Seth Rogen’s studio chief is extra Selina Meyer (“Veep”) than Louis B. Mayer.
As a lot as Rogen’s Matt Remick, head of the fictional Continental Studios, sits in a sought-after seat of energy, he’s helpless in opposition to bigger traits within the movie business. He desires to be making “Chinatown,” however as a substitute his most necessary job is getting a Kool-Help film off the bottom. Bryan Cranston’s Continental chief govt asks: Can he do that? “Oh, yeah!”
“As pitiful as it is, the conflict that my character lives and breathes every second of his life is one a lot of people with his job are facing in real life,” Rogen says. “They love movies. They’re also responsible to a very specific bottom line and they have to defend the choice they make to a board of people who don’t give a s— about movies.”
“The Studio,” the 10-episode collection debuting Wednesday on Apple TV+, will be the definitive portrait of up to date Hollywood. If films like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Player” captured the film business in full swagger, “The Studio” belongs to a extra determined chapter the place even the omnipotent really feel impotent. Studio heads, too, should tolerate conversations with individuals who haven’t been to the films in ages, however who liked “The Bear.”
In a latest interview, Rogen and Goldberg, the longtime writing, producing and directing duo behind “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express” and “This Is the End,” mentioned “The Studio” isn’t fairly a Hollywood postmortem, irrespective of how a lot Cranston’s efficiency within the helter-skelter CinemaCon-set finale verges towards “Weekend at Bernie’s” territory.
“We’re people who have been given great lives from this industry who, in general, though it’s been very frustrating, have gotten to do what they want,” Rogen says. “The show is very specifically written from the perspective of people that think things can work out in Hollywood.”
Tapping into dream manufacturing facility demoralization
There at all times is, and doubtless at all times shall be, cause for optimism in Hollywood. The following massive hit is perpetually simply across the nook. However as audiences have develop into more and more distracted by streaming, TikTok and video video games, the movie business — or at the least the most important studio model of it — has was an IP-factory, hoping that franchises, superheroes and horror can maintain itself.
There’s nonetheless time for a turnaround (there’s that optimism once more), however ticket gross sales in 2025 are down 6.9% from final yr and 38.6% from 2019, based on Comscore. The traits are worse when you have a look at tickets bought fairly than {dollars} earned, since large-format screens beef up ticket costs.
Greater than that, although, “The Studio” — with a boatload of cameos of everybody from Martin Scorsese to Netflix chief Ted Sarandos to Zoe Kravitz — faucets right into a deeper demoralization. Flanked by a workforce of executives (Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders), Remick finds himself — when circuitously obstructing filmmakers he adores, like Scorsese and Sarah Polley — beset with questions over whether or not they’ve forged a racist Kool-Help film, if their “Smile” knockoff “Wink” can work or how you can promote a film with zombie diarrhea.
Matthew Belloni, the previous editor of The Hollywood Reporter and founding companion of the media firm Puck, seems as himself within the collection. He says that there’s fact underlying virtually each scene within the “The Studio,” “for better and mostly worse.”
“It captures the existential dread that seems to permeate every conversation,” says Belloni. “People recognize that the glory days of Hollywood are over and the whole concept of what Hollywood even means is being redefined. And that has caused everybody in town to go completely crazy. This show captures that craziness very, very well.”
Exposing inside Hollywood drama, once more
“The Studio” isn’t the primary time Rogen and Goldberg have had a job in revealing the interior workings of a Hollywood studio. When their 2014 North Korean comedy “The Interview” led to the hacking of Sony Photos, the studio’s personal correspondence landed on the web.
“Without ‘The Interview,’ a show like this would have been much harder for us to write,” Rogen says, chuckling. “We got to the CEO-level of problem.”
These issues finally included Sony Photos co-chair Amy Pascal stepping down. Pascal, who has since been a extremely profitable producer, has remained a mentor to Rogen and Goldberg. In “The Studio,” she’s fictionalized by Catherine O’Hara as a savvy producer and Remick’s former boss.
“One of the biggest misconceptions people seem to have with Hollywood is that it’s run by people who only care about money and don’t at all care about film,” Rogen says.
“There’s a few of those people,” Goldberg chimes in.
“They are out there, for sure,” continues Rogen. “But in general, the people who have ascended to Amy’s level to run studios are people who love movies and can sit in a room with the greatest filmmakers on earth and have an on-the-level conversation about filmmaking.”
‘A hundred episode ideas’
Rogen and Goldberg, who created the present with Frida Perez and a pair of “Veep” veterans in Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory, started growing “The Studio” through the pandemic. Then, they thought it actually could be a satirical elegy for Hollywood. The dual blockbusters of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” although, prompted them to present the collection a extra hopeful spin. However they had been by no means quick on fodder.
“Most of it is very directly from our lives,” Goldberg says.
“As soon as we thought of it, we thought of a hundred episode ideas,” provides Rogen.
That features one episode the place Remick joins a date at a hospital fundraiser attended by docs. That got here from Rogen’s personal expertise attending galas for the Alzheimer’s illness charity he runs along with his spouse, Lauren Miller.
“I find myself at a lot of medical galas and at a lot of tables with doctors who save people’s lives. And they seem to take particular joy in diminishing what I do for a living,” Rogen says laughing.
These scenes — the docs are those who love “The Bear” — unfold with Remick claiming that what he does issues, even when that features a film that sounds not too dissimilar in vulgarity to his and Goldberg’s R-rated animated comedy “Sausage Party.”
“What’s funny about Hollywood is how people have imbued every moment with life-altering stakes that could last forever,” says Rogen. “People seem to take their jobs in Hollywood more seriously than the people who are actually making nuclear decisions. That’s what’s terrifying.”
As a lot because it lampoons Hollywood, “The Studio” can also be an ode to it. An episode a couple of lacking reel is completed within the fashion of “Chinatown.” Many of the collection, which Rogen and Goldberg directed, are shot in lengthy, balletic takes — even the episode wherein Remick retains fouling up an formidable lengthy take tried by Polley.
These are simply among the ironies of “The Studio,” which, on the subsequent fundraising gala in Los Angeles, is certain to be, greater than any new film, what most individuals are speaking about.
