2025 in Film Part 1: The State of the Studios

Another film year has come and gone already and like the last couple of years its time to start the retrospective with the State of the Studios and they definitely had an interesting year,

Though I will say up front that this year movie wise is where we felt the full impact of the 2023 prolonged writers and actors strikes as a lot of films came out that really could’ve used some more work on the script before production remounted but because movie productions take time to remount that work either couldn’t be done or wasn’t done and it showed when watching them, hopefully with Sean Astin (Sam from Lord of the Rings) as the new head of SAG-AFTRA the industry can now have someone they can sit down and deal with properly as Fran Fine-sorry-Drescher was not that person.

But now with that caveat out of the way lets start with the clear loser and that is:

5. Sony/Columbia:

The house that Spider-man has virtually built this century started to show signs of cobwebs holding that studio together more and more,

For while they had some decent hitters they also like the last non big Spider-man movie years didn’t really have a big hit to their name and they clearly could’ve had that with KPop Demon Hunters which was a Sony Animation production but then distributed by Netflix giving them a massive hit was a humongous mistake,

Because Sony/Columbia desperately needs to prove themselves to be more than just “The House that Spidey built” because while Spider-man is still a very popular character he can only swing to the rescue of Lady Columbia every couple of years and that web cartridge is running out with Tom Hardy’s Venom movies now finished and the Spider-Verse series only having one more movie left before that story ends as well,

And part of the problem may sadly lie with current studio chief Tom Rothman who used to be at 20th Century Fox, now Rothman is a fellow who keeps a watchful eye on the budgets of his productions which is much needed in todays bloated budget spending on big movies but I’m starting to get concerned about his leadership going forward and maybe if it might help Sony/Columbia if a team of new blood were to come in and bring a fresh pair of eyes.

4. Paramount:

Oh dear oh dear, the blizzard is hitting this mountain hard,

When Skydance was announced as a potential suitor to buy Paramount from Viacom I was all for it as it felt like at that time the least worst option as the other main contender was Sony and I don’t think anyone was really wanting that given that Paramount would become to them what 20th Century Fox has become to Disney: another division within a megastudio that only really serves the main company’s bidding.

But after a change of President and a lot of hoop jumping Skydance was finally able to get their hands on the studio and it has been a mess ever since from the appointments that have been made across the company to shelving late night shows and now dumping a animated film onto Paramount Plus and worst of all trying to wrangle Taylor Sheridan who’s hit shows like Yellowstone and Landman among others were not only brands specific to Paramount as a whole but also were keeping Paramount+ afloat which saw him drive his cattle to the Universal ranch,

And that last one came after new studio chief David Ellison was out in the press praising Sheridan and wanting him to be part of the studio under his leadership well that didn’t happen and his judgement has been found wanting ever since because being a producer on a movie is one thing but being the head of a studio requires an entirely different set of skills notably in how you deal with people and since taking the reins of Paramount Ellison I feel has struggled to transition from producing to studio chiefton,

And this is a struggle he is far from alone in dealing with, Kathleen Kennedy one of Hollywood’s most iconic producers has at times struggled with the chiefton role but at least Kennedy has been able to find good creative minds like Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni and Tony Gilroy to help shoulder the workload but Ellison at the moment has really yet to do this,

Then again as we’ve seen with Warner Brothers and Discovery it can take a couple of years for a new studio head to find their way in the job and properly set their mark with where they want to take the studio as a whole but at the very least David Zaslav’s decisions made some degree of sense and he found some very very good people like Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca and James Gunn and Peter Safran to run the various divisions of that studio,

By contrast Ellison has really only hired people who fit a certain skill set and given the way things are going in the US right now he runs the risk of being out of step with his audience very quickly if he isn’t careful and/or he doesn’t lift his game and have a better sense of judgement.

3. Walt Disney:

The House always wins they say well sometimes so does the Mouse,

But this is not to say Disney has had a good year they most certainly have not but like in the great game of Baseball anything can happen in a movie year and just because you stumble throughout most of the match/movie year all it takes is the right thing to come along and BAM! You take the win right at the end,

But the road to get there was an awful one with Captain America Brave New World and Snow White barely finding any audience at all, Thunderbolts* struggling in the box office despite good reviews, a Lilo and Stitch live action remake that I thought would be a 1-1.5 billion dollar hit only to barely get over the billion dollar mark while Fantastic Four was greeted with a shrug from audiences and Tron Ares got nullified,

And then there is the mess inside the studio with Pixar struggling, Lucasfilm not much better and a leader in Bob Iger who has been there for the better part of 20 years and has returned not as the white knight but as the architect of so many of Disney’s current problems,

And those problems stem from Iger inheriting a studio on its knees from Michael Eisner and deciding to essentially spend his way out of trouble and acquire short term sugar hit successes that only really end up disguising the lack of proper long term planning and strategies that actually build successful and durable franchises,

And Marvel Studios once an invincible juggernaut along with Lucasfilm and Pixar have borne the brunt of these problems as they didn’t really originate with Walt Disney Pictures itself, sure Pixar had a distribution deal with Disney in its early days but it wasn’t until Iger took the reins that it was formally brought into the fold then there was the decades long struggle with boys and Iger’s decision was to then acquire Marvel and Lucasfilm to solve that problem,

Only it really didn’t and again Disney’s struggle to appeal to boys is far from new its been there for many decades now that isn’t to say they made movies for boys they did with the likes of Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, later on Aladdin and Hercules to name a few but their primary bread and butter was animated fairy tales that while boys did like them they mainly appealed to young girls,

And that mindset ended up kicking back in with these acquired brands and now their not what they once were and personally I think Disney needs to get rid of them all unless things change drastically because I cannot see anything improving for them anytime soon because the question now has to be asked whether it was Bob Iger who masterminded the studios juggernaut years in the 2010’s or was it really Alan Horn who Iger hired after he retired from Warner Brothers and more and more I feel that it was Horn and not Iger who had his finger on the pulse.

2. Warner Brothers:

Oh what could have been,

On any metric the year that Warner Brothers has had after being down in the pitt for so long is remarkable,

7 movies opening at number one above 40 million dollars, a wide variety of movies covering a range of genres and a movie in One Battle After Another that is essentially the Best Picture Oscar’s to lose,

And on top of all that this felt like the year where the Discovery approach to running the studio after a rough 2-3 years of sorting out the mess they inherited from AT&T and WarnerMedia really paid off, the fruit was ripe for picking and it was plump, juicy and delicious,

All that David Zaslav and Co had to do next was set the course for the next 10-20 years, get Animation and Family Entertainment back up and running again and resist cutting and running for a short term pay cheque,

And yet that’s precisely what Zaslav more or less did, after all the crap he got thrown at him for some of his decisions, after all that work sorting out WB to make it a viable studio again, after making the hires he did that could execute his vision properly and after FINALLY setting out a proper course for DC on film he cut and ran like a coward and showed his true colours,

And those colours being no more than those of a financial administrator, the type that are budget men brought in when a company enters receivership and they sort out the books, tidy up the company and get it ready for another sale and I was someone who thought that Zaslav’s calls as the head of WB were more hit than miss,

After all he hired Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy to restore the allure of Warner Bros Pictures and then reupped their contracts after this historic year, he was the one to hire James Gunn and Peter Safran to administer the Panadol Solubles to alleviate WB of its DC migraine which had been there really since Richard Donner was fired from Superman II in 1979 and New Line Cinema became a home of horror once again,

Not to mention Warner Home Video was kicking goal after goal after goal with their physical disc releases especially their catalogue titles like Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon,

But nope instead of sitting back, chomping on a cigar or two and thumbing his nose at his critics all he’s done instead is vindicate them and validate their concerns when he took the job and now all of this good long hard work risks being undone by Netflix coming in as the potential new owners of the studio who will be under no obligation if they so choose to keep any of the current people in the current roles at the studio let alone any potential scuttling of the Home Video division which would be equally fatal,

And the heads of Netflix can make all the promises they want about committing to theatrical releases and home video physical disc releases plus not wanting to change things too much but many film fans (myself included) will not believe them unless they back up those empty promises with concrete actions and deeds as those speak louder than any words they say right now.

And that leaves a surprising Number 1 which is:

Universal:

Even when your done, you can get back up again,

And Universal has not had the best of years with big movies like How to Train your Dragon, Jurassic World Rebirth, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and Wicked for Good I’m certain they were hoping to be at or near a billion dollars worldwide at the box office and instead they all fell short of the mark,

And then there is Blumhouse which has put out a few stinkers of its own and Jordan Peele’s produced Him which has made me start to worry about Peele’s judgement in what projects to back,

But Focus Features looks to have a good year and 2026 is definitely going to be their year to take the top studio spot with Michael/Super Mario Galaxy/The Odyssey/Disclosure Day and Minions 3 all of which should be mammoth hits at the box office,

And that only happens when you have good studio leadership at the top and Universal has that in Donna Langley who to her credit has built a leadership team in that studio that celebrates the wins and learns from the losses,

Case in point the Dark Universe in 2017 which got burnt alive right out of the gate with the Mummy and then went no further, those in charge including Langley deserve huge kudos for seeing their mistake and going “That didn’t work but we have Jurassic Park, Despicable Me and the Fast and the Furious to keep us going” although now only Despicable Me remains viable,

But now thanks to shrewd judgement by Langley and Co, Universal now has Christopher Nolan and Taylor Sheridan to help carry the globe on their backs and Uni has already had the first taste of Nolan’s winning formula with Oppenheimer and should do so again with the Odyssey and Sheridan could well deliver them big hits for Peacock their streaming service and some mid-range movies that the big tentpoles could anchor well.

And this has funnily enough been the theme of this years State of the Studios, the leadership at the top that can set the direction, hire the right lieutenants to oversee studio branches and when that tree starts to wilt or gets chopped down in the pursuit of a short sighted dollar and before the dark times, before the pandemic the sense of good studio leadership wasn’t as important but now with theatrical attendance down and only springing up for select titles the importance of a good studio chief is more important than ever.