On the heels of the Academy Awards, Bloomberg Originals has posted Why Hollywood is Facing a Very Unhappy Ending.

The short documentary explores the current downturn in the Los Angeles-based film industry, questioning if Hollywood is confronting a temporary or a terminal decline.

It outlines the economic crisis…

• Production Slump: Shooting days in Los Angeles dropped 16% in 2025, falling roughly 50% below the 2017 peak.
• Box Office Decline: US and Canadian box office receipts totalled $8.6 billion in 2025, a significant drop from the $12 billion reached in 2018.
• Labor Impact: Employment in California’s motion picture industry, which peaked in 2016, was decimated by the pandemic and the 2023 actor and writer strikes. Approximately 41,000 workers left the industry between 2022 and 2024.
• Streaming Losses: Major media companies poured billions into streaming services but are now pivoting toward profitability, leading to mass layoffs and fewer project greenlights.

…and blames it on technological and cultural disruption:

• Artificial Intelligence: AI is viewed as an existential threat with tools now capable of recreating voices, faces, and movements.
• Creator Economy: Platforms like YouTube and TikTok are capturing younger audiences.
• Consolidation: Aggressive mergers are accelerating as legacy media companies seek the scale needed to survive against tech giants.

Meanwhile, Dara Resnik, showrunner, writer, indie producer and educator, has posted For the Pragmatic F*cking Dreamers on Substack.

In it she outlines her survival strategy for filmmaking in Hollywood:

“1. The job (writing pilots/screenplays)
2. The hustle (pitching)
3. The work I own (making MY shit)
Most people in this industry are already doing at least two of these and feeling like that means they’ve somehow failed. I need you to know that it’s not just okay, it’s the strategy now. Here’s what it actually looks like to live inside this moment without either pretending it’s fine or giving up.”

She goes on to explain her creative life and raison d’être — well worth reading.

Dara, like the Bloomberg doc, believe that indie films are the future, what Ted Hope and others call NonDē or “non-dependent” or “non-dependent on the studio machine”, referring to a type of filmmaking that is self-driven, micro-budget, and community-powered.

My take: ah, those were the days, eh? By the way, Hollywood is still making films, just not in L.A. right now — check out the very last credits of any movie these days to see tax-payer dollars at work in Hollywood films from: Canada, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Georgia, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Malta, and on and on.