Who Wants $30 Billion?

Because the finna is gag, sis

Likely DOGE candidates from Dear White People (2014)

Hollywood must be doing better than is being widely reported, or experienced by myself and everyone I know. The town will forfeit $30 billion in potential revenue this year, and every year it doesn’t close the inequity gap for creatives of the global majority. And yet, according to Variety, Hollywood is making a show of ditching DEI Programs to Avoid Donald Trump’s Wrath:

“Bullying is causing a lot of companies to reassess,” says Vernā Myers, former head of inclusion at Netflix. “Most smart companies are just trying to figure out how far this is going to go. They’re trying to stay out of the crosshairs.”

Bullying. That’s the official reason Hollywood capitalists are okay with leaving $30 billion uncapitalized. Although, even before the current administration, as far back as 2021, a series of reports from consulting firm McKinsey & Co. have been outlining how this money is forfeited and how it could be gained. An article for Hollywood Reporter from 2024, months before the last election, summed it up this way:

“…analysts totaled up the potential financial revenue that Hollywood could stand to gain if it adopted more culturally inclusive business solutions: $10 billion per year from closing the Black inequity gap, an eye-popping $12 billion to $18 billion from properly valuing Latino professionals and consumers, and — in the latest report — $2 billion to $4.4 billion from more effectively tapping the Asian and Pacific Islander market.

I know the eyes of people in Hollywood tend to glaze over whenever they hear the words “equity and inclusion.” I did think “ $30 billion dollars” was still a draw.

How the business was saved last time, from Hollywood Black on MGM+

Doubling Down

$30 Billion, which the actual reports from McKinsey & Co suggest is a conservative number, is what we stood to gain back when DEI was still at its performative peak. For comparison, the total US Box Office since Covid has been hovering around $8 billion. An extra $30 Billion would increase the revenue for the entire Film & TV business by 7 percent, at a time when industry consolidation and layoffs have devastated creative ecosystems so severely, few expect them to ever recover.

Storied political strategist Alastair Campbell, who helped Tony Blair and Britain’s Labour Party topple a decade of Thatcherism, told Pod Save America this week about the dangers of caving to bullies at a time like this:

“I think that in ceding the ground on this whole woke thing, we conceded to a really bad idea… The Right is brilliant at this, they will take something that they worry… is an advantage to the other side and they poison it… with the help of the Right-Wing media eco-system they then make the Left lose confidence…”

So what does Campbell, known for overthrowing deeply entrenched conservative movements and restarting an economy, think we should do?

“If I was on a big conglomerate board, I’d come out and say this is the time to double down on DEI. Some might say but what about the polls? The polls are driven by the nature and the terms of the debate. Control the nature and terms of the debate.”

Campbell’s point about “controlling the nature and terms of the debate” rather than falling for bully tactics, has many Hollywood analogs. For instance very few, reporting on the shrinking economics of Film & TV, seem interested in connecting the dots to the town’s lack of meaningful commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

DEI DIE’s on Dear White People on Netflix

Unjustified Frictions

Despite the press releases and progressively coded casting choices, one can see by looking at the data collected in McKinsey & Co’s reporting, that all but a handful of industry leaders are tacitly ignoring their advice. To save you the trouble, no, casting or hiring a lone non-white creative and giving them less resources to make or market their projects than their white counterparts is not listed as a way to close the inequity gap. And yet when these are the only efforts made and the project falls short of box-office expectations, diversity is all but named as the culprit.

Not outright, of course. But, one doesn’t have to try very hard to read between the lines of industry analysis on a couple recent tent-poles starring non-white actors, struggling to meet box office expectations. Whether by weighing “controversial statements” made by the actors or pondering the appetites of “middle America” it’s hard to arrive at any other conclusion for the financial failure of these films other than “the lead isn’t white.” The data, however, does not support this conclusion. According to McKinsey & Co’s report on Black creatives:

“Our estimates are based on closing the representation deficit for off-screen talent, achieving production and marketing budget parity, and giving Black-led properties equal international distribution. As noted elsewhere in the article, these frictions that suppress industry revenues are unjustified with respect to performance.”

Billions in potential income is being suppressed because of “unjustified frictions,” one of the more adorable euphemisms for racism I’ve come across. In other words, these projects are essentially (even if unconsciously) being set up to fail due to a lack of personnel, financial resources and also vision. Yes, you need people who have different culturally based view points to strategically open a movie in ever diversifying markets.

Most audiences know from experience that traditional TV ads and Rotten Tomatoes scores are not trustworthy reasons to leave one’s home and native digital environment to risk $20 on a movie. If that’s all you got to get audiences into seats, blame a lack of vision and understanding of the modern attention economy on the film’s failure, not the race or political leanings of the people involved. The mono-culture is done. Multi-cultural view points are required to capitalize the billions in question.

Popular Myths

Another useful analog to Campbell’s point about the polls is the way we talk about audience habits. Prognosticators and execs talk about “the audience viewing habits” as if that weren’t a demonstrably malleable thing. We have all seen and read the breathless reporting on how Netflix accomplished this feat in less than a decade.

Beyond our lived experiences, anyone who knows Hollywood’s history understands that shaping consumer habits has historically been the aim and primary job of the studios. Genres were introduced during the silent era in order to regulate audiences’ expectations and thus make more reliable investment predictions. China certainly understood Hollywood’s unique ability to mold public perception. Its often touted dominance of the global box office was not an inevitability, but the product of a decades long pursuit in adopting Hollywood’s model for stoking demand among audiences.

So when Hollywood people say things like “theatrical is dead” or “AI is inevitable,” or more to the point, “Black movies don’t travel” they are not describing an actual reality, so much as they are committing to one.

The people in charge of the money, however, seem like they’d rather lose out on revenue than to “risk” equitably resourcing projects from or starring people of color. In the case of Black led films, this means even when the data suggests that no matter the budget level, the ROI is higher for Black led projects.

What you’re looking at is hard cold data that shows no matter the production or marketing budget, Black projects have a higher ROI than other projects.

My friends, the myth that “Black films don’t travel” literally can not be dispelled by using the language of the oppressor: financial charts and graphs! Even when that myth is holding back the salvation of the industry.

Disruptive investments in Bad Hair on Hulu

Call To Action

It would be nice if the people in charge of the money would stop shooting themselves in the foot, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Instead, I’ve been asking aloud, where are the disruptor investors? Who has the courage to do for “platforming projects of the global majority” what Netflix has done for “making people watch things at home?” It might just save theatrical, invigorate streaming and make a lot of money.

Currently Hollywood’s “finna is gag.” And if you plan on waiting for that bit of Gen Z AAVE to cross over before you take advantage, you’re going to miss out.

As I keep saying to anyone who will listen, platforming Black History provides potential strategies to survive late-stage capitalism. Black Hollywood History is no different. Oscar Micheaux created one of the earliest independent markets for alt-Hollywood cinema with his debut Within Our Gates, a response to the Maga origin story Birth of a Nation.

After the studio system collapsed in the 1960’s, Melvin Van Peebles ushered in a decade-long windfall of films for and by Black people before it was given the dismissive name of Blaxploitation. Spike Lee repeated this miracle again with Do The Right Thing in ‘89, sparking a decade of hip-hop-infused classics set in Black neighborhoods with both art-house and blockbuster ambitions. Tyler Perry has become an industry onto himself, impervious to the apocalypse befalling the rest of us, by never failing to cultivate his own segment of the Black audience.

Because I study history, I’m willing to bet that Black artists will play an outsized role in reinventing this business. We do so every time it crumbles as if our lives depend on it, because in many ways they do. Our influence over popular culture and mass media has often been the only tool in our arsenal towards liberation and it remains a potent one. The question is, who has the courage to withstand all the… (checks notes) bullying, I guess, and reap this $30 billion? If that’s you, I know a few folks who can help you figure out the best way to spend it.