Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay declared Hollywood is over, citing collapsing studios, sold-off lots, and a crowdfunding model she says has already replaced the old gatekeepers.
Two-time Oscar nominee Ava DuVernay did not hedge. On stage at a Screen Talk during the BFI London Film Festival, she told the room the industry she worked in is done.
“Hollywood is over,” she said, according to Breitbart News. She followed it with a blunt inventory of the wreckage.
"Did you guys hear? It’s done. They’re buying each other, they’re collapsing. It’s all changed. They’re selling studio lots. The idea of going to Sundance and getting a three-picture deal from Harvey Weinstein? He’s in prison."
That is not a critic on the outside. That is a celebrated progressive filmmaker describing the business that made her famous.
DuVernay did not stop at the eulogy. She sketched what she sees replacing the studio system: apps, sites, and small pools of like-minded money.
"You put your movie up there, and there are all kinds of apps and sites that allow people who are like-minded to do it."
She gave a concrete example. Twenty people putting in $5,000 each. Enough, she said, “to say something or make something.” Recoupment, in her telling, no longer runs through a studio greenlight. It runs through festival circuits, YouTube, or a straight sale.
"But [it’s about] also just asking people, getting 20 people investing $5,000, a nice amount of money to say something or make something. And there are ways to get that money back, whether it’s through taking the film around to different film festivals or YouTubing it or selling it. This is what we’re going back to."
“This is what we’re going back to.” The line lands like a confession. The old ladder, Sundance premiere, Harvey Weinstein handshake, three-picture deal, is not bruised. It is gone. Weinstein is in prison. The lots are for sale. The buyers are buying each other on the way down.
DuVernay framed the collapse as a decade-long shift, not a sudden shock. “Everything has changed over the last 10 years, even since I’ve been making [movies and TV shows],” she said.
Her closing question was pure Hollywood progressive framing, offered as her own:
"It’s all: What do we do now? What can we build now that’s new, that serves more kinds of people and kinds of stories?"
Serve more kinds of people. Build something new. That is the language the industry has used for years while the commercial core hollowed out. Now one of its own Oscar-nominated voices is saying the old structure is finished and the money has to come from somewhere else.
She did not name the apps. She did not produce a balance sheet. She did not need to. Studios consolidating, lots on the market, and a prison sentence for the man who once handed out three-picture deals told the story for her.
Hollywood spent years acting as the country’s cultural referee. An Oscar nominee just said the arena is closed. The rest of the country already found other screens.
