“IP is recession-proof”

This is part one of a two-part series by Paula Mejía on what happens to Hollywood IP during an economic downturn.

Early in Apple TV+’s Hollywood satire The Studio, an executive named Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) shakily meets with the studio’s mercurial CEO Griffin Mill (played by Bryan Cranston, dressed in ‘70s Van Nuys porn producer chic). While he’s apparently considering Remick for the top job as studio head, Mill has a nagging concern—chiefly, that Remick is into “artsy-fartsy filmmaking bullshit” versus the studio’s bottom line. 

Mill then reveals that he’s about to lock down the rights to Kool-Aid IP for the studio, and—I’m paraphrasing here—that if a movie about dolls sans genitalia could rake in a billion dollars, Remick should thus have no problem doubling that figure off “the legacy brand of Kool-Aid” alone.

The tense coexistence of art and commerce animates The Studio, which is already fizzy with Emmys chatter despite Hollywood’s less-than-rapturous historical reception of stories that cause them to look a bit too long in the mirror. The punchline of the Kool-Aid bit, which crystallizes in a wildly vague promotional video made by marketing head Maya Mason (a delightfully daffy Kathryn Hahn), is that there’s no story here. But Remick knows he needs a hit, and everyone has heard this eponymous jug of Red40 bellow “oh yeahhhh!” In The Studio’s flagging economy, as in ours, name-brand familiarity can often be more appealing than an actual story.

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In times of extreme contraction, studios seek big payouts without taking big swings. “The streamers are all saying they want four quadrant” programming, says TV producer Ilene Staple, a reference to a property that hits their four demographic sweet spots (men under 25, women under 25, men over 25, and women over 25). The safest way to do that, in the eyes of executives, is to plumb the reserves of “proven IP,” or intellectual property with a discernible pre-existing fan base. Movies based on original stories, like Ryan Coogler’s smash vampire epic Sinners, are anomalies in a world of Minecrafts, and especially so at a time when 401ks are now more like 201ks. 

“When the business was good and flowing, you could take shots and ‘okay, we'll have some proven IP, and we'll mix it in a portfolio with some unknown, fresh ideas, and it's a nice balance,’” says Troy Craig Poon, formerly the head of acquisitions at MTV and a film producer. “But now we're in such a contracted industry that if you have a really great original idea, good luck to you. Because it's very challenging to get it made.” In the words of a former executive at a major streamer, “IP is recession-proof.”

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