In Hollywood, there’s a new sheriff — or sheriffs — in town, according to Barry Diller. The IAC chairman said huge tech companies like Apple have now replaced legacy studios like Disney and Paramount as the leaders of the entertainment world.
“What is the definition of the leadership of Hollywood? The definition is that it has moved to technology companies. Netflix, Amazon and Apple are really the controllers of what we would call the worldwide film and television business,” Diller said Friday. “That’s, to say the least, a country mile from what our imagery of Hollywood was.”
His comments were made at FT’s Business of Entertainment Summit in West Hollywood, Calif.
One key reason for the entertainment world’s power shift, Diller noted, is that the tech companies simply have more money to spend. Apple, for example, is worth $3.5 trillion and Amazon has a market cap of $2 trillion. Disney, for comparison, is worth $169 billion.
“It’s astronomical, the difference in resources between those companies,” Diller added.
Disney, it should be mentioned, still spends a pretty penny on content. But the tech companies are accelerating their spending while Disney and others are trying to reign theirs in.
Last year, Disney paid $27 billion for shows and movies — down about $3 billion from the year prior. Netflix spent $13 billion on content last year and will spend up to $17 billion in 2024, while Amazon increased spending 14% year-over-year to $18.9 billion in 2023.
For the unfamiliar, Diller has a long and decorated history in Hollywood. He was the chief executive of Paramount from 1974-1984, before becoming the head honcho at 20th Century Fox, where he launched Fox as the nation’s fourth network in 1986. In 1995, Diller founded IAC, the digital media conglomerate behind outlets like People Magazine and The Daily Beast.
“The hegemony of Hollywood on worldwide entertainment, which had been going on since the birth of the film industry in the early 20th century, that’s gone. That is no more,” he reiterated. “Hollywood no longer has that hegemony.”
