Is it too late to reverse Hollywood's runaway production? Writers on the ‘stark' reality

Los Angeles Times

a day ago

When you gather the creative minds behind six of the most entertaining and acclaimed shows of 2025, the conversation is destined for narrative intrigue. The writers who took part in this year's Envelope Roundtable touched on social media blackouts, release strategies, runaway production, even the wonder of Bravo's 'The Valley.' How's that for a twist?
This panelists are Debora Cahn of 'The Diplomat,' about an American foreign service officer thrust into a thorny web of geopolitics; R. Scott Gemmill of 'The Pitt,' which focuses on front-line healthcare workers inside a Pittsburgh hospital during a single 15-hour shift; Lauren LeFranc of 'The Penguin,' a reimagining of the Batman villain Oswald Cobblepot as a rising Gotham City kingpin, Oz Cobb; Craig Mazin of 'The Last Of Us,' an adaptation of the popular video game series about survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic; Seth Rogen of 'The Studio,' a chronicle of the film industry's mercenary challenges as seen through the eyes of a newly appointed studio chief; and Jen Statsky of 'Hacks,' about an aging comic's complicated relationship with her outspoken mentee.
Read on for excerpts from our discussion.
Lauren, you're making a series that is tethered to source material that's really beloved by fans. I'm curious what the conversations are like with DC, or 'The Batman' director Matt Reeves, when your series has to fit into a larger canon.
LeFranc: I knew where Oz ended in 'The Batman.' I knew my job was to arc him to rise to power and achieve a certain level of power by the end. Outside of that, I was given carte blanche and I could just play. And that's the most exciting thing to me. We both were in agreement that this should be a character study of this man. I love digging into the psychology of characters.
So many people were like, 'Do you feel pressure? What's this like for you?' And I was like, 'Am I numb as a human?' I don't feel that kind of pressure. I feel pressure to tell a great story and to write interesting, engaging characters that are surprising and to kind of surprise myself. I'm not the first type of person you would think who would get an opportunity to write a guy like Oz, necessarily, and to write into this type of world. I think there's been a lot of crime dramas and a lot of genre shows or features that don't have the lens that I have on a man like that. So I took that seriously. And I also really wanted to pepper the world with really interesting, complicated women as well. I felt like, in some of these genres, sometimes those characters weren't as fully formed.
Craig, you know what it's like working with source material, and we knew the fate of fan-favorite character Joel, who dies in Part 2 of the video game. Tell me about your experience of the death of Joel in the video game — playing it — and how that informed what you wanted to see out of Season 2 and where exactly it would fall.
Mazin: I was upset when it happened, but I wasn't upset at the game. It was, narratively, the right thing to do. If you make a story that is about moral outcomes and the consequences of our behavior, and somebody goes through a hospital and murders a whole lot of people, and kind of dooms the world to be stuck in this terrible place, and takes away the one hope they have of getting out of it, yeah, there should be a consequence. If there's no consequence or even a mild consequence, then it's a bit neutered, isn't it? It made sense to me and it made sense that if we were going to tell the story, that was the story we were going to tell. Sometimes people do ask me, 'Was there any part of you that was like, 'Hey, let's not have Joel die?'' No. That would be the craziest thing of all time.
How quick were you watching the real-time reaction from fans?
Mazin: I don't do that.
Rogen: But how do you get validation? How do you know to feel good?
Statsky: Can you teach me not to look?
Mazin: I think I'm looking for validation. Really what I'm looking for is to repeat abusive behavior toward me — that's what my therapist says. For all of our shows, millions and millions and millions of people are watching these around the world. And if 10,000 people on Twitter come at you for something, that is a negligible number relative to the size of the audience, but it sure doesn't feel [like it]. So I made a choice. The downside is I do miss the applause. Who among us doesn't love applause? I've just had to give that feeling up to not feel the bad feelings.
With a show like 'The Studio' or 'Hacks,' does it feel cathartic to lampoon the industry or show the ridiculous nature of the business and the decision-makers sometimes?
Rogen: What's funny is, as we were writing the show, we never used the word 'satire.' To us, the goal was not to make fun of any element of the industry — honestly, it's mostly based on myself and my own fears, as someone who's in charge of things, that I'm making the wrong choices, and that I'm prioritizing the wrong things, and that I'm convincing my idols to work with me and then I'm letting them down, and I'm championing the wrong ideas. That I'm making things worse and that I'm giving notes to people that are detrimental rather than exciting, and that I'm mitigating my own risks rather than trying to bolster creative swings. That was the startling moment where I realized I personally relate in my darkest moments to a studio executive more than I do a creative person in the industry in many ways. And that was kind of the moment where I was like, 'Oh, that's a funny thing to explore.'
Statsky: But it's interesting when you put it like that, because of the part of showrunning where you become management and you're much more on that business side [of] running a show. We're executives in many ways too.
Mazin: I have a question for you. How do you deal with the fact that — as we kind of move through things as writers, we are always comrades, we are colleagues of people. When you become a showrunner, you don't notice it at first, but there is this barrier between you and everybody, and one day you wake up and realize, 'Oh, it's because they look at me and see someone who can fire them, who can elevate them, who can change their lives for better or worse.' And you start to feel very, very lonely all of a sudden.
Statsky: Oh, there's a group text you're not on.
Mazin: And it's about you.
Statsky: It's about you. It's such a hard part of this job that I struggle with very much because as writers, we are empathetic to others, and we are observing the world, and we are trying to commune with people as best as possible. But then you do this thing and you're like, 'I like writing, I like writing, I like writing.' And they're like, 'Great. Now here's a 350-person company to manage and you become a boss.' I struggle with it a lot, the thinking of people's feelings, thinking of people's emotions, wanting to be in touch with them, but then also, at the end of the day, having to sometimes make really difficult management-type decisions that affect people's livelihood. I find it very challenging. I need your therapist for that as well.
Debora, you have a character, a female vice president, who's been doing the bidding of an older president whose capabilities have been called into question, and spoiler alert, she becomes president. The season launched a week or so before the 2024 presidential election. What was that like? And how is it writing a political drama now versus when you were working on 'The West Wing'?
Cahn: Back in 'The West Wing' days, we would have people come in, people who worked in the field, and we would say, 'What are you worried about that we don't know to worry about yet?' And that was a pretty good barometer for getting an interesting story that was likely to still be topical in a year. That's all you want, really, is to not be completely lapped by the news when you're trying to tell a story that's not going to go to air for a year. Now, we're released from any boundaries of any kind. There's nothing that we can do that's more absurd than what's happening. Suddenly, we're doing a documentary, or we're doing a balm for what you wish government was like or what you vaguely remember it was like. But we're trying to stay in the headspace of, 'What is the foreign policy community going to be thinking about in the next two years?' and trying to find something that will continue to feel relevant. But more and more it's like, 'What are the conflicts that sane people have with each other in this field? What happens when you can look at two people and you feel like they both have good values and they are kind to children? What do they fight about?'
Let's talk about release strategies. There's the traditional, week-to-week model and the more modern, all-at-once model. There's a mix of both in the marketplace. Scott, with 'The Pitt,' you could just see the way people rallied around every week to see what happened next. What do you like about the weekly release?
Gemmill: I've only ever done that. This is my first streaming show, and we are doing it in a traditional drop a week. So I've never had a show that was bingeable. I don't know any other way. At one point, they were going to release three episodes at once, but they only released two [at the start]. I don't have a dog in that fight. I think my show, just because of the nature of it, would be very hard to binge.
Rogen: As someone who's been bingeing it, I can attest to that. [To Cahn] Yours comes out all at once.
Cahn: It does. I don't love that. It's not what I would choose. I think Netflix offers a lot of other pluses. [It's] got a big audience all over the world and that's really nice. But I came up in broadcast television, and the idea that you've created this thing and it's a story that you've experienced over time, and then people are like two days and done, it just —
Mazin: It's weird.
Cahn: And it changes the way that you write.
Mazin: Over the last few years, what's happening is, for shows that are coming out week by week, people will now save up three at a time. So they don't want to watch week after week. There's this weird accordion thing going on, and I don't know where this is going. I don't think any of us do. I'm a little nervous about the week by week. I am just hoping that it remains.
I thought for sure one day Netflix would go, 'Why are we doing this?' Because I really didn't understand. I still don't understand.
Cahn: I have this question every three months.
Rogen: They don't have an answer.
Cahn: It works for them.
Gemmill: Wonder why they complain about grind. Because it's not there. Well, it's because you put it all out at once.
Mazin: But then what I'm worried about is that they're right. I'm just wondering if people are starting to lose their patience.
Statsky: Attention span. I think they are. I've even noticed, because we used to drop two a week. In this season for 'Hacks,' we've done one a week. I saw a couple tweets where people were like, 'Why are the episodes shorter this year?' I was like, 'Well, they're not. You used to watch two.' But I do think the one-a-week model, because now people are so trained [to binge] — like you're saying, the attention span, it's scary. I don't think people want to watch like that anymore.
Rogen: I produced 'The Boys,' and we actually went from them all coming out at once to weekly. And it did not affect the viewership in any way, shape or form was what we were told. What it did affect, that we could just see, was it sustained cultural impact. People talked about it for three months instead of three weeks of incredibly intense chatter. It just occupied more space in people's heads, which I think was beneficial to the show.
Cahn: When they're coming out one a week, you can repeat things that you can't when they're coming out all together. You have to look at them in terms of, did they each have the same rhythm? Are they each really featuring the same characters and storylines? You have to think about it in terms of, 'If people do three at a time, what's their experience going to be?' It's terrible.
The talk of the town is runaway production and how to stop it. Scott, 'The Pitt' is set in Pittsburgh and you did film exteriors there, but principal production happened on the Warner Bros. lot. Talk about why that was important for you.
Gemmill: The show could have been shot in Moose Jaw. But it was important to bring the work here, so we fought really hard to get the California tax credit. The most important part of my job besides writing producible scripts that are on time is to keep my show on the air as long as possible, to keep everyone employed as long as possible. And that's the thing I like the best about it. This is the first show that Noah [Wyle]'s done since he left 'ER' that's shot in Los Angeles. It's a shame. There's more production now, but when we first were at Warner Bros. for this, it was a ghost town. It's so sad because I've been in the business for 40 years and still get excited when I go on a lot. And to see them become unused just because it's cheaper to shoot somewhere else ... and there's so many talented people here, and it's hard on their families if you have to go to Albuquerque for six months. I don't ever want to leave the stage again.
Mazin: We did our postproduction on the Warner Bros. lot, but we shoot in Canada. And I love Canada. But yeah, of course, I'd love to be home. I like doing postproduction here. I'll take what I get. The financial realities are pretty stark, that's the problem. If you are making a smaller show, the gap is not massive. If you're making a larger show, every percentage becomes a bigger amount of money and also represents a larger amount of people to employ. But what's good is it seems like they're starting to get their act together in Sacramento. I do worry sometimes it's a little bit too late, because the rest of the world seems to be in an arms race to see how many incentives they can give to get production to go there.
I'm hoping that at least we can start to move the needle a bit because, listen, that Warner Bros. lot, when I was a kid starting out, I would go on that lot, I would see the little 'ER' backlot with the diner and all of it. And I was like, 'That's on TV. It's here.' And now I walk around the Warner Bros. lot and it's just a single tram full of tourists and no one else. And it's so, so sad.
LeFranc: It's really heartbreaking. You used to be able to write what you're doing, produce, do post all on the same lot. You had a family that you were able to form, and you could mentor writers. I would not be able to be a showrunner if not for all the people who came before me who mentored me, and I could walk to set, produce my own episode, and then I can walk to post. It's so hard now where you're asking writers, especially if networks aren't paying for writers to go to set, 'Can you pay for yourself to fly to New York?' It just makes it so hard to be able to educate people in the way that I feel like I was privileged enough to be educated. What are we going to do about that?
Gemmill: Mistakes get made. The best part about the whole business is it's collaborative. But when you're separated by thousands of miles, sometimes there's a disconnect.
Before we wrap, please tell me what you're watching. Jen, we were talking about 'The Valley' earlier.
Rogen: Oh, I watch 'The Valley' too. It's amazing. Do you watch 'The Valley' aftershow? It's almost as good as 'The Valley.'
Statsky: I'm really worried about Jax.
Rogen: We watch reality television. I see the blank looks on everybody's face.
Statsky: We're in comedy.
Mazin: I can't believe how scared I was when you were talking, and then how good I felt when you're like, 'It's a reality show.'
Statsky: So, you know 'Vanderpump Rules'?
Mazin: Ish.
Statsky: It's an offshoot.
Rogen: Which is an offshoot of —
Statsky: 'Real Housewives.'
Mazin: This is an echo of an echo. Go on.
Statsky: Yes, it's an echo of an echo of garbage.
Rogen: But it's so good.
Statsky: But it is the worst indictment of heterosexual marriage I've ever seen.
Rogen: Yes, it really is.
Mazin: Oh, so incidentally, the San Fernando Valley is what it's [about]? It's about Valley Village.
Statsky: Valley Village. It's the couples that have moved to the Valley and are having children and —
Rogen: And they are all in very bad places in their lives. It's amazing.
Statsky: You think [in] reality shows most people are in bad places. That's sadly what people want to watch. These people are in particularly bad places.
Rogen: And the show seems to be compounding it, I think.
Statsky: Yeah, weirdly, being on a reality show is not helping their problem.
Rogen: I find that I watch reality TV because when I watch all of your shows, I find them intellectually challenging. They make me self-conscious, or they make me inspired or something, which is not how I want to feel necessarily after a long day at work just watching something. And so reality TV makes me feel none of those things. It in no way reminds me of what I've done all day.
Mazin: If you make me dissociate, I'm watching.
Statsky: You're going to love it. But once you start watching, Jax owns a bar in Studio City. We can all go. We can reunite.
Mazin: I've gone to that bar.
Rogen: You been to Jax's?
Mazin: Yes, I've been to that bar.
Statsky: Wait, hold on. But everyone else in that bar was there because they watched the reality show. Why were you there?
LeFranc: Out of context, I'm so invested in all this.
Rogen: You've got to watch it. ... Nothing I will ever make is as good as 'The Valley.'