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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bill Mechanic On Trump & Hollywood Tariff Quick-Fix
Editor's note: When President Donald Trump proposed to 'fix' runaway Hollywood production by imposing 100% tariffs on films shot abroad, Pandemonium Films CEO Bill Mechanic answered Deadline's call quickly to break down whether such a kneejerk solution could remedy a problem long in the making. A former producer of the Oscars and top executive at Paramount, Disney and Fox, Mechanic spelled out why the tariff solution was folly. Deadline got a ton of reaction and so did Mechanic, who agreed the complex problem deserved a second deep dive. Here it is, and we're grateful to have it. Given the number of articles and opinions offered these past few days, it's clear that many people believe Donald Trump's tweet about instituting punitive tariffs on movies to help production in the U.S. There are discussions about what is actually subject to the tariff – the whole film or parts of it. How the tariffs might work in conjunction with federal production incentives. Arguments about whether the idea is good or bad. Whether any of it's real or just his usual bluster and hocus and pocus, without, that is, any real magic. More from Deadline Trump's Kneejerk Hollywood Fix Is No Tariff-ic Idea: Bill Mechanic Examines The Pitfalls & Tells How The Town Really Feels – Guest Column Read Jon Voight's Plan To Save Hollywood: Midsize Federal Tax Credits, Increased Write-Offs & Harsh Tariffs On Overseas Incentives Bruce Springsteen Says Trump Is Running "A Corrupt, Incompetent And Treasonous Administration" Like Apate, the Greek Goddess of deception, truth has no role in the Trump universe. Fundamentally, it's difficult to believe Trump would lift any finger other than his middle one toward Hollywood. Jon Voight's claim that Trump loves movies (well maybe not Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice), is absurd. Undoubtedly, he has a large base of fans here, but as far as votes go, he barely bothered to campaign in California. This just isn't where his bread is buttered. But I understand why people want to believe the offer of help is real, since the state of motion picture production is in critical condition. Production has been hacked at and chopped down by a variety of factors: the impact of the pandemic; the effect of the streamers cannibalizing theatrical exhibition even though theatrical releases make for more successful play off on the streamers; the self-immolation of actions by studios (best example: WB one year released their entire film slate day-and-date with streaming). And while the SAG and WGA strikes dealt with absolutely critical issues, they made the financing landscape even more tenuous. Put it all together and what do you have? An industry that makes fewer and fewer movies. The motion picture world of today reminds me of Rio – opulent penthouses (big IP) on one side of the street, and hovels (independent movies) on the other. No middle class in between. Of the Top 10 movies so far this year, the only two, Dog Man and King of Kings, both PG-rated animated films, were produced for less than $100 million (in fact, both less than $50 million). Independent movies have almost all been bullied out of the way. As a result, work opportunities have dried up, not just here but everywhere. Certainly some of the U.S. situation is due to overseas production, but that's a secondary factor. Soundstages are empty everywhere. The fact is jobs are scarce because movies are scarce. Many of the most constant sources of film financing have restricted what they fund. So what do tariffs do to address the problem of less films, more jobs, etc.? As close to nothing as you can get – unless you can't count. Tariffs fundamentally do one thing – make imported goods more costly. Usually instituted because of a severe imbalance in trade. Movies are very different in that regard – movies are one of America's most consistent winners in trade surplus. More than two-thirds of the revenue on major films come from overseas. Do not miss this point: A tariff may stop something from being made but it in no way at all guarantees it will get made in the U.S. With all the noise Trump has created from his preceding tariff announcements, the only responses have been an outlined agreement with the UK — one which the U.S. automakers feel is completely unfair to them. A just-announced ceasefire with China at crippling tariff levels has been without China conceding anything! Trump's nonsensical tariff policy is destroying everything and helping no one. The result is American trade surplus is at a historic low. Wall Street ping pongs the effects based on rumors and projections. Costs are beginning to skyrocket as the costs are passed on. Do you think for one moment the UK, Europe, Australia, India, Japan and China won't hatch plans to make it uneconomic to distribute American made films in their countries? Any tariff plan will destroy one of our greatest products in the balance of trade. If that happens, the crumbling economics of film production will be worse than at any point in time. Weakened theatrical, almost no TV or ancillary sales, and no international to speak of. If Trump wanted to create chaos, he has succeeded. The point being, even if there is some kind of movie tariff, do not expect the soundstages to be filled. The number of movies being made will further collapse. Independent production will move to the soundstages on Boot Hill. Tariffs don't help anyone in our industry. What would be a solution to losing movie production? Better owners of studios. More movies from streamers flowing through theatrical. Better movies. Or the thing that makes the most sense, competitive production incentives. Tariffs do not make Los Angeles, Atlanta or anywhere else here competitive. They raise prices. That's it. If Trump creates a federal production incentive program, it might, when added to state subsidies, change the landscape. But don't you think he would have done something for the industries he's crippled already? I don't know how true it is, but the commercials I've seen in the past few weeks claim that Ford has the most U.S.-based car manufacturing system, yet I just read that Ford thinks the car tariffs will cost them over $1.5 billion in profit!!! How are the farmers being helped? The merchants? Where do you think movies fall in our megalomaniac's world? That was the main point I was trying to make. Everyone wants a panacea for the problems ailing our industry. Wish fulfillment is clouding judgment. Trump has no plan to help movies. He hates Hollywood. We're a revenge target, not an industry that will help him. Look at what he's done to the Kennedy Center, to the law firms who opposed him, what he's tried to do to New York, how he said he would not provide federal aid when Los Angeles suffered the worst fires in our history, how he pulled out of climate control and attacks California's clean air initiatives. All the negativity aside, change happens only when we will it to happen. Our soundstages are empty, production levels are not only low and narrow in focus. Tariffs will only make matters worse. Incentives are the best chance we have to turn things around, so that's the effort we should all get behind. With enough support, perhaps the unlikely will come to pass and Washington will act. Best of Deadline Where To Watch All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies: Streamers With Multiple Films In The Franchise Everything We Know About 'My Life With The Walter Boys' Season 2 So Far 'Bridgerton' Season 4: Everything We Know So Far
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Trump's Kneejerk Hollywood Fix Is No Tariff-ic Idea: Bill Mechanic Examines The Pitfalls & Tells How The Town Really Feels
Editor's note: Bill Mechanic is chairman and CEO of Pandemonium Films and a former top executive at Paramount and Disney and chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment. He also is a former producer of the Oscars and Oscar-nominated films like Hacksaw Ridge and Coraline. He also is a teller of hard truths to whom Deadline turns when nobody else will speak up on a hot-button issue. That certainly is the case right now, a day after President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social how he plans to 'fix' runaway production by imposing tariffs on films and TV shows that film outside the U.S. The common refrain today has been that a film business finally on its firmest footing since Covid doesn't need a force to destabilize the hard-won forward momentum. Mechanic takes it a step further, questioning Trump's motives behind a power play that puts Hollywood on its heels, a feeling familiar to many other industries and segments of the economy struggling in this tariff moment. As anyone who refuses to log onto Truth Social knows, the site has changed the old newspaper slogan 'All the news that's fit to print' into 'All the lies fit to put online.' More from Deadline Trump Receives Jon Voight's Plan To 'Make Hollywood Great Again'; Studio Bosses Not Confirmed Yet To Meet POTUS Over Movie Tariffs Industry Reacts To Trump's 'Insane' Movie Tariff Threat: 'This Would Destroy The Independent Film Sector' IATSE Is "Engaging" With Trump On Movie Tariff Proposal, But Insists Federal Solution To Runaway Production Must "Do No Harm" To International Territories There is no truth on Truth. So what to make of Agent Orange, the King of Chaos, proclaiming he is going to save Hollywood? Last night he wrote: 'The movie industry is DYING a very fast death' and that he would help save America, on the grounds that shooting films overseas is a 'threat to national security.' Throwing those two big ideas together doesn't change that he has no intention of helping the film industry. All he wants is another dumpster fire in order to obfuscate the blowback his tariffs have caused havoc for American industry, the American economy and, oh yes, problems for everyone pretty much everywhere in the world. So what does he propose to help Hollywood? More tariffs. What Trump was really saying, to paraphrase Mark Antony, is: 'I come to bury Hollywood, not save it.' What he's after is more chaos (as if there isn't enough). Everything's backfiring and his unpopularity has reached a historic level. So he goes back to the tried-and-true lie — he's 'fixing' something broken. That, of course, is absurd. He's exacerbating the economic issues in the content-creation business, which covers both movies and all the various forms of television. There is nothing in his idea that will help the industry. Let's take it piece by piece (I may be missing a piece or two, but when attacked broadside, strike back in the same manner). Start with the notion that national security is threatened. Maybe he's doing that, but there isn't a kernel of the truth in the concept that shooting overseas can lead to embedding code or revealing war plans (for those, all you have to do is log into his Cabinet's chat groups). This isn't Fight Club, where porn can be inserted in between frames (especially considering that now, virtually everything is shot on video). I've produced or overseen hundreds of movies that were shot overseas, even built studios in Australia and Mexico for that purpose. Other than China, which offered rigid co-production terms, no foreign government has ever even commented on any political content in any of those movies. None has never asked for any changes, and never proposed a single idea. Shooting overseas used to happen mainly because it presented a more appropriate location, or because there were cost savings. More and more in the last decade-plus, money forces the decision, not location. I would guess lawsuits against any official decree will argue this point. Trump is butting into another area where he has no jurisdiction. I'm not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, but if national security is the foundation of the decree, it's a losing proposition. He's made up a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Trump was, is and always will be an outsider in Hollywood. Like so many other harebrained ideas coming out of Washington these days, this one seems spewed out rather than thought through, and it presents a solution that doesn't solve anything but aims to create headlines and noise as opposed to making things better. It is all part of Trump's revenge tour. He's out to destroy anyone or anything that has not bowed at his altar. Voters, law firms, educational institutions, for God's sakes — our allies! He's the guy lighting the fire to burn down Hollywood, not the one putting it out. Production has left California due to economic issues, but it has not left the U.S. Try booking a stage in Georgia or Louisiana. Those states have trained crews and valuable subsidies. There are many other states also attracting production with incentives but aren't as advanced. Much like Detroit lost its hold on the auto industry, California has lost its dominance, mostly due to the arrogance of not understanding there are always alternatives. More than 20 years ago, the film commission came to see me when I ran Fox to find out what could be done. I told them the labor costs were higher and the incentives at that time didn't exist at all. No-brainer to shoot elsewhere. Nothing was done until the problem grew to disaster levels. There are current bills before the California Legislature that, if passed, would be a godsend and reverse a lot of the production decisions based on money. If Trump really cared, he'd create a federal program of incentives (much like the one in Australia). What are the chances of that happening? Zero. He's too busy slashing and burning everything in his path that doesn't throw him money. Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico and even New York aren't losing projects over subsidies. California is — but California is part of the revenge tour, not a place he'd even think to play a round of golf. So what kind of potential harm will Trump's proposed fix create? Virtually no independent movie can be made without subsidies. Yes, if I can shoot in Australia and pick up 15% over one of our subsidy states, I would. I have. Because I'm not patriotic? Hardly. Then why? Because the current movie business is such a mess – the studios and streamers have damaged theatrical, eliminating the biggest part of sequential distribution and severely wounding international. Meaning every single bit of cost savings counts. Enough to be the difference between making a movie or scrapping it. If I produced Hacksaw Ridge 30 years ago, I would have had a much bigger budget and would not have shot the Okinawa section in Australia, and certainly would have shot the American section in the South. But to make the movie, I had to slice the budge by 30%, needing to shoot everything in Australia, where we were fortunately blessed by the world's best subsidies, and then raised the rest of the budget through equity and presales. Otherwise, the Oscar-nominated film wouldn't have been made. Under Trump's decree, Hacksaw Ridge would die before it had a chance to live. A film about American courage, an American humanitarian — an America we all believe in or want to believe in and one that bore no foreign influence but was proudly shot entirely in New South Wales. Independent production requires subsidies, not tariff wars. How many industries are being destroyed by tariffs? Small production companies and independent producers might become a thing of the past. The studios and streamers will survive the decree, but my guess is it will cut production because of higher costs. Disney, WB, Uni, and Sony will only make the surest bets (not that they aren't already), meaning the edges of production will be narrowed, and there is barely anything there now. Netflix and the streamers, whose growth now comes mainly from overseas, will have to adjust. It certainly is worse for them as they have allocated a good portion of their budgets to international production in order to have enough local product. Trump said he proposed his film tariffs after deep discussion with a couple of people. My guess is he was referencing talking to himself in the mirror, or to a vision of himself in some other wacky manner. This is an idea that has no thought behind it. It helps no one. It doesn't make America stronger. It only makes us a more hated country. Let's hope it dies a natural death, and that someone in the industry shows the courage to challenge the decree in court. The rest of us are just collateral damage in his revenge tour, where there is no such thing as collateral damage. There is only revenge. Like Mr. Magoo, he never notices the dead bodies left in the road. Best of Deadline How To Watch The 2025 Met Gala Arrivals And Everything To Know About The Theme 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
