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Telegraph
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How Instagram can make – and break
'I'd like to thank the Academy, my agent and God. But mostly the Instagram algorithm,' said no one at this month's Academy Awards. It's possible that some winners may well be thinking it, though, as they give their acceptance speeches at future Oscar ceremonies – at least, if some film industry insiders are to be believed. The social media platform is becoming an increasingly influential force in Hollywood according to the likes of actress Maya Hawke, who recently alleged that studios are increasingly funding and casting projects based not on talent or how good a script is, but on the collective Instagram followers of those involved. 'I don't care about Instagram. Instagram sucks, right? But if you have over this many followers, you can get your movie funded,' The Stranger Things actor told the Happy Sad Confused podcast in February, in comments that hinted at a gradual reshaping of the entire industry by the Meta app. 'I've talked to so many smart directors about how I'm going to delete my Instagram,' she continued. 'And they'll be like: 'Just so you know, when I'm casting a movie, producers will hand me a sheet with the collective followers I have to get.'' Hawke went on to explain how, were she to purge her account, these directors may be forced to recast some roles in the film to actors with bigger follower counts on Instagram. Why? Because financiers want a certain threshold of social media visibility attached to the project. The more followers, the more built-in marketing for the movie, before a penny has been spent on billboards and so on. The bigger the social reach of their stars, the bigger the box office – in theory. Hawke's quotes sparked questions now reverberating through Hollywood. 'I think it's crazy, to be honest with you,' Top Gun: Maverick actor Jay Ellis responded in the Hollywood Reporter, insisting that social media clout is 'not acting. [It's] not being able to hit a mark [or] being able to have a connection with a fellow actor... That's marketing. I don't subscribe to it. It's not how I think we should give people roles – it should be based on performance.' Scarlett Johansson weighed into the debate recently when she described the pressure she felt to join Instagram from studio execs. 'I got an email from Universal [Pictures], and they're like, 'Hey, would you consider joining Instagram in tandem with the release of Jurassic World Rebirth?'' she said. '[I] get a lot of pressure to join social media.' She went on, though, that she deleted her Instagram account after three days. 'I honestly am too fragile of a person to have social media,' she noted. 'My ego is too fragile. I can't deal with it. My brain is too fragile, I'm like a delicate flower. I have enough anxiety.' So what is the influence of Instagram over Hollywood? When The Telegraph canvassed a wide range of movie industry insiders, trying to understand whether what Hawke and Johansson describe is becoming prevalent in Hollywood, few had first-hand experiences of studios acting this way. Instead, the consensus was that it probably 'does happen, but I think in a quite informal way,' as one producer put it, speaking like many interviewed for this piece under condition of anonymity because of what she describes as 'a cloud of shame around it – like it's a road to ruin for the integrity of movies or whatever. I get that. But there are reasons and economic factors, related to how hard it is to get movies and especially non-franchise movies made today.' Her point is that studios in 2025 are struggling to entice audiences into theatres – and with the boom in streaming platforms also now over, Hollywood is in a period of contraction, scrambling for ways to slow the decline. Last year alone, Disney announced major lay-offs; Paramount Global cut 15 per cent of its workforce, and Pixar announced 14 per cent of its employee register were being made unemployed. Box office totals for 2024 slid 3 per cent from 2023 and 23 per cent from 2019. Americans also spent 23 per cent less on streaming services in 2024, according to one study; Netflix's stock took a series of tumbles as a result. In that context, movie studios want all the help they can get in helping their films cut through and find an audience. 'Look at Selena Gomez,' says Matt Belloni, respected industry reporter and host of The Town podcast. 'When Netflix bought Emilia Pérez' – a film that the streaming giant acquired after its Cannes Film Festival premiere – 'they knew that [Gomez] had a huge following and would be able to get them attention' by posting about the movie to her 421m followers. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) Put this way, why wouldn't stars' social media metrics play a part in which films are greenlit? 'If an actor has a huge following, they know that they're going to get promotion out of it,' continues Belloni. 'It doesn't mean they're going to be a good actor. It doesn't mean the movie's going to be a hit. But they're at least going to get them to promote. And that's added to the value of a lot of these stars, I think.' Belloni suggests that this has been the case at studios for a while. Pixar's 2023 blockbuster Elemental is one such example. On the back of a run of box office disappointments, the studio handed viral railway enthusiast Francis Bourgeois a cameo in 2023's Elemental, seemingly for no other reason than the two million Instagram followers he commands. The film ended up a hit, surpassing $500m in multiplex receipts; their previous release, Toy Story spin-off Lightyear, in contrast, made just $226 million. Did Bourgeois's small role as a train conductor help make a difference? It certainly didn't hurt. All aboard! 🚂 We were delighted to have railway enthusiast Francis Bourgeois visit #SheppertonStudios to record his cameo role in Disney and Pixar's #Elemental. Meet Element City's very own 'Wetro' Operator! See the film in cinemas July 7. — Pinewood Studios (@PinewoodStudios) June 6, 2023 Elemental isn't alone. I Love My Dad – a drama written, directed and starring LA-based James Morosini – won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at SXSW and gave streaming platform Hulu one of their most acclaimed films in recent years on release in 2022. Among its leads opposite Morosini was influencer Claudia Sulewski: a YouTuber and social media entrepreneur with over two million Instagram followers. Sulewski undoubtedly helped rocket boost the visibility of that movie; a film whose sticky subject matter – a father who 'catfishes' his son – might have put off some potential audience members without it. Instead, one single social media post about the film from her account in February 2022 earned 135k likes on Instagram alone. But these positives may be offset by downsides with the potential to wreak havoc on Hollywood in the long term, some industry figures warn. A Hollywood like the one Hawke is describing is no longer 'an even playing field, where talent wins out,' one casting director suggests. View this post on Instagram A post shared by CLAUDIA SULEWSKI (@claudiasulewski) It's a place where great new filmmakers might be restricted from telling brilliant stories, simply because they couldn't cobble together enough Instagram reach from the cast they've assembled. It's a also place where the next Mikey Madison – this year's Best Actress Oscar winner, who had a modest social media following prior to landing her breakout role in Sean Baker's Anora and now isn't Instagram at all – may miss out on a part to an influencer with less acting talent but better self-marketing, warns that same casting agent. There's also a danger that film will follow down the path of other creative fields, where artists are already complaining about the demands hoisted upon them when it comes to maintaining social media presences. In the music industry, songwriters have been voicing their deep frustration for years at record labels' insistence that they focus as much on the TikTok content they're creating as their actual music. In 2022, the pop star Halsey accused Capitol Records of refusing to allow her to release a new song 'unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok' to go with it. Florence Welch and Charli XCX are among other artists to have hit out, with the latter posting a TikTok in 2021 captioned: 'When the label asks me to post my 8th TikTok of the week.' The accompanying clip? A lip-sync of the words: 'I didn't want to be here.' Similar problems persist in the publishing industry, with emerging authors complaining that it's nigh-on impossible to get their novels published without some social media following first. Will the same grim metrics come to dominate the world of film too? Fortunately, there's reason to believe that some of those fears may be unfounded. For starters, the aforementioned I Love My Dad is proof that pre-existing social media fame and genuine talent aren't mutually exclusive; Sulewski ultimately impressed critics, who applauded her performance as the fantasised girl-next-door Becca. Another example is Issa Rae. Before the acclaimed American TV storyteller created the hit show Insecure, for example, she was a YouTube star with legions of followers, known for the web series Awkward Black Girl. After all, social media celebrity doesn't necessarily translate into film-star glamour. Audiences may be fans of an influencer in short-form content viewed on a phone, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll crave watching them on the big screen. On Instagram, meanwhile, influencers play themselves; it's their real-life personalities that fans adore. Would they want to see that person disappear into the role of someone else entirely? And when they're getting to see their favourite influencer for free on Instagram every day, what makes Hollywood sure that followers would pay to see them in a movie theatre? Some industry figures remain cautious. One prominent Hollywood writer-director warns that 'the industry has been taken over by tech companies' like Netflix and Apple. These companies approach problems with 'a very tech mindset. It may not be a huge problem now, but in a world where entire completed films are thrown in the trash because they won't generate optimal profits' – a nod to recently scrapped Warner Bros productions Coyote vs. Acme and Batgirl – 'can you really rule out a future where every movie is made with metrics like you're describing in mind?' Perhaps not. There's no need to worry about Amazon casting Mr Beast as the new James Bond – yet. But the longer that Instagram remains a powerful beast in our culture, and the more that Hollywood profits continue to decline, anything is possible.
Fox News
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Scarlett Johansson admits she offends fans by refusing to take photos
Scarlett Johansson does her best to maintain a work-life balance, even if it upsets some fans. In an exclusive to InStyle Magazine for their cover this month, the "Black Widow" star said her long-standing personal policy has been to not take photos with fans if she's not at an event. "It really offends a lot of people. It doesn't mean I'm not appreciative, of course, that people are fans, or happy to see me. But I always say to people, 'I'm not working,'" she explained. She added, "[And that means] I don't want to be identified as being in this time and place with you. I'm doing my own thing." Johansson will take photos at premieres or TV appearances, but she considers that to be a time when she is working. She also works to keep her kids, Rose, 10, with her ex Romain Duariac, and son Cosmo, 3, with husband Colin Jost, out of the public eye. "The thing about being a public figure is that the idea of being recognizable and celebrated feels fun, but then you can never stuff it back in the bottle," the 40-year-old said. "The reality of it is, there's a massive loss to that, you know? So I think preserving that for as long as possible until it's someone's choice, that's the choice I make as far as my kids go." Johansson also has no real interest in joining social media, even if a studio is begging her to for promotional purposes. "I mean, even today, I got an email from Universal [Pictures], and they're like, 'Hey, would you consider joining Instagram in tandem with the release of 'Jurassic World: Rebirth?' [I] get a lot of pressure to join social media," she said. She admitted she's considered it, but "didn't feel like I could." "The work that I put out there is all based in truth. That's the key ingredient. So if I was a person who really enjoyed social media, then I could totally get on the bandwagon. But I'm not. And I think the film will do fine."
