"The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants"
About this Quote
A screenwriter doesn’t say this to mourn lost glamour; he says it to name the new authors of the movie. Eszterhas is accusing Hollywood of a quiet coup: the people who once shaped stories for the screen have been demoted, and the spreadsheet has been promoted. The line works because it’s blunt to the point of insult, and because “taken over” frames the change as hostile rather than natural. It’s not “influenced” or “guided” by marketing and finance; it’s occupied.
The subtext is about risk. Marketing people and accountants don’t hate creativity; they hate uncertainty. Their job is to reduce variance, to make outcomes legible to forecasts, test screenings, brand tracking, and international pre-sales. That logic doesn’t merely shape what gets greenlit; it rewrites what stories are allowed to be. Endings get softened, characters get simplified, and originality gets treated like a budget line item: nice if it doesn’t complicate opening weekend.
Eszterhas’s own career gives the complaint extra bite. He thrived in an era when adult thrillers and mid-budget “originals” could dominate the culture; his frustration tracks the industry’s shift toward franchise IP, synergy, and “four-quadrant” safety. He’s also talking about power and credit. When the money side runs the room, the writer becomes an input, not a driver.
There’s cynicism here, but also a warning: when a business starts mistaking predictability for quality, it doesn’t just make safer movies. It makes smaller imaginations feel like a rational choice.
The subtext is about risk. Marketing people and accountants don’t hate creativity; they hate uncertainty. Their job is to reduce variance, to make outcomes legible to forecasts, test screenings, brand tracking, and international pre-sales. That logic doesn’t merely shape what gets greenlit; it rewrites what stories are allowed to be. Endings get softened, characters get simplified, and originality gets treated like a budget line item: nice if it doesn’t complicate opening weekend.
Eszterhas’s own career gives the complaint extra bite. He thrived in an era when adult thrillers and mid-budget “originals” could dominate the culture; his frustration tracks the industry’s shift toward franchise IP, synergy, and “four-quadrant” safety. He’s also talking about power and credit. When the money side runs the room, the writer becomes an input, not a driver.
There’s cynicism here, but also a warning: when a business starts mistaking predictability for quality, it doesn’t just make safer movies. It makes smaller imaginations feel like a rational choice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
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