The end of the Hollywood KingMaker

In the weeks leading up to the oscars, Jeffrey Katzenberg Was Spotted Gingerly Navigating His Way Way AROUND TOWN ON CRUTCHES AND IN A FOOT BRACE – The Result, The Hollywood Reporter have learned, of a recent Fall. It’s not Polite to Note Such An Impairment, But In The Case of Katzenberg, It’s Too Fitting A Metaphor to Let Slip by.

After Decdes Toggling Between Top Studio and Production Jobs, The Peripatic 72-Year-Eold Billionaire Has Been on a Cold Streak of Late. In the Wake of the Catastrophe that was quibi, the ShortForm Video Platform He Founded with Former ebay ceo meg whitman that burned thROUGH Katzenberg Took A Business Sabbatical To Focus on Politics and Cement His Reputation As A Go-To-To Political Power Broker in the Mold of Lew Wasserman. In 2023, he-chaired Joe Biden’s Re-Election Campaign. That Project, of Course, Crashed Even Harder Than Quibi DID.

As part of Biden’s Inner Circle, Katzenberg Has Been Blowed For (at BEST) Failing to Recognize the President’s Decline or (at Worst) Covering Up for It. There’s A Reason Katzenberg Ran Point for As Long As He Did. Few Could Match His Energy and Relantless Drive, But Wen Kamala Harris Assummed The Nomination, Katzenberg Played A Minimal Role in Her Fundraising Effors, An Has Yet. Health. (He Decklined to Comment for this Story.)

For Katzenberg’s Critics, of Wich There Are Many, It’s A Well-Deserved Comeuppance for a Mogul WHOM MANY LA-BASED DEMOCRATS PARTILY BLAME FOR THEMSEMSELVESS. “Getting Biden Re-Electked Was Going to Be Jeffrey’s Great Redemption,” Says An La-Based Political Consultant with Ties to The Entertainment Industry. “Insthead, It All Fell To Pieces. We Don’The The White House. We Don’t Have The Senate, and We Don’t Have the House. And Donors Feel Like Sonted.”

Two and a Half MONHS INTO DONALD TRUMP’S Second Term, The Mood Inside the Industry’s Political Class Veers Between Bewilderment and Submission. GONE IS The URGENCY AND Energy That Marked The Days and Weeks Following Trump’s First Inauguration in 2017, WHICH SAW WORLDWIDE PROTESTS INCLUDING THE WOMEN’S FROSESS Downtown La Maga is in Ascent. The democrats – and by Extension Hollywood Liberals – Are In A Political Wilderness, and All Signs Suggest That Katzenberg’s Tenure as Hollywood’s Chief Political Operator Is Near. A VACUUM HAS OPENED, PROMPTING TWO Existential Questions Within An Industry that’s Grasping for a Way Forward:

Canne Replace Katzenberg As the Political Face of the Town? And Perhaps More Importantly: Given The Political Climate, Should Anyone Replace Him?

The Trump Administration’s Retributctive Style Complicets Those Questions. Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC Chair, Appears Intent on Keeping Media Corporations in Ideological Line, WHICH MEANS THAT HEVY-HITTER Liberals Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Marvel’s Kevin Feige and Comcast’s Donna Langle are Likely Neuted. As fiduciarians, they’ve got Shareholders’ interest to prioritize.

There Was A Moment WHEN SUCH INDUSTRY STALWARTS as Producer Jj Abrams or Management Mogul and La Olympics Czar Casey Wasserman, Both Prolific Democratic Bundume Katzenberg, But Neither Has Yet Met The Challenge. The Former’s Fundraising Has Waled of Late, and Any Electral Efforts the Latter Might Now Pursue would Complicate his work on the 2028 Summer Games. Interviews with a variety of Political Consultants and Donor Advisers Suggest that FEW OTHERS Are Likely to Step Into the Breach. Some argue that ascendance of Silicon Valley and the Trend of Tech Companies Taking Over Hollywood Should Broaden the Search. The Proped Merger Between Skydance and Paramount Has Elegated the Profile of Oracle Fortune Heir David Ellison, 42, Who Gave Almost $ 1 Million to Biden’s Re-Election However, his Father and Financial Baccker, Larry Ellison, Is A High-Profile Trump Supporter. Another Name that has emerged is Billionaire Snap Ceo Evan Spiegel, 34, Who Recently Launted The Department of Angels to Aid in the Rebuilding of The Communities Iledes. But a consultant who have worked with Spiegel Says He Prefers Being Seen As A Philanthropist and Has Little Interest in Stepsing Into The Political Sphere.

ALL OF WHICH LEADS TO THE CONCLUSION OFFERED BY LA-BASED POLITICAL CONSULTANT MURPHY: “The ERA OF THE SELF-APPOINTED MEGA Political [figure] is over. That’s Because No One-Especialally After Katzenberg-Trusts Tese Self-Appointed Kings Anymore. ”

Among Industry Donors, There’s A General Sense Thaty’re Not Quite Ready to Open Their Pocketbooks to Democrats Rolling Through Town with Hat in Hand. “TELL ME YOUR MESSAGE AND EXPLAIN WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO BEFORE YOU ASK US FOR A BLIND CHECK,” SAYS A TOP INDUSTRY Donor Who’s Been Active for Decades. This Donor Was Referring to a Fundraiser Held in March for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ Victory Fund, WHICH HANDS OUT MONEY to the DCCC and others. Tickets to the Fundraiser, at Which Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Rep. Suzan Delbene (D-WA) WERE ALSO Present, Went for $ 10,000 to $ 100,000. “I THINK WHEN MIDTERMS AND THERE Are Active Campaigns Going, The Checks Will Start Flowing Again. But That Election Is Way Off, And Right Now Asking For A donation Tonation Tone. your ACT TOGETCHER, WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT. ”

Hollywood’s Current Political Reckoning isn’t Just About DistRust and Fear of Trump. The Entertainment Industry is Fractured and Is No Longer The Cultural or Financial Force It Was Even A Decade Ago. Furthermore, Arguable The Industry’s Biggest Assets – Celebrities – Have Been Cast As Political Labilities in the Wake of Trump’s Victory. Everyone from george Clooney and Oprah Winfrey to taylor swift and beyoncé supeported Harris, Yet Despite Those Endorsments, Fewer Working-Clas Four. Hollywood Model, in Terms of the Ways that we used to Support the [Democratic] Party, is Dead. And it should be, because it doesn’t work, ”Says screenwriter Billy Ray, Who for the Past Several National Election Cycles Has Worked with Democrats on their MESAGING.

Ray notes that some democrats suffered defeats in the past, there USUALLY WAS ACKNOWLEDGment and Commitment to Adjust and Change; Obama Did in 2010 After the Midterms, As Did Hillary Clinton in 1994. But at Least SO Far, The Absense of Introspection Shown by the Democrats in the Face of Their November Defeat Has. “We Just Droped $ 6.7 Billion on An Election Cycle. And Yet if You Stopped Almost Any American on the Street and Asked Them, ‘What does the democratic party stand for?’ They Probably Can’t Tell You.

As One Producer with Political Contacts Oberves, “You Go to the Dinners Since the Election and People Are Paralyzed. They’re Just Repeating Whaty. Richest Ones Are Hanging Back, Figinging they’ll Make Money Right Now [on Trump’s tax policies] and Sort It Out Later. ” This Source Adds, “There’s A Chill Now – An Arctic Chill. IT doesn’t metter what a wel-inntentioned jelffrey katzenberg or rob reiner do or don’t do any kind of one at the Jeff bezos level is immediatly docitulating, Dumping $ 40 milling.

Murphy Concurs. “I DON’T THINK Hollywood Influence Is Gone, But Is Much More Fragmented Now.”

Comedian Adam Conover, A Prominent Leftist Voice in the Industry Who Serves on the Board of the WGA West, Contends That Hollywood, After A Rabble-Resbellion Durya. Accommodating in his Second – Especialy After An Election That Ratified The Notion of Its Diminized Power As A Political Force. “Hollywood Goes Whore The Wind Bloows,” HE SAYS. “The Election Was A Rightward Turn. We’re Living in A Different World. The Media Can and Will Get Conservative Again. 24 In George W. Bush’s American, Including Liberals. ”

There’s Another Element at Play in the Political Power Vacuum that Now Now Exists in Hollywood: Its Gerontocracy Crisis. Katzenberg Built His Clout, Contacts and Pocketbook in the 1980s As A 30-Semetting Studio Chief at Paramount and Disney. At the Time, his age was in line with the rest of the presidents of the major. These Days, Those Influential Posts Are Mostly Still Held by Boomers. NEXT-Gen Execs, Reflection Updated WorldViews, Haven’t Been Elegated to Positions that wound Allow Them to Become KingMakers.

In the lead-up to the 2018 Midterms, A Yonger, More Diverse Class of Political Players from the Worlds of TV and Film Started to Emerge. There Was an unprecedated level of Political Activism, Much of It at the Grass-Rots Level. Christy Callahan, A Former Motion Picture Creative Executive Who Now Serves As A Senior Adviser to the National Gun Violence Prevention Group Brady, Hosted DOZENSSENSSSers, The Majors. Events that broght in anyWhere from $ 50,000 to the Low Six Figures. Her Concern, After Seeing Some of the Richest Men in the World Attand Trump’s Inauguration, Including Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, Is that “Small-Dollar Events Won.

After the election, Ray Spent Two Days in Political Mourning. But his resolve is back. WHEN COLLEAGES AND PEERS FROM The Entertainment Industry ask Him Whaty Shold Be Doing Nowadays, Ray Tells Them You Fully On Guns and May Not Agree Fully on Pronux, But You’ve Got to Support Them Anyway Because they are the Future of the Party, and It’s EITHER THAT OR DON’Ture.

“People Who Tell Stories for A Living or People Who Take Them To Market Know Nov. 5 Was A Massive Swing and A Miss,“ He Continues. “IT’s incumbent on US to Tell the People in the Party Just How Far Off The Target they’ve Been. If anybody in the World Understands What Is Like to Be Rejetted In the Marketplace, IT.

With the Industry Feeling Political Ruderless, Perhaps Is Time for A Casting Call: “Seneking Well-Connected, Energetic Power Broker with A Keen Sense of Narrative.”