'The Studio' is the defining portrait of modern Hollywood

NEW YORK: The studio head has historically been seen as a fearsome and all-powerful figure, capable of ending a career with the snap of a finger or changing lives with an impulsive greenlight.

- 

In "The Studio," though, Seth Rogen's studio chief is more Selina Meyer ("Veep") than Louis B. Mayer. As much as Rogen's Matt Remick, head of the fictional Continental Studios, sitsina sought-after seat of power, he's helpless against larger trends in the film industry. He wants to be making "Chinatown," but instead his most important task is getting a Kool-Aid movie off the ground. Bryan Cranston's Continental chief executive asks: Can he do this? "Oh, yeah!"

"As pitiful as it is, the conflict that my character lives and breathes every second of his life is one a lot of people with his job are facing in real life," Rogen says. "They love movies. They're also responsible to a very specific bottom line and they have to defend the choice they make to a board of people who don't give a damn about movies."