The Incredible Shrinking Studio Chief

High-flying execs are dropping like flies right now — at Amazon MGM, and possibly soon at Warners — turning what was once the most coveted job in Hollywood into one of the riskiest. How the C-suite got so dangerous... and depressing

- PETER KIEFER and BORYS KIT

While it seems unlikely that any corner of the entertainment industry will be spared during the 10-episode run of Apple TV+'s new satirical comedy series The Studio, the primary vehicle by which its creators interrogate the current malaise afflicting Hollywood is through the eyes of a modern-day studio executive. Like any great satirist, Seth Rogen, who plays an angst-ridden studio chief, is dancing — at times hilariously — around an IRL question: Has there ever been a more challenging and unpleasant time to be a studio executive than today?

It's undoubtedly a question that former Amazon MGM Studio chief Jen Salke was asking herself on 27 March when she was pushed out after seven years on the job. It's likely one that Warner Bros. Pictures co-heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were mulling as they tried to swat away rumours that they might be next (a 30 March Bloomberg report suggested that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was already interviewing their replacements). And it was on the minds of the dozen current and former executives who spoke to THR to vent about their profession.

Legendary — and legendarily busy — executives like Irving Thalberg, Robert Evans and Sherry Lansing are mythologised, but even on the best of days in the best of times, the life of an executive is gruelling. There is endless incoming material to read and assess, and the job requires constantly finding new ways to say “no” gracefully to stay on the good side of vengeful agents and fragile talent. Execs are juggling those challenges while negotiating the internal cutthroat politics of their departments, all while trying to pick winning projects amid a sea of mediocrity. And that's on a good day.