The Triple Crisis That’s Breaking Hollywood—and Changing the Future of Movies

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Apr 24, 2026

Sean Fennessey, film critic and Ringer content chief, dives into Hollywood’s three-way crunch: shrinking ticket sales, vanishing production jobs, and a creativity slump. He explores how franchises pushed out classic movie stardom, why Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney hint at a reset, how video games became the next IP gold rush, and why theaters still matter in an age of hyper-niche media.

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INSIGHT

Superhero Movies Are Becoming a Genre Not the Center

Superhero fatigue reflects a genre wave cresting, not the permanent death of spectacle; like Westerns, these movies will persist after leaving the cultural center.
Sean Fennessey says Marvel weakened itself by flooding Disney+ with easy-to-ignore shows, breaking the casual audience’s attachment to the shared arc.

INSIGHT

Video Games Are Replacing Superheroes as Studio Fuel

Video games are emerging as the next major IP engine because they already command deep audience familiarity and can train younger moviegoing habits.
Sean Fennessey points to Minecraft, Mario, Zelda, Call of Duty, and Elden Ring, and says the best version is auteur-led adaptation rather than fan-service obedience.

INSIGHT

Star Wars Collapsed From Planning by Reaction

Disney’s Star Wars trilogy failed because it was marketed as a trilogy without a settled story, so each film fought the last instead of advancing one coherent plan.
Sean Fennessey contrasts Kevin Feige’s long-range Marvel vision with Lucasfilm’s reactive handoffs between J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson under deadline pressure.

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Hollywood is in the middle of a triple crisis. You can measure it in tickets, jobs, and ideas.

Start with tickets. The best year for the movie business this century was 2002, when Americans and Canadians bought 1.6 billion tickets, or about five per person. Last year, Americans bought half that number. Eighty years ago, the typical American went to the movies twice a month. Now they go about twice a year.

Then there are the jobs. Studios are making fewer movies and shows than they did just a few years ago, and the projects they green-light are increasingly shot overseas, where governments hand out generous subsidies. According to The Wall Street Journal, employment in Hollywood has fallen 30 percent since 2022 across the hundreds of trades—actors, carpenters—that make film and television possible.

And then there's the creativity problem. It's not just that studios keep reheating 20th-century IP. The stars are getting older, too. Among the 14 most important movie stars of this decade, the average age is 57. Half are over 60. None is under 45. Even many of Gen Z's favorite movie stars—the Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington—had hit films before Gen Z was born.

Today's guest is Sean Fennessey, host of The Ringer's The Big Picture and author of the new Substack Projections. In an essay published this week, Sean argues that all the gloom is missing something real: Attendance is perking up, young stars are breaking through, and the auteurs we've followed for 20 years are ascending to the center of the culture. Today, Sean and Derek talk about the new rules of Hollywood and what they tell us about the changing winds of American culture.

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If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Sean Fennessey

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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