I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the financiers are people who are very much part of the industry/corp conglomerate, which may be what you mean. But as far as I know, the studios don’t dip into coffers they perceive as their own very often, which means they’re still in a middleman position, which means their task is not to decide what’s worth a risk, but to decide what they can convince someone else to risk.

I wonder if it means that no-one actually knows what makes a movie or TV show work, so there’s no moderately objective measure of talent and probable success — or if it’s a side effect of the huge number trying to get into the industry, that the only way insiders can filter the people trying to get in the door is to look only at friends of friends.

I think it’s both. I’ve seen how agents get flooded with more query letters than they can possibly read – even with unpaid interns to do the reading – so they resort to throwing out some unread, randomly. Naturally, when you have a stack of query letters up to the rafters and someone you know and respect recommends a friend, you go for the friend.

But another problem is that the only quantified method – which has been disputed as ridiculous for years – is to go by whatever the person’s last movie made as a benchmark for what the next one will make. It doesn’t work because it ignores so many factors (do movies with top actors/directors/writers keep doing well because of those individuals, or because of the great marketing campaigns their films get on the assumption they’ll more than pay it back, or is it simply that those individuals pick good projects?), but additionally it creates barriers for people entering the business who have no stats to make investors want to risk a movie on them.

Yes, I’d noticed that Hollywood is extremely nepotistic, to the point of being more aristocratic than capitalistic. I don’t know if there’s any other way to explain why Jon Peters continues to have power & influence.

I don’t really understand why an industry that so many people are absolutely desperate to get into should be nepotistic — surely they *should* be able to take only the most talented people. I wonder if it means that no-one actually knows what makes a movie or TV show work, so there’s no moderately objective measure of talent and probable success — or if it’s a side effect of the huge number trying to get into the industry, that the only way insiders can filter the people trying to get in the door is to look only at friends of friends.

I also still believe ego is a big factor. Practically, they want to convince investors their money will be safe. But film has always attracted people who have huge egos, and their attitudes filter down and shape the culture of the industry, making it hard for people who have a healthy self-image to compete. Hmm, this may also be part of what drives Hollywood to work to make women neurotic with body shame – shaming others is a favored tool in the arsenal of the ego-obsessed.