John Landgraf Says Industry Contraction Won’t Kill Hollywood, Encourages Young Execs to ‘Keep Getting Better’
Like most professionals working in Hollywood today, John Landgraf can’t predict what the industry will look like as it continues to contract with the decline of linear and rise of streaming. But he feels bullish that Hollywood will “still be here” at the end of this period of change, and those with the mindset to persist will be there as well.
The FX chairman delivered the equal parts optimistic and realistic sentiment about the future of entertainment during a panel conversation with Disney TV studios chief Eric Schrier, moderated by filmmaker Paris Barclay and hosted by the Hollywood Radio & Television Society. Barclay brought up the topic as he jokingly asked the TV executives for a glimmer of hope that the industry would “be OK” amid layoffs and change permeating across the sector.
“And there’ll be room for all of us?” Barclay responded to Landgraf’s optimistic view.
“I don’t know about all of us,” he said. “I can’t speak for everyone. Personally, my singular strategy is just keep getting better. Early in my career, I was the bug — not the windshield. I went home feeling terrible about what had happened that day … But every day I said, ‘OK, well, what can you get better at?’ My theory was, ‘Well, I might not be good at this yet, but if I get better every day, eventually I’m going to be really good at this.’”
Landgraf called himself a late bloomer, having joined FX at the age of 41, and noted he didn’t start to feel confident in his role until he turned 50. His advice for the young executives in the room was to persevere and never stop learning.
“My first mentor used to say, ‘persistence is all.’ The difference between the people that are still here and that have been successful and the ones that aren’t is that the ones that are still here didn’t give up,” Landgraf said.
Beyond the encouraging words, Landgraf and Schrier shared the stage to share their insight into creating bold projects to global success and record-breaking Emmy recognition, including the ambitious epic “Shōgun,” which spent 10 years in development and launched to impressive viewership — leading to it expanding from a limited series to an additional two seasons currently in the works — and the comedy series “The Bear.”
For “Shōgun,” Landgraf and Schrier noted the desire to put their own spin on the trend of sweeping dramas following the success of “Game of Thrones.”
“We mortgaged the farm,” Landgraf said of making the Japan-set series from Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo. “Probably every brand and every studio said, ‘I want my ‘Game of Thrones.’’ Most of what they did had swords or dragons. We were more focused on what would be an interesting way of doing an epic that was relevant to the current moment, that transcended the fraught politics of real history, which is very heavily contested terrain right now in political terms.”
“We always aspired to do an epic. It wasn’t until Disney came in and we had access to the streaming platforms that there was a capability financially to do something with that scale,” Schrier added.
Amid talk of what makes the best pitch for a show and the best way to approach giving notes to “sensitive” creatives, the conversation also touched on the larger existential crisis sparked by the current political climate, finding solace in the idea that troubling times tend to spark creativity.
“We had a meeting with Donald Glover the day after a particularly devastating election some time ago, from my point of view,” Landgraf told the panel. “Donald said, ‘It’s going to be a great time to make great art.’ And he went out and made ‘Atlanta.’”
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