founder said that he had an “existential fear [that] if our industry becomes overly dominated by [the streaming] model then over a period of time the mindset of the creative community becomes business to business”.
Ford made pains to assure the audience that he is not anti-streaming. In fact, AGC has multiple projects in the works for streaming services. The executive credited the digital giants with “fuelling much of the growth in production activity”, which has led to a “boom” for producers. He said that U.S. content continues to be the “most popular form of entertainment” being commissioned but noted that “they are also by and large putting tremendous focus on generating local-language product to help fuel subscriptions in strategically important territories”.
However, for AGC the priority is to “build an entity of corporate substance, a balance sheet” and to do that “you need more than revenue generation from fees, you need assets, you need to own at least some portion of what you’re making”.
Theatrical movies have been way better than streaming movies this year!