The future of James Bond under Trump's movie tariffs
It began with a bleat:
And suddenly Hollywood is upended. To be clear up front: We don’t know if this America-first declaration on the film industry will ever be enacted. Nor do we know whether it will just cover films, but TV shows as well? And what about video games?
Movies really are the true representation of globalism. It seems fitting that anti-globalist Trump is keen to impact that. US films (which represent tremendous soft power for the US to spread its cultural ideals) travel globally with considerable success, film financing or the desire to location shoot more often than not takes productions out of the US, and special effects and other post-production work is mostly done off-shore nowadays too.
There’s no real detail on this. But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t resulted in everyone scurrying around to consider what the future of the US film (and TV?) industry looks like as a result of this.
Taking what he wrote literally, it appears that this will impact all production (and not just the import of foreign film, but also any US-produced films that are engaging in foreign shoots).
But, as is the way with this guy, how much of his bleat can we take seriously? It doesn’t really make any practical sense - the cost of film production will skyrocket, fewer films will be made, and its impractical for all films to be made in America if there’s a need to use international locations. Oh, and then there’s that pesky fact of how many films are made for streaming these days, bypassing theatrical which is the only part of the supply chain where the tariff price could actually be applied.
Now we are left waiting while his staff turn this into some sort of policy.
Because there is no detail on this, I don’t want to dedicate too much of the newsletter to the implications of this, but the news story did leave me thinking a fair bit about Jeff Bezos, who has done all that he can to be in Trump’s good graces.
(An aside… why is Bezos so hell bent on making Trump happy? I’d look to Amazon’s plans to launch Starlink competitor Project Kuiper, which is going to represent substantial business for Amazon in the years ahead).
At every turn, it seems like Trump’s tariff plans are impacting on Bezos’ various businesses in a really detrimental way. As soon as I heard about the Trump movie tariff, I thought about Amazon MGM Studio’s plans to amp up cinema distribution and release 12-14 films theatrically in 2026.
And then there’s the large investment in James Bond - THE globalist cinema icon.
If these tariffs are ever to happen (a big if…), I guess we should expect that the next James Bond movie will completely defy what viewers like about them (global exoticism) and will instead see it filmed in an Iowa cornfield. Or it will do what every film is likely to start doing, which is to be shot with that same awkward, kinda shitty Volume production style that has ruined every Star Wars TV show since The Mandalorian?
News Desk
Marvel is now marketing Thunderbolts* as The New Avengers. Read: Indiewire
The only surprising thing about Kevin Pollak joining Tulsa King for season 3 was that he wasn’t already part of the cast. Read: thefutoncritic
Australia’s ABC will next week roll out a new took to staff called ABC Assist. It will “support content teams throughout the production lifecycle.” Read: Capital Brief
YouTube is testing a YouTube Premium subscription plan designed for two people to use, with tests underway in India, France, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Read: The Verge
NBC has renewed the One Chicago franchise - Chicago Fire for Season 14, Chicago Med (for Season 11) and Chicago PD (for Season 13). Read: TV Line
BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg has a new animated series on Netflix starting August 22. The voice cast for Long Story Short includes Lisa Edelstein, Paul Reiser, Ben Feldman, Abbi Jacobson, Max Greenfield, Angelique Cabral, and Nicole Byer. Read: Variety
Is The Local, an effort to sell local news to streaming platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and Max, going to save local news? Read Niemanlab
Trailer Park
Highest 2 Lowest, a new Spike Lee joint starring St Elsewhere actor Denzel Washington debuts in theaters August 22 and on Apple TV+ September 5.
When a titan music mogul (Denzel Washington), widely known as having the "best ears in the business," is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma. Brothers Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the fifth time in their long working relationship for a reinterpretation of the great filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's crime thriller "High and Low," now played out on the mean streets of modern day New York City.
Squid Game returns for a third and final season June 27 on Netflix.
Tony & Ziva, an NCIS spin-off, debuts on Paramount+ in the US fall.
That’s the newsletter for today.
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