Hollywood’s Breaking Faster Than Film Schools Can Teach It. Inside the Scramble to Keep Up

Professors are rewriting syllabi on the fly as studios melt, algorithms rule and screens go vertical: ‘Entertainment changes at the speed of light. Universities do not’

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I write about TV and host Ankler Agenda with Elaine Low. I reported on agents’ concerns about a market chill amid the war for Warner Bros., covered the hot adult animation market and wrote about sports doc fatigue. Something you want to hear about on Ankler Agenda — Warner Bros. tea, what’s next in the creator economy, box office 2026? Email me at elaine@theankler.com, and your mailbag question might be featured on a holiday episode!

Hollywood can’t agree on what it’s becoming — only that it’s changing fast.

In just the past week, Netflix and Paramount plunged into a bruising tug-of-war over Warner Bros. that will permanently reshape the studio business (I got top agents’ take on a potential deal, and Lesley Goldberg spoke to C-suite studio execs about their concerns), while Disney quietly signed a $1 billion pact with OpenAI that opens the door for AI-generated videos starring Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, Lilo and Stitch, Marvel heroes, and Star Wars icons. Even the people running the industry can’t say with confidence what the job landscape will look like a year from now.

Now imagine trying to teach it.

Across the country, film schools and drama programs are scrambling to prepare students for an entertainment business that no longer runs on pilots, or even horizontal screens. In a world where TV shows are watched entirely on phones, and AI threatens to become as integral a part of the movie-making process as knowing how to light a set or operate a camera, cinematic arts and drama schools aren’t always equipped to move nimbly.

“There’s an innate tension between academia and innovation,” says Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “The entertainment industry changes at the speed of light. Universities do not.”

That tension is now turning into a full-blown identity crisis at some of the nation’s top film and drama schools — one that has professors rewriting syllabi on the fly, students (and parents) questioning what they’re paying for, and schools quietly asking a troubling question:

Are we training artists for a Hollywood that no longer exists?

For today I spoke to Galloway, University of Cincinnati acting and voice professor D’Arcy Smith, who is going all in on teaching microdrama acting, and University of Southern California Prof. Tomm Polos, who’s bringing creator-economy ideas and tactics to drama students.

What you’ll find out:

• Three blunt rules from a top film-school dean for building a career when the old paths no longer exist

• How acting for microdramas is radically different from traditional acting and what acting inside a 9:16 frame actually changes about performance (some videos to watch are below)

• How Polos’ creator-economy tactics are being folded into drama programs and why “waiting for the phone to ring” is no longer an option

• The algorithm lessons professors are quietly teaching behind the scenes (and what TikTok and Instagram reward right now)

• How USC is pushing artists past the “ick” of monetization, reframing it as survival, not selling out

• As traditional studio career ladders collapse, what educators now tell students to rely on instead

• How AI, virtual production and global storytelling are reshaping what “job-ready” even means in Hollywood

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