Introducing: The Disappearing Ladder
My new series examines how Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and boomers are navigating Hollywood’s narrowing path to power — and relevance
I host Ankler Agenda, talked to agents about the Heated Rivalry effect on the romance market, interviewed Heated Rivalry’s casting directors about how they found their stars and dug into agents’ concerns about Netflix-Warners. I’m elaine@theankler.com
Every generation in Hollywood thinks it’s facing an unprecedented career crisis. The 20-somethings worry they’ll never get a foothold. The 40-somethings fear they’ve plateaued. The 50-somethings wonder when experience became a liability. Even those in corner offices are quietly calculating how long their run can last.
That shared anxiety is the focus of an upcoming reported series for paid subscribers I’m launching called The Disappearing Ladder, which will look at the unique squeeze on every generation — Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and boomers — and how each one is navigating an industry where the traditional path upward feels narrower, shakier and, in some cases, gone entirely.
The circumstances may differ by age, but the underlying question is remarkably consistent:
What does a sustainable career in entertainment even look like now?
In the coming weeks, I’ll go generation by generation, reporting on the economic pressures, cultural clashes and power shifts reshaping Hollywood’s career map — and examining what each cohort brings to a business in constant upheaval.
To kick things off, I’ve pulled together some of our previous reporting below (both from me and my colleagues) on how age and timing are shaping careers right now in ways that can feel especially acute.
Take a look at the reading list below — and if you have a story to share, I’d love to hear from you at Elaine@theankler.com.
Happy Presidents Day, and I’ll see you on Ankler Agenda on Thursday, and back here next week with my first look at Gen Z.
Generation Map: Z to Boomers
My feature on the plight of Gen X touched a nerve: old enough to have tasted success but young enough to be rocked by a shrinking studio system. Women of Gen X feel particularly burnt (and their earning typically peaks earlier than men’s).
Seventeen 20-somethings last year told me their hopes and fears and the what-ifs that keep Gen Z up at night. “My career might have been more advanced by this point if the pandemic and the strikes hadn’t happened,” one 2018 college grad tells me. “It feels like it’s the worst time to be a young person in Hollywood.”
For my Salary Confessions series, I spoke to everyone from industry creatives still getting toilet paper from their parents to studio execs bringing down more than $1 million a year. Their raw accounting of the gap between their aspirations and their financial reality brings home the growing divide between Hollywood’s haves and have-nots.
For Gen Z, social media dominates traditional media in time spent. Much of that time, though, is spent trading, remixing and communicating via Hollywood IP. Abby Barr and Matthew Frank decipher why Hollywood isn’t benefiting the way it should — and how the industry can capitalize on the culture-leading habits of this younger cohort.
Mike De Luca was 27 when he became president of production at New Line. Barry Diller was 32 when he was crowned CEO of Paramount Pictures. Sherry Lansing became head of production at Fox at 35. What happened to all the young guns? Peter Kiefer in 2023 explored the grey ceiling bottlenecking industry succession.
Matthew talked to cultural theorist Matt Klein about the Minecraft movie phenomenon: “What troubles me is praising this film without acknowledging that layer” of pop cultural in-jokiness, Klein says. “That’s kind of not recognizing how culture actually works.”
Richard Rushfield talked to author and podcaster Meghan Daum about ’90s media and the roots of Gen X.
The relationship between younger audiences and clipping is both a curse and the best thing to ever happen, as Hollywood increasingly bends to the social tastes and attention of Gen Z to market film and TV:
Younger audiences yearn for real-world experiences, whether that’s 100,000-square-foot Netflix Houses in Vegas, Philly and Dallas, Warner Bros.’ Friends experience.
“If you want to know how any sausage is made, you ask the people grinding the meat,” wrote Leila Jordan in this look at the assistants, pages and coordinators who worked at Paramount Skydance during the company’s turbulent post-consolidation period.
The changing of the guard isn’t just in studio offices; it’s on the most glamorous of awards stages.
Whitney Friedlander dug into the state of Gen Z comedy, what this cohort is watching (and not).
