The What If's? Issue

Considering Hollywood's huge decisions of today through yesterday's woulda, coulda, shoulda's

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YOUNG TURKS From left: Richard Lovett, Joe Rosenberg, Bryan Lourd, David O'Connor, David Lonner, Kevin Huvane. in 1995. (Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Something a little different today.

We have a hard time imagining that what our noble industry is today is not what it has always been, nor what it will always be.

For a large part, this is the legacy of The Founders. While Entertainment is the least predictable of industries, Hollywood was the most stable of businesses. From close to the beginning there were seven studios (Paramount, Columbia, Warners, MGM, Universal, Fox and Disney). They waxed and waned and changed hands, but that septopoly remained the overwhelming force up through the 1970s, when MGM fizzled out. Then there were six, and so it remained until the 2010s, when one more went away — and new ones suddenly appeared.

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It's hard to think of another industry where the org chart was so static for so long; it could make a person think the studios were a law of nature.

Now all that is in flux. Today, no one could get better than even money predicting in