In his second HPA Summit keynote, Strada founder and CEO Michael Cioni delivered a sobering update on Hollywood’s trajectory. The problem, he argues, isn’t storytelling, audience demand, or even AI – it’s a collective refusal to evolve. Hollywood’s sunk-cost mindset, he warns, is pulling the industry down while creators move faster, freer, and more profitably than ever before. Is Hollywood broken? Eight months after his original data-driven analysis at the Hollywood Professional Association (here’s our article on that), Michael Cioni from Strada returned with fresh numbers and a tougher message. Despite rising global production spend and steady streaming growth, on-set work hours have collapsed to a thirty-year low. Empty stages dot the studios of Los Angeles. “If storytelling isn’t broken,” he asked, “why are so many people out of work?” The answer, he said, lies in the sunk cost fallacy: an instinct to keep pouring time, money, and reputation into legacy systems simply because they’ve existed for so long. Check out Michael’s second talk here: Hollywood’s anchor: the sunk cost fallacy Cioni likened Hollywood’s outdated workflows to an anchor on a cruise ship—dragging the industry down while the world sails ahead. The habit of defending infrastructure, networks, and tools built over decades prevents meaningful change. “We keep diving back into the same techniques and ideology,” he said, “even when the model is shifting from underneath our feet.” To survive, he urged, the industry must look at data with “sober eyes.” Audiences are not disappearing, and neither is investment. What’s broken is...
Published By: CineD - Today