CAA‘s Maha Dakhil talked about the “revolution” currently happening in the film business wherein people with talent and drive “are actually really becoming the masters of their destiny.”
“The people who are working at the highest levels are people who are not just performing in movies or showing up and being hired, but are actually really becoming the masters of their destiny,” CAA’s managing director and motion picture agent (she counts Tom Cruise among her clients) said while speaking at the Forbes Iconoclast event in New York last week.
Dakhil pointed to the surprise success of recent horror films Obsession and Backrooms as evidence of this revolution.
“You’re catching the movie business in the middle of a revolution these last few weeks with these horror movies that have driven up the box office week to week and usually there’s a drop in box office,” she said. “The moviegoing habits right now are showing us that the audience is really alive, really there, really connected, and these are not meaningless horror movies.”
And while some might brush the movies off as “horror movies,” Dakhil noted that they represent more for the audience.
“They are … movies that are showing us something new and revelatory about the human condition,” she continued. “People are running toward them in a way that gives us so much hope for what we do as advocates and protectors of artists to be able to get behind these creators, these, our actors, our athletes, our musicians, any of these, voices can now create multiple ways of reaching people, and we are seeing that we don’t even need studios to greenlight ideas; we just need talent and courage.”
The conversation also turned to AI and why it’s important to build trust with the audience. Cruise, for example, is one artist who’s built that trust, which has led to career longevity. “He has a social contract with the audience; you know that he’s going to really deliver and earn your movie tickets,” Dakhil said.vShe noted that audiences are turning against content that seems to be manufactured or manipulated. And while some in Hollywood might “fear” Gen Z, she does not.
“I love Gen Z because they’re alive, they’re present, and they are peer to peer, and I think it scares the hell out of a lot of Hollywood,” she said. “But to me it’s extremely intriguing and exciting because they are asking us to meet them at the source. They’re the consumers that are driving the business right now.”
And audiences in general, she added, are beginning to eschew not only AI-generated content but also that which leans heavily into CGI as well as franchises that seem repetitive.
“People actually are more excited about analog, real experiences,” she shared. “They’re turning away from CGI effects and the franchises that have been copied and imitated and and regurgitated and they’re looking for what’s real and what’s human and what’s driven by artists and their ideas and that connection. I know that we’re talking about AI as inevitable as a tool, but for artists you can’t replace the soul of the the artist, and that’s what the audience is reflecting.”
The conversation, moderated by Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane, also included Liberty Media Corp. president and CEO Derek Chang and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch. Watch it here.
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