Stop blaming the f*cking audience!

For more than a decade, every corner of the entertainment industry has carried the same defensive reflex. When something fails, it’s the audience’s fault. When a film underperforms, a series loses viewers, or a platform bleeds subscribers, the explanation is always the same in that “people didn’t show up.” The arrogance of that statement is staggering, because it assumes the product, the execution, the delivery, and the price all lived up to expectation. They did not. The truth is that the audience has been extraordinarily patient while quality declined, costs rose, and creative accountability vanished. The consumer has been gaslit into believing they’re the problem, while the industry’s leadership continues to burn capital on mediocrity, mismanagement, and vanity projects that no rational investor or paying viewer could defend.

Hollywood once understood the simple contract between creator and consumer and that if you deliver quality entertainment at a fair value, and the market will reward it. Today that contract is broken. Studios greenlight content to serve shareholder optics and ideological mandates, not consumer demand. Executives rely on IP recycling and nostalgia mining because they no longer know how to build audience trust from scratch. The press parrots those decisions, protecting relationships instead of telling the truth, and then has the audacity to act ‘SHOCKED’ when the numbers implode. When a $200 million production collapses in the first weekend, they never examine the arithmetic, instead they attack the audience for being “fatigued,” “toxic,” “entitled,” or “disconnected” but the only ones disconnected are the executives who still think a recognizable brand equals guaranteed revenue.

Look at the evidence. Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis was supposed to be a triumphant comeback for one of cinema’s legends. Instead, it grossed barely $14M dollars worldwide on a reported $120–$136M budget. Critics called it incoherent. Viewers called it unwatchable. Yet trade publications spent weeks blaming “limited audience appetite for risk” as if consumers owe blind loyalty to an indulgent art project. Disney’s Strange World collapsed under its own confusion with a $180M animated feature that could not find an audience because the studio marketed it as a statement rather than a story. When that failed, executives and commentators blamed families for not supporting “original content.” They ignored the reality that the movie was poorly written, visually flat, and released weeks before it hit streaming, cannibalizing its own sales. The audience didn’t fail, BUT Disney did! Robbie Williams’ Better Man burned through nearly $200 million only to return $22M. The problem wasn’t that the world stopped caring about Robbie Williams, it was that no one outside the U.K. could understand why this project existed or why it cost 9 figures. Marketing failed. Development failed. Oversight failed. The consumer simply passed on what they didn’t ask for.

Warner Bros. spent over $200M on Joker: Folie à Deux hoping lightning would strike twice. It didn’t. The film lost between $125 and $200M by every credible estimate, yet executives floated every excuse imaginable such as superhero fatigue, audience confusion, and even the claim that critics were “too harsh.” The studio never accepted that the choice to turn a gritty psychological drama into a musical sequel alienated the exact demographic that made the first film a billion-dollar success. Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine, a $50M sports drama with critical acclaim, opened to just $6M! The Rock, to his credit, acknowledged you can’t control box office results but the trade press still hinted at “limited audience enthusiasm” as if viewers owe him a ticket regardless of relevance. Over and over, the pattern repeats. Poor creative choices, bloated costs, and delusional forecasting end in public blame of the very people who keep the lights on.

Meanwhile, the labor strikes of 2023 detonated whatever stability was left. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA walked out with legitimate grievances, but the result was catastrophic collateral damage. Billions in losses, shuttered productions, collapsed financing, and an exodus of mid-budget projects that will never recover. Christine Vachon, one of independent cinema’s most respected producers, said the strikes hurt indie film more than COVID. She was right. The disruption gutted production pipelines, bankrupted suppliers, and scared off equity partners who had finally started to return post-pandemic. The union leadership celebrated a symbolic win, but the industry they claimed to protect is now a fraction of what it was. While executives and actors congratulated themselves, the investors who actually fund these projects quietly exited the field. The strikes didn’t just halt work, they exposed how fragile and financially unsound the modern entertainment ecosystem truly is.

The numbers since then speak for themselves. 2024 recorded one of the WORST summer box office seasons in modern history. Tentpoles like The Flash, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Haunted Mansion, The Marvels, and Furiosa all failed to recoup their budgets. Analysts across Wall Street now describe a “negative feedback loop,” where fewer theatrical releases lead to less audience participation, which justifies even fewer releases. Streaming services haven’t fared better. Disney+, Paramount+, and Peacock all posted subscriber declines while doubling down on costly original programming that nobody asked for. Netflix remains profitable only because it spends less on marketing and kills underperforming shows without hesitation. Yet in media commentary, the narrative is still that “the audience has changed.” 

No! What has changed is the product!

The price of admission has soared. Average U.S. ticket prices exceed $14.00 before concessions. Families face nearly $70.00 just to see a mediocre film in a crowded theater. Add streaming subscriptions on top like Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Max, Paramount+, Apple TV+, Peacock and a middle-class household is spending hundreds a month to be disappointed. Consumers are not cheap, they are rational. They are exercising the only power they have left and that is by opting out. The same pattern holds in gaming, music, and sports. When quality erodes and value disappears, markets contract. That’s not consumer failure, that’s market logic.

Yet the arrogance persists. Disney’s own marketing teams have publicly scolded fans for not showing up, claiming hypocrisy for demanding “original stories” but skipping them at the box office. Sony executives blamed critics for the embarrassment of Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter, as if reviews - NOT quality - dictate turnout. Streaming showrunners complain about “algorithmic viewers” who won’t “invest in slow burns,” ignoring that audiences have infinite alternatives competing for their attention. The Hollywood press plays accomplice, running puff pieces about “audience toxicity” while ignoring that these viewers were loyal for decades before finally walking away. You cannot gaslight the paying public forever.

The hard truth is that audiences are not failing to show up. They are showing extraordinary discernment in what they support. When something connects, people still turn out. Top Gun: Maverick grossed nearly $1.5B because it delivered an authentic cinematic experience. Oppenheimer earned almost a billion on intellectual rigor and craftsmanship. Even small independent titles like Everything Everywhere All at Once found sustained profitability through originality and emotional resonance. The success of those films destroys the “audience fatigue” narrative completely. People still want to be moved, inspired, or challenged. 

They just refuse to be insulted.

So why does the blame continue? That would mean admitting the truth which would require a total reconstruction of Hollywood’s financial model. The industry has become addicted to its own delusion. Executives are rewarded for greenlighting projects that look good in shareholder decks, not for projects that perform. Directors are granted unchecked creative control with other people’s money. Agencies inflate packaging fees and above-the-line costs until there’s no runway left for profit. The trades protect access to studios and stars by repeating PR talking points instead of investigating the economics. Then, when it all collapses, everyone blames the consumer. The arrogance is systemic. It is sustained by power, fear, and the assumption that audiences will always return because they always have. That assumption is now breaking.

Investors see what the public sees. They track returns, debt ratios, completion bonds, tax credit arbitrage, and state incentive pipelines. They read that hot garbage that is Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, then cross-reference those headlines against the numbers. They see studios writing off entire films as tax losses before release. They see billion-dollar streamers trading profitability for subscriber optics. They see strikes decimate trust between labor and capital. They see an industry where budgets double but accountability halves. They are exiting in droves. The private equity capital that once filled the mid-budget gap is GONE, replaced by speculative single-purpose LLCs that collapse after one film. Bank lending is nonexistent. Insurance underwriting has tightened. Cash equity has dried up. The institutional money that once fueled this business has migrated to safer, better-governed sectors like AI, infrastructure, energy, and private credit.

Having spent the last 2 years working directly with private equity groups, family offices, and institutional investors, I can tell you exactly WHY. They ARE NOT afraid of film or television as creative products. They ARE afraid of the people running them. They have watched executives misrepresent returns, manipulate accounting, and ignore fiduciary discipline. They have watched producers promise equity investors “guaranteed returns” while offering no collateral or lawful compliance under SEC Regulations. They have watched strikes destroy delivery schedules and contractual enforcement. They have seen the same names resurface on failed projects year after year with no consequence. Investors are rational. They allocate based on performance and governance. When a sector proves it cannot self-regulate, capital exits. That is exactly what has happened here.

The entertainment industry no longer has a credibility problem, it has a competence problem. You cannot rebuild trust with slogans. You rebuild it with results. Yet studios and streamers continue to chase social validation over shareholder value, burning billions while lecturing audiences about why they’re wrong. Independent film hasn’t escaped this rot either. Many indie producers are so eager to mimic studio optics that they price themselves out of viability. They raise unrealistic budgets, hire name actors at inflated rates, and then wonder why their capital stack collapses before production. They blame investors for being “risk-averse” instead of recognizing that the numbers don’t work. This delusion stretches across every tier of the business, from the top of Burbank to the smallest production office trying to mount a $3 million feature with no market plan.

The lesson is brutal but simple: stop f*cking blaming the audience! The audience IS NOT broken. The audience IS NOT lazy, distracted, or stupid. They are paying attention. They see through the headlines, the excuses, and the PR spin. They know value when they see it. They are tired of being lectured, overcharged, and under-delivered. They want entertainment worth their time and money. They want quality, coherence, and craft. If Hollywood cannot provide that, then Hollywood will shrink until someone else can. Markets always correct themselves, and no amount of spin can stop that correction.

From my perspective as a capital strategist who spends every single day evaluating whether projects deserve real money, I can tell you the rot is not invisible…it’s obvious. Every investor meeting begins with the same question: “Why should we believe the numbers this time?” They are not being cynical. They are being prudent. They have watched too many supposed sure things evaporate. They have learned that most entertainment “deals” are built on optimism, not verified math. When you show them a model that doesn’t reconcile or a package that relies on speculative distribution, they close the book. They would rather deploy capital into real assets than chase vanity. That is the consequence of years of denial.

So stop f*cking blaming the audience! Blame the executives who stopped caring about quality. Blame the agents who inflated costs beyond reason. Blame the directors who mistake indulgence for art. Blame the media that keeps running defense for an industry that has lost its way. DO NOT blame the people who simply stopped paying for what no longer earns their trust. The audience didn’t walk away, the industry pushed them out. Until Hollywood accepts that, nothing will change, and no investor in their right mind will return.