‘Black Love’ Producer Tommy Oliver on Navigating the Post-Peak TV Marketplace, Paying a ‘Black Tax’ and Banking on BIPOC Stories

variety.com:

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Every producer in Hollywood has felt the squeeze over the past year. TV and film buying activity has dropped significantly as the industry resets the bar for content volume and profitability while studios slash, burn and reorganize themselves for a different era.

Tommy Oliver, the producer-director who is founder and CEO of the Confluential Company, is working through the downturn with cautious optimism that a saner business landscape will open up more opportunities for independent players.

Oliver raised capital with Goldman Sachs a few years ago to build up the Los Angeles-based Confluential. The firm now runs a busy production services division in addition to nurturing and financing its own projects, as Oliver explains in the latest episode of Variety‘s weekly podcast “Strictly Business.” “We focus on BIPOC stories, and so we only put money into projects from creators of color.

That’s it. And so when things are great [in Hollywood], it’s maybe OK to good for us. When things are bad, it’s horrible, because these are the sort of projects are often at the back of the queue, and we’ve gotten to a place now, unfortunately, where there’s also a ‘Black tax’ on projects,” Oliver tells “Strictly Business.” “For us, it has completely changed the calculus around what makes sense and where the opportunities are, because I’m not going to stop trying to do the things that we can be proud of.