Former Amazon Studios Executive Ted Hope Lambasts Studios and Streamers: ‘Two Film Unions Striking Proves the System is Built to Be Unfair’

variety.com:

Ted Hope delivered a blistering takedown of the studios and streamers during an “out-of-the-box” keynote at the Locarno Film Festival.

The veteran U.S. producer has been in the indie trenches since 1990 when he founded Good Machine, the label behind Ang Lee’s “The Ice Storm” and Todd Solondz’s “Happiness,” but subsequently leaped to the other side of the fence when he became head of motion picture production in the early days at Amazon Studios.

During a wide-ranging address accompanied by a slide presentation at the Locarno Film Festival’s StepIN think tank on Wednesday, Hope lambasted streaming giants and studios, the Writer’s Guild of America, the impact of AI, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and more.

Hope’s talk started out with the heading: “50 Proofs That The Cinema Apocalypse Is Upon Us.” Here are some of Hope’s “proofs” of the impending apocalypse for indies, delivered in his bullet points: Hope joined Amazon in 2015, the early days of the company’s original movies program.