“Most of the time, we are not assholes!” : how the studios bosses reacted to The Studio

The boss of Sony Pictures believes that, if there is a small part of truth in the Apple series, it does not really reflect the reality of Hollywood daily.

Hollywood took it for its rank.

With his Apple TV+ The Studio series, the Tête Seth Rogen offered himself a perfect playground: a creaky satire of the industry where he embodies the boss of a major (fictitious), named Continental Studios. The farce should be a card for the next Emmy Awards, as it multiplies the spikes against real figures of cinema and enjoys the presence of prestigious directors and actors who came to play their own role, from Martin Scorsese to Olivia Wilde via Zoe Kravitz.

But what did the main concerned think, namely the (real) patterns of Hollywood studios? Have these leaders who make the rain and the good weather in American cinema, were they upset by Seth Rogen’s window paint produced by Apple? Few expressed themselves on the subject, but Tom Rothman, boss of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, dared to play the game in an interview with Letterboxd. If he says he appreciated the series, he puts things clear:

“Oscar Wilde said that each joke conceals a truth in the making. In each episode, there is a brilliant core of truth, and that is what makes a good satire. But beyond this nucleus, everything else, it’s big Bullshit. Really anything. Maybe certain days … It can happen that it goes into twist, but most of the time, we are not this kind of big asshole”.

He himself says he played the game of The Studio going on stage at the Cinemacon a few months ago.

“I went up and started by saying: ‘Hi everyone, I’m Seth Rogen!’ It made the crowd laugh. “

Joking aside, Sony of Sony Pictures’ boss judges that “what the series shows is that there is a fundamental truth: studio patterns are trying to do things properly, but they face a multitude of obstacles. The difference is that the series suggests that we constantly sacrifice our moral integrity. It is not really like that. Most of us are like me: we have the cinema, Just try to do our best. ”

Even before the broadcast, Seth Rogen had said that it was called by “almost all the bosses of the big studios” who told them about their opinion on the series:

“They all said to me: ‘It’s great … but it’s very traumatic to look for us.”