CAA’s Maha Dakhil spoke of the “revolution” currently taking place in the film industry where people with talent and drive are “in effect becoming masters of their own destiny.”
“People who work at the highest levels are people who don’t just perform in movies or show up and get hired, but actually become masters of their own destiny,” the CAA managing director and film agent (she counts Tom Cruise among her clients) said while speaking at a Forbes Iconoclast event in New York last week.
Al-Dakhil pointed to the surprising success of recent horror films mania and Back rooms As evidence of this revolution.
“You’re watching the film industry go through a revolution over the last few weeks with these horror films pushing the box office up from week to week and usually there’s a decline in the box office,” she said. “Movie viewing habits right now are showing us that audiences are really alive, really there, really connected, and these are not meaningless horror films.”
While some may describe these films as “horror films,” Dakhil pointed out that they are more for the audience.
“They are… films that show us something new and suggestive about the human condition,” she continued. “People are running towards them in a way that gives us a lot of hope in what we do as advocates and protectors of artists so that we can stand behind these creators, these, our actors, our athletes, our musicians, any of those. Voices can now create multiple ways to reach people, and we’re seeing that we don’t even need studios to greenlight ideas; we just need talent and courage.”
The conversation also turned to artificial intelligence and why building trust with the public is important. Cruise, for example, is one artist who has built that trust, which has led to career longevity. “He has a social contract with the audience, and you know he’s actually going to hand out your movie tickets and earn them,” Dakhil said. She noted that audiences are turning against content that appears to have been manufactured or manipulated. While some in Hollywood may “fear” Generation Z, they don’t.
“I love Gen Z because they’re alive, they’re present, they’re peer to peer, and I think that scares away a lot of Hollywood,” she said. “But to me, it’s very interesting and exciting because they’re asking us to meet them at the source. They’re the consumers who are driving the business right now.”
She added that audiences in general are starting to avoid not only AI-generated content but also content that leans heavily into CGI as well as franchises that feel repetitive.
“People are actually more excited about analog and real experiences,” she said. “They’re moving away from CGI effects and franchises that have been copied and imitated and remade, and looking for what’s real and what’s human and what’s driven by the artists and their ideas and that connection. I know we talk about AI as an inevitable tool, but for artists you can’t replace the spirit of the artist, and that’s what the audience reflects.”
The conversation, moderated by Forbes Chief Content Officer Randall Lane, also included the president and CEO of Liberty Media Corp. Derek Chang and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch. Watch it here.
