What Taylor Swift, ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ and Scorsese can tell Hollywood about Gen Z

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The business world tends to treat every new generation of consumers as an alien species that must be thoroughly analyzed and understood, or else it will destroy us all.

Hollywood is no different. The entertainment industry, which often resembles a revolving-door gerontocracy, is in a constant sense of insecurity about how the behaviors of young people might render it culturally irrelevant. Do teens and early 20-somethings even care about movies in theaters anymore? Or are they only interested in what’s on their phones?

But a handful of recent theatrical movie releases have shown the power of appealing directly to the sensibilities and interests of Gen Z, generally thought of as the TikTok-addicted cohort born between 1996 and the early 2010s.

Young people sparked the summer “Barbenheimer” explosion and turned theaters into dance parties for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert movie ($231.9 million in global box office). They gave Blumhouse’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s” an $80-million smash domestic opening (though the second weekend was much, much smaller, suffering a gnarly 76% drop). They made “GentleMinions” happen.

Nate Jones, 23, is chief relationships officer at JUV Consulting, a firm that was launched by Gen-Zers to help brands better figure out their younger audiences, whose habits are different from those of millennials and Gen Xers in important ways. Jones is also a Los Angeles-based film nut, so I, an elder millennial, wanted to get his take on recent movie trends and how the industry can adapt.

Wide Shot: After the Eras Tour movie and “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” is the movie theater the new Gen Z hangout?

Nate Jones: What I see as a huge fundamental shift that’s happened in the last few years is that we’re no longer seeing a movie because we’re going to the movie theater; we’re going to the movie theater because we’re seeing a movie. There’s a directional change there.

As in, you’re going to see a specific movie, rather than moviegoing being a regular habit on a Friday night.

Yeah, exactly. In the way that social media has impacted most industries, it’s all about, what is the cultural conversation that’s happening, and how can I be in on it? Social media, and specifically TikTok, has framed all of Gen Z’s mind-set as, am I in on the thing? Am I in on the joke? And a lot of the viewership in theaters has been driven by this idea of FOMO. The obvious example is “Barbenheimer,” which to me is very much the result of TikTok and social media.

Now people often use “Barbie” as like this case study into marketing and the future of movies. But I actually think it’s quite hard to replicate that intentionally. It is really hard to fabricate virality, no matter how much investment you put into it. It’s really at the hands of young people. It’s no longer really in the hands of the studios or the production companies. And now you sort of do need Gen Z to be really bought in and interested in what you’re doing to replicate what we’ve been seeing.

I also think Gen Z is a very lonely generation, right? We talk a lot about the loneliness epidemic and the friendship recession. And I think this idea of a collective experience is really important. The Eras Tour movie is obviously doing really well, and is once again the product of a cultural conversation that people want to be in on.

Well, that’s such a specific example because it was a pure FOMO thing and it’s a totally different experience from anything else at a theater, where people are dancing in the aisles and taking videos while watching.

To me it also begs the question of, what is the role of the phone in the movie theater? In places that seemed exclusive where you would never take content, never take photos — think of private members clubs — are now having to pivot their whole strategy because it’s, like, the content from the inside that gets people interested to go in.

What’s also on this point is that my friends and I talk a lot about, “Oh, that’s a streamer movie.” There are some movies that have theatrical releases that are like, I’m gonna wait until that comes out on streaming. I do want to see it. But I can see that from my couch, whereas there are some movies where the experience is different going to the theater. The Eras Tour movie is a prime example of that.

It depends on the situation. The idea of like someone whipping out a phone and taking a picture of the screen in “Killers of the Flower Moon” makes my skin crawl a little bit.

Yes, I know.

Are we going to see the phone trend bleed into other types of moviegoing experiences, where having them wouldn’t typically be considered appropriate?

I think yes. I think a lot about [streaming watch parties] and this idea that commenting on the thing is almost as important as the thing itself.

A good example of this is that when we’re scrolling on our TikTok “For You” page, most of the time, people are reading the comments section while the video is happening, because the comments section is almost as important as the video itself. Do I think there will be a world where there’s more room for folks to have a conversation and react in real time to the movie theater experience? I do.

I think the AMC CEO brought this idea up about phones in theaters and was chastised for it.

Yeah, it was Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres. [Aron in 2016 floated the idea of having dedicated auditoriums that would allow texting. He quickly dropped the idea after a backlash.]

I actually think he was onto something. What you’re saying is right, though. There’s a time and place. I am someone who also is concerned with the sanctity of the experience, but I think it will become more commonplace. I do not doubt that.

The world is ending, in other words. (I’m kidding.) How are studios using social media differently to tap Gen Z now?

Over the last few days, I’ve gotten so much “Priscilla” [the latest from director Sofia Coppola] content on my TikTok feed. It’s not just posting cuts from the movie. It’s individuals creating videos that feel almost like an insider scoop, so that we don’t feel like we’re being marketed at, but that we’re being let in on something.

What we’ve seen is that when something goes viral, Gen Z basically becomes the worldwide unpaid marketing team for whatever you’re selling. But trying to actually make that happen is really difficult. So what do you tell film distribution and marketing clients about how to walk that line?

It is really important, when you’re crafting those strategies, to have that young Gen Zer in the room with decision-making capabilities. And not just the intern in the corner taking notes, but someone who’s actively involved with the conversation.

The second thing I would say is that having a risk appetite is also important. If you want to go viral, it’s hard to play it safe. And in the world of trends, you have to move very quickly. You can’t have your legal team wait two months to approve something. You have to be responding to what’s happening that day.

Young people were a big part of the audience for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which I thought was interesting, considering it’s a 3½-hour movie [46% of the opening night audience was under 35. The oldest Gen Zers are around 26, while the youngest are 11].

One of the learnings there is that Gen Z is a very purpose-driven generation that skews more progressive, as every young generation does. And I think this movie is representing a community [in this case, Native Americans] that’s often not represented in the entertainment industry. Similarly to when you think about the new “Little Mermaid” [which featured a Black lead]. If you were buying a ticket, that said something about you.

And while I think Gen Z has a short attention span, which is often noted, I don’t think that means that we won’t watch something for hours and hours and hours. We do binge-watching for hours and hours. I think it just means the time in which you have to capture our attention is quite small.

What do people in the entertainment industry get wrong about how to reach Gen Z?

I see a failure in terms of being so revenue-centric and only creating things that are safe. And I think sometimes people don’t have the risk appetite to tell a different story. Whereas I hear a lot from Gen Z-ers, especially who work in this industry, saying, why are these the only stories we’re telling? Why can’t we think creatively? Why can’t we think about something novel?

Got feedback about this newsletter? Send me an email at ryan.faughnder@latimes.com.

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Number of the week

How much will Bob Iger actually pay for full ownership of Hulu? Walt Disney Co. last week said it expects to fork over $8.6 billion for Comcast Corp.’s 33% in the “Only Murders in the Building” streaming service, based on the floor valuation of $27.5 billion the two sides decided on four years ago.

But of course, that’s just the starting point of what will be a long process to figure out the fair market value of Hulu, which many analysts believe is significantly higher. Disney will probably end up making a second payment, assuming the streaming service is appraised at a greater value than the original number. That process likely won’t finish until sometime next year.

There’s debate over what Hulu is really worth. Analyst Rich Greenfield and his Lightshed Partners colleagues wrote recently that $35 billion would be a “reasonable starting point” for valuing Hulu on its own.

However, the analysts added, that’s not the whole story. Hulu holds value for Iger & Co. that goes beyond the subscription and advertising dollars it generates as a standalone service. Disney bundles Hulu with Disney+ and ESPN+ at a discount in order to bolster the company’s whole streaming strategy and reduce churn, so that should be factored in as well.

Thus, Greenfield estimates Hulu might be worth $40 billion to $45 billion. If that turns out to be the case, Disney would owe Comcast an additional $4 billion to $6 billion, roughly speaking. That would be a nice get for Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, though not as sweet as if Hulu ends up being valued at $60 billion (!) as some have suggested.

Film shoots

Latest data on shooting permits from FilmLA: Look out below! Shooting days for last week fell below 200 in the Los Angeles area.

Best of the web

— Speaking of Gen Z and TikTok, the dominance of pro-Palestinian messaging on the social media platform during the Israel-Hamas conflict has Democrats worried about a sharp generational and ideological split, according to Semafor. My colleague Jaweed Kaleem has written about a similar breakdown.

— When in doubt, just don’t tweet. And if you must, definitely don’t use fake social media accounts the way HBO bosses apparently did to respond to negative reviews, a mini scandal that was blown open by a Rolling Stone report. HBO and Max chief Casey Bloys later apologized for trolling TV critics, saying the plan was “a very, very dumb idea.”

— A deep dive from the Entertainment Strategy Guy on what shows might qualify for the WGA’s success-based streaming bonus. Bloomberg took a crack at this question, too.

Finally...

The most fun documentary I’ve seen lately is “BS High” on Max, Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe’s tale of the Bishop Sycamore High School scandal in which a wildly under-qualified football team with charismatic but shady head coach ended up in a nationally televised game with IMG Academy. It’s quite a story.