Over a six-decade profession in Hollywood, Jon Voight has performed an aspiring gigolo (Midnight Cowboy), received an Oscar for Finest Actor (Coming Residence) and, on the age of 76, been awarded a Golden Globe.
Now, the 86-year-old Voight has taken on one other position that has generated loads of drama: “Special Ambassador to Hollywood” for the Trump administration.
If the position was meant to be ceremonial, Voight, a longtime conservative, didn’t get the memo. Final weekend, he visited US President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago compound to pitch a plan to “make Hollywood great again” — a dialog that sparked per week of tension within the world movie business.
Simply hours after their assembly, Trump took to his telephone, posting that he would intervene to avoid wasting Hollywood from “a very fast death” by instituting a 100 per cent tariff on motion pictures coming to the US that have been produced in “Foreign Lands”.
Shares in Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount plummeted the following morning, shedding $20bn in market worth.
Hollywood executives are puzzled by the obvious sympathy from a US president who beforehand expressed disdain for them as “elites”. Trump has slammed actors comparable to Meryl Streep as “liberal movie people” and lashed out on the Academy Awards as “boring, woke crap!”
“This is just crazy,” mentioned one senior Hollywood government, noting that the American movie business has a commerce surplus, in contrast to different industries Trump needs to bolster together with his tariff plans. “What is it you’re trying to achieve?”
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel mocked the announcement, telling viewers: “What a great idea. Next year, [HBO’s] The White Lotus is gonna be set at a Hampton Inn.”
But the Teamsters, a union representing drivers and different workers within the movement image business, thanked Trump, calling his transfer a “strong step towards finally reining in the studios’ un-American addiction to outsourcing our members’ work”.
Questions abound about how Trump’s movie tariffs would work in follow — and whether or not they may occur in any respect. A White Home spokesperson on Monday mentioned “no final decision” had been made and the administration was “exploring all options”.
If the plan goes forward, it might mark the primary occasion of a tariff being levied on a service as an alternative of a bodily good, mentioned Marney Cheek, a accomplice on the Covington legislation agency.
“Most films are transmitted digitally and not in physical form, so there is a fundamental question about how to implement the tariff,” she mentioned. “The US government has been opposed to digital service taxes in the past, so they would have to come up with a scheme to collect the money.”
Executives at Netflix and different main teams are getting ready to satisfy with Trump to attempt to affect the plans, mentioned folks acquainted with the matter. Their message for Trump: movie tariffs would injury US companies.
Throughout earnings calls this week three of the biggest studios prevented addressing the subject solely.
Disney and Netflix didn’t reply to requests for remark. Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount declined to remark.
Like different components of US media and cultural circles, Trump has feuded with Hollywood but additionally proven a want to be included in it. As a former actuality tv persona and producer of NBC’s The Apprentice, he was awarded a star on Hollywood’s Stroll of Fame in 2007. He has appeared in movies such because the Nineties hit Residence Alone, enjoying himself as a New York businessman. His current takeover of Washington’s Kennedy Heart implies a continued curiosity in influencing American tradition.
“Trump cares about movie stars, he cares about Tom Cruise. He loves being King Trump and wants the beautiful people . . . My question is, where is the upside for him?” mentioned media analyst Alice Enders.
Enders believed it’s “very unlikely” for Trump’s administration to offer vital federal tax incentives to Hollywood, as each Voight and California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed this week. “It won’t play well with his base. The Christian base, they’re not in Hollywood. They’re going to say: why are we giving them more money?
“Doge has been cutting things right, left and centre,” she mentioned, referring to the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity. “And you’re going to give a huge amount of money to Hollywood?”
As he introduced a commerce take care of the UK on Thursday, Trump nodded to his Hollywood ties, mentioning he had been pals with actor Sean Connery, who performed the unique James Bond. “Great guy,” Trump mentioned. However he reiterated intentions to implement movie tariffs, which weren’t a part of the commerce settlement.
Days earlier than his inauguration, Trump introduced that Voight — together with fellow conservative actors Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson — would change into “special ambassadors” whose jobs could be to assist a “very troubled place, Hollywood, California” that was dropping out to “foreign countries”.
No matter their different {qualifications}, Stallone and Gibson have expertise in wanting outdoors the US to make their motion pictures. Stallone shot Rambo: Final Blood in Bulgaria, whereas Gibson is capturing his sequel to The Ardour of the Christ in Italy.
Regardless of the mutual hostility between Trump and most of Hollywood, the president’s declare that it’s a “troubled place” sums up the way in which many within the metropolis’s leisure business really feel in the intervening time.
Manufacturing has been shifting out of Hollywood for years, because of beneficiant incentives supplied by Vancouver, Atlanta, New York and London. The pattern to shoot outdoors LA accelerated after the 2023 labour strike, which introduced manufacturing to a standstill for six months. An anticipated rebound has not materialised, leaving some to stress that Los Angeles is destined for a similar destiny as Detroit and the auto business.
Senior executives say there may be nonetheless a robust want to shoot in Hollywood, however they bemoan the expense — notably after the strikes — and onerous allowing necessities to movie in LA.
Newsom has launched a $750mn annual tax-incentive plan, doubling the prevailing credit score, and there may be additionally dialogue of reducing purple tape.
Trump appeared to stroll again his plan on Monday, saying he was “not looking to hurt the [movie] industry, I want to help the industry”. However he has not offered any extra particulars, leaving Hollywood in limbo — and afraid of scary Trump by talking out.
Executives this week questioned whether or not this was all a scheme to inflict injury on Canada, or a political tactic to realize favour with unions and weaken assist for Newsom, a Democrat with doable presidential ambitions.
“With only a single social media post to go on, [it is] virtually impossible to size the impact to the industry,” Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne wrote this week. He warned that the tariffs “would lead to fewer films, more expensive films, and lower earnings for all in the business”.
“At this point, we have more questions than answers,” Swinburne concluded.
