THE CREATIVE RECESSION — PART I Why Film and TV Feel Stuck: How We Get Out Of It

The phrase “creative recession” struck a nerve.

Not because it was provocative — but because it felt accurate.

Across film and television, there’s a growing sense that something fundamental has stalled. Not just financially, but creatively. Fewer projects are being made. Fewer risks are being taken. And the work that does reach audiences often feels familiar, cautious and strangely hollow.

This isn’t about nostalgia.

It’s about output, opportunity and ambition.

And it’s happening right now.

A Shrinking Industry, Not a Growing One

Despite the explosion of platforms, less original film and television is being made than people realise — particularly in the mid-budget space where most innovation historically lived.

• Fewer independent films are green-lit each year

• Fewer returning drama series make it past season one

• Development slates are smaller, safer, and slower

• Emerging filmmakers and writers struggle to get a first meaningful credit

What we’re seeing isn’t a golden age of abundance — it’s consolidation disguised as choice.

Audiences scroll endlessly, yet genuinely new work arrives sporadically. Release schedules feel thin. Cultural moments are rare. Shows disappear weeks after launch. Films land without impact and vanish without conversation.

This is what a creative recession looks like.

Risk Has Become the Enemy of Culture

At the heart of the creative recession is a simple shift:

Risk has been reclassified as failure.

Studios, streamers, and broadcasters now operate under intense financial and algorithmic pressure. Every project must justify itself before it exists — projected audience size, comparative data, engagement forecasts, brand safety.

The result?

• Fewer original ideas

• Fewer distinctive voices

• Fewer genre-bending experiments

• More remakes, reboots, IP extensions and tonal sameness

Risk used to be the engine of progress. Now it’s something to be engineered out of the system entirely.

Why the 70s, 80s, 90s — and Early 2000s — Still Loom Large

The reason filmmakers and audiences still reference these decades isn’t because they were perfect — it’s because the system allowed failure.

Those eras produced:

• Bold studio films that shouldn’t have worked but did

• Genre films that smuggled subversive ideas into the mainstream

• Television that evolved season by season rather than being over-policed at pilot stage

Most importantly, creators were given room to grow.

Today, projects are expected to arrive fully formed, globally appealing, and immediately successful — or they’re quietly written off.

That’s not how culture develops.

That’s how it stagnates.

Homogeneity Is the Symptom, Not the Disease

Across genres — horror, drama, comedy, sci-fi — there’s a growing sameness:

• Similar visual language

• Similar narrative beats

• Similar moral framing

• Similar casting logic

This isn’t because talent has dried up.

It’s because systems reward familiarity over originality.

When the financial downside of failure is concentrated — and the upside is capped — decision-makers naturally retreat to the safest possible option. Over time, this produces a monoculture.

A creative recession doesn’t announce itself loudly.

It arrives quietly, through repetition.

The Opportunity Cost We Never Talk About

Every safe greenlight is also a missed greenlight.

For every derivative project made, there’s a bold one that wasn’t:

• A filmmaker who didn’t get their break

• A writer whose voice never reached an audience

• A genre twist that never got tested

• A future franchise that never had the chance to exist

Creative recessions don’t just reduce output — they delay cultural evolution.

And the longer they last, the harder they are to reverse.

How We Reverse the Creative Recession

The solution isn’t more money spent on fewer projects.

It’s smarter distribution of risk.

Here are several ways the industry could actively rebuild creative momentum.

1. Portfolio Thinking, Not Project Thinking

Instead of betting everything on individual “event” titles, distributors could:

• Finance slates of smaller projects

• Accept that some will fail, some will break even, and a few will over-perform

• Measure success across a portfolio, not a single release

This is how venture capital works.

It’s how innovation happens everywhere else — except film and TV.

2. Tiered Risk Models

Not every project needs the same expectations.

Distributors could clearly separate:

• Low-risk, high-return IP projects

• Mid-risk original genre films

• High-risk experimental or emerging-talent projects

Each tier has different metrics for success — and different creative freedoms. Right now, everything is judged by the same blunt instrument.

3. Better Revenue Models, Not Perpetual Ownership

The problem isn’t ownership — it’s stagnation.

Flat buyouts and perpetual control concentrate value, cap upside and reduce the incentive to take creative risks. Over time, confidence drains out of the system.

A healthier ecosystem would prioritise smarter revenue models, not permanent ownership:

• Shared upside instead of one-off fees

• Performance-based participation

• Slate-level risk and reward

When value circulates, confidence returns.

And confidence is what allows creativity to thrive.

4. Volume Restores Confidence

Ironically, the best way to restore audience trust is more output, not less.

Regular releases:

• Train audiences to engage

• Reduce pressure on individual titles

• Create discovery pathways

• Allow sleeper hits to emerge organically

Culture thrives on momentum.

5. Treat Development as R&D, Not Waste

Other industries accept research and development as essential. Film and TV increasingly treat it as expendable.

Development slates should be:

1. Larger

2. More diverse

3. Less obsessed with immediate conversion

Not everything needs to be made — but everything needs to be explored.

The Choice in Front of Us

Creative recessions are not permanent states.

They are responses to fear.

• Fear of failure.

• Fear of cost.

• Fear of change.

But the film and television industries were built by people willing to gamble on ideas that shouldn’t have worked — and did.

The question now isn’t whether audiences want originality.

They do.

The question is whether the industry is willing to rebuild the structures that allow it.

Because creativity doesn’t disappear.

It waits.

And the longer we delay, the more voices we lose along the way.

Coming Next: PART II

The Numbers Don’t Lie

In Part II, we look at the data behind the creative recession.

• How many fewer films and TV shows are being made.

• Where opportunity has collapsed.

• How risk has narrowed.

• And why output is shrinking even as platforms multiply.

Creative recessions don’t begin with a lack of ideas.

They begin when the numbers quietly move in the wrong direction.