Donald Trump’s return is making Hollywood nervous

The standing ovation lasted for more than ten minutes. “The Apprentice”, a dramatisation of the early career of Donald Trump, had one of the buzziest premieres at the Cannes Film Festival in May, with Hollywood grandees in attendance, including Cate Blanchett, an actress, and Oliver Stone, a director. Distributors snapped up the rights to release the title in many countries. But in America no big studio was willing to touch it. The reason is simple, says one American content buyer, glancing around a restaurant in Beverly Hills to check for eavesdroppers: “Fear.”

In some ways Hollywood is more daring than ever. The shift from broadcast to streaming has freed producers from the rules that restrict bad language and raunchy scenes on TV in many countries. Relying more on subscription income and less on advertising has also reduced the need to make inoffensive “brand-safe” content. In the past decade provocative drama has flourished; boundary-pushing comedy is enjoying a rollicking renaissance.

Yet when it comes to news and politics, Hollywood seems to be growing more timid. As films like “The Apprentice” struggle to secure a release at home, studios are trying not to offend important foreign markets such as China. On the small screen, entertainment-focused streaming companies are declining to commission the current-affairs shows that were a mainstay of broadcast and cable. The result is a broad retreat from political programming.

Hollywood is Democratic territory: Joe Biden raised $30m there at a recent fundraiser with actors such as George Clooney and Julia Roberts. But whatever happens during the first televised debate, held on CNN on June 27th, after The Economist went to press, the probability of a sequel to the Trump presidency is making Hollywood’s top brass nervous. A media personality in his own right, as well as a cable-news addict, Mr Trump is notoriously sensitive to his on-screen depiction. His lawyers’ cease-and-desist letter to the makers of “The Apprentice” warns that “President Trump will pursue every appropriate legal means to hold you accountable.” One Hollywood executive predicts a chilling effect on America’s TV and movie industry should he be re-elected: “He will go after people who make content he doesn’t like.”

Relations between studios and the government are especially sensitive, because the film business is heading for a period of regulatory scrutiny. During Mr Trump’s first term, trustbusters attempted to stop AT&T buying Time Warner, whose CNN news channel was a frequent critic of the president—and one of his favourite punchbags. With studios struggling to make streaming pay, a new round of consolidation is likely. Paramount is looking for a buyer, and Warner Bros Discovery may soon need one. Comcast, a cable giant touted as a potential acquirer, has been labelled “Concast” by Mr Trump (“C-O-N, right, con, because it’s a con job”), who dislikes its MSNBC cable-news network.

Mr Trump aside, polarisation in America has made studios warier of alienating audiences with content seen as political. After Disney got into a fight with Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, over gay rights in 2022, conservatives pored over Disney’s output for evidence of “wokeness”. They detected it in the plots of films such as “Elemental”, a blameless if unsubtle story of racial harmony. Bob Iger, Disney’s boss, has assured investors that “Where the Disney company can have a positive impact on the world…great. But generally speaking, we need to be an entertainment-first company.”

The risk of repelling viewers is heightened as streaming brings media companies’ news content closer to their entertainment offerings. In the past conservative audiences might not have associated MSNBC with the “Despicable Me” films. Today the two sit side-by-side on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock.

It is not just at home that things are trickier. American movies began to make most of their box-office takings overseas 20 years ago, forcing studios to pay attention to the whims of audiences (and censors) in China and beyond. Now streaming is internationalising television in the same way. Netflix, the biggest streamer, is in more than 190 countries, each with different politics. Sometimes local edits are required: last year Netflix removed “Flight to You”, a Chinese series, from its platform in Vietnam after the government there objected to the show’s endorsement of China’s claim to territory in the South China Sea. No big streamer picked up “The Dissident”, a film released in 2020 about the Saudi-orchestrated murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Bryan Fogel, its Oscar-winning director, described streamers’ calculus as: “It’s better to keep our doors open to Saudi business and Saudi money than it is to…anger the kingdom.” (Streaming executives dispute this.)

Some of Hollywood’s new entrants from Silicon Valley have particular reason to tread carefully. Apple has become a big player in video streaming, but the business remains insignificant relative to its hardware operation, which generates around $300bn in sales a year. It does not want to jeopardise this gusher of cash. Last year Apple parted ways with Jon Stewart, a comedian, who said the break-up was caused by the firm’s discomfort with his coverage on his Apple TV+ series of subjects such as excessive corporate profits in America.

Amid such controversies, news is one part of the old television bundle that is being left behind in the transition to streaming. Netflix has pushed into most genres of TV—including, recently, live sport—but has no intention of entering the news business, sticking to the mantra of its co-founder, Reed Hastings, that “We’re not in the truth-to-power business, we’re in the entertainment business.” Warner Bros Discovery cancelled its CNN+ streamer in 2022 after less than a month. Apple makes a bland daily-news podcast and has no plans to do more. Nor has Amazon (which is fielding requests that it reveal footage of Mr Trump allegedly using racist language while filming a TV series for MGM, which Amazon now owns).

“To be in the news game right now is seen by these companies as a more political act, arguably, than it ever was,” says James Tager of PEN America, a free-speech group. “And if politics means ‘choosing sides’ in an increasingly polarised country, then…reporting the news will seem to cautious executives as a no-win situation.” Social-media firms have reached much the same conclusion and have started down-ranking news content in their feeds. Instagram’s boss explained recently that news and politics were “not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest) or integrity risks that come along with them”.

Hollywood has not fled from politics entirely. Disney, which owns ABC, is considering bringing more news to its streaming platforms. Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post shows that not all tech-media barons are afraid of current affairs (though it has lately given the Amazon founder a headache, with a newsroom revolt over a new publisher at the Post).

And not everyone in the media is scared of Mr Trump: one executive hopes that a Trump administration might at least be more aggressive in asserting intellectual-property rights in piracy-prone countries such as China. But for now, most of Hollywood has decided that politics is a channel best left on mute. ■