How Hollywood’s Hit Formula Flopped—and What Could Come Next
Plain English with Derek Thompson
The Shift in Hollywood's Blockbuster Strategy
This chapter examines the evolution of Hollywood's filmmaking approach, contrasting the historic dominance of sequels and franchises with a contemporary pivot towards original content. It highlights key examples of recent industry successes and challenges, particularly within major franchises, while questioning corporate motivations and audience preferences. The discussion sets the stage for understanding the future landscape of cinema amid increasing globalization and corporatization.
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Speaker 2
Welcome to the show, Lindsay. Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here on another podcast talking about colts. Okay,
Speaker 4
Lindsay, now you have collected hundreds of stories over the years, but when we reached out to you to do a show for us, you instantly chose this one. Why?
Speaker 2
This story actually is more personal for me because it involves one of my good friends, but it's not just that the story is crazy. It's got all these different components that make it like something out of a Charles Dickens 19th century novel. But you know what? I'm not going to get ahead of myself. Just listen and see what you think. Let's
Speaker 4
give it a listen.
Speaker 1
I grew up in Huntington Canyon, Utah, out in the middle of nowhere, a really small town. The canyon is pretty narrow and the mountains are steep. We moved into a house right in the middle of the canyon. It was three trailers pieced together in the most awkward way. It was so rickety that when the wind blew down the canyon, it would blow through the house. My mom would have candles lit in the house and the wind would blow them out. This
Speaker 2
is Jeremy Tucker, a hardworking crew boss at a carbon fiber manufacturing plant in Salt Lake City. When he's not at work, he's playing darts in a league with his friends or rockhounding for gems and stones. A seemingly normal existence. However, growing up, his life was anything but. So
Speaker 1
my mom and dad are raising a big family on almost nothing. And this trailer was a reflection of that. My mom is a really strong person. She raised 10 kids. I'm the oldest, so the family looks to me for help and advice. Religion was everything in my family. For the first 22 years of my life, I grew up in a religion where it was imperative to have as many kids as possible. I was born into a break-off sect of Mormonism. We called ourselves the Order.
Speaker 2
Mormonism is best known for Mitt Romney, magic underwear, and Broadway musicals. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints boasts millions of members worldwide. But what is lesser known is that there are over 400 different break-off sects, fundamental estrains, and expressions of Mormonism.
Speaker 4
Kind of like cover bands, I guess. 400, Lindsay?
Speaker 2
Yes, and Jeremy grew up in one of them, known as the Kingston Group. The group lives communally with a practice known as the United Order and is composed officially of about a thousand members. But the number is probably a lot higher as most of these groups like to keep their member count hush-hush. The
Speaker 1
order is everything. That's our identity. We believe that we are the ones that are literally keeping the world from being destroyed.
Speaker 2
Everyone in the order turns their earnings into the church to serve the greater good. Sort of like religious
Speaker 3
communism.
Speaker 2
Exactly. And in the order, God has a system of organization that is managed through male leaders.
Speaker 3
Of course.
Speaker 2
These men see themselves as ruling God's kingdom on earth, like a tightly run accounting firm. Everything has to be carefully documented and accounted for, and it's all supposed to be done in preparation for Jesus' second coming. Every
Speaker 1
day is consumed by the religion. Family prayers, meditation three times a day, Sunday meetings, Friday night, young people's meetings, stewardship training classes, numbered men's meetings. Church starts at 10 o'clock every Sunday morning. My mom wakes up around 7 o'clock to start getting all the kids out of bed, fed, dressed, and bathed. I just dread her coming into my room because church is so boring. And I wish that just this one Sunday, we don't have to go to church. But you always do.
Speaker 2
And church was just a mile down the canyon.
Speaker 1
You have around 50 people that are packed into this little Quonsa hut. Elbow to elbow. And it's cold, especially if it's in the winter. It's really cold. We start off with a hymn and then have opening prayer and it's followed by another hymn. And then we sit down and listen to last week's talk from the prophet on cassette tape. I'll ask Brother Daniel
Speaker 2
to speak to us next. I appreciate very much the things that have been brought out this morning. The way some of our young people feel, they feel like that they can go
Speaker 1
on the outside and do things or they can do things that no one will know, but you can't do that. You come back with that smell that you
Speaker 4
can't fool anyone. I shouldn't say that. Sometimes you can fool certain people, but there are people you cannot fool. This
Speaker 2
is Daniel Kingston. His brother Paul Kingston is the head prophet for the order, which means he has a lot of power and influence in the group. And he is notorious among ex-order members for being violent and abusive.
Speaker 3
Oh, great. Sign me up.
Speaker 2
In 1998, he made national headlines for beating his 16-year daughter, 28 times before she passed out when she was attempting to flee her marriage. Well,
Speaker 3
I guess when you're a 16-year wife, you should obey
Speaker 2
the pedophile that you're betrothed to, right? It gets worse, you guys. She was married to Daniel's brother, her uncle.
Speaker 3
Uh, can you pass my vomit bag?
Speaker 4
One step ahead of you, Liz. I
Speaker 1
was always confused by the order as a kid. And anytime I had questions, I could go to my parents and I would ask these questions. And even though their answers didn't make sense, the thing that I took away is that... They were certain their faith was so strong.
Speaker 3
Well, the brainwashing was so strong, really. My
Speaker 1
parents were really close. Every weekend, we were doing something as a family, camping trips and picnics and going sledding. And then all of a sudden, things changed. I didn't see a lot of my dad. I remember asking my mom, where did dad go? It's the weekend. He should be home and my mom would tell me he's at Aunt Becky's. Okay, who's Aunt Becky? Jeremy
Speaker 2
and his family would attend church each week in the small trailer, but at least once a month, they would show their commitment to their faith and drive to the old standard restaurant supply building in Salt Lake City. A
Speaker 3
restaurant supply building for church?
Speaker 2
Yeah, we'll get into that in a little bit. It was a long grueling drive that took several hours. You
Speaker 1
know, as often as we could, we would go to Salt Lake. We had a tiny little church building that a thousand people would cram into. And you had to sit through two hours of listening to sermons. And
Speaker 2
here's an example of the kind of dry sermons that these folks would have to endure every single week. The
Speaker 1
thing that we need to do is we need to, and I'm not saying that, in fact, the thing that we do need to do as parents, as managers, is we need to take a closer look at what the people who are associated with are doing with their free time and help them line things up and include things where they can put their energy into. My brothers and sisters and my mom would sit wherever there was an available seat. I remember my dad sitting on the front row with... Let me guess,
Speaker 3
Aunt Becky.
Speaker 1
With Aunt Becky. And I remember asking my mom, why aren't we sitting with dad? And she wouldn't really say anything. I would walk up to the front row and ask to sit by him. And sometimes I was able to sit with him. And from the front row, you could see all the speakers up on the stage. The
Speaker 2
men would sit in rows numbered by their importance.
Speaker 1
directly connected to God. Most of the lessons in church meetings were more about building up the kingdom of God through hard work and saving money.
Speaker 2
The order encouraged its leaders to make as much money as possible. And as a result, ordered leaders account for hundreds of businesses. They own everything from small pawn shops and laundromats, to global energy companies and arms dealers that allegedly trade with foreign mafias. Oh,
Speaker 4
sounds perfectly legitimate. I
Speaker 3
thought Jeremy's family lived in a broken-down trailer.
Speaker 2
Well, though hard work was valued in the order, extravagance, not so much. Most members are dirt poor.
Speaker 3
So the leaders live like paupers too then? No.
Speaker 2
Male leaders in the Kingston family live in gated mansions.
Speaker 4
Again, it sounds perfectly legitimate. I mean, the leaders are the ones, after all, doing all the commanding and all that bossing does get tiring. And when you're that tired, you need a mansion to rest in, obviously. Obviously.
Speaker 2
But you didn't hear that from me. These men like to keep up an appearance of poverty. They don't want people to know how they really live.
Speaker 3
Because then it could arouse suspicion that they're completely full of shit.
Speaker 4
And using members for slave labor, essentially.
Speaker 3
Another common theme amongst cults, working for free or pennies in honor of a greater purpose, to serve
Speaker 2
the divine. You
Speaker 4
know, it is funny how that greater purpose always seems to benefit the ones at the top. And
Speaker 2
the Order does a good job keeping up the facade. Their official headquarters address leads you to a rundown home in a dilapidated Salt Lake neighborhood. Sometimes the group meets in old warehouses for church service. Ah, that's
Speaker 3
the restaurant supply building. The
Speaker 1
business and the religion are one and the same. That's what the order uses to build the kingdom of God as a flow of income. One thing that we heard over and over is how important it is to turn your money in. In our Sunday School Lessons as kids, they would tell us, even if you find a penny on the sidewalk, you need to take that to the office and consecrate that penny.
Speaker 2
Consecration is the act of donating time, talent, money, and property to build up the church. The Kingston's believe that all money earned should be turned over to the church.
Speaker 4
I mean, at least they do have a fancy word for it. Consecration. I
Speaker 1
remember one time as a really young kid walking out of Safeway with my mom after we had finished and seeing a penny out in the parking lot and I was really excited that I could actually do what I had been hearing about in church So I picked up the penny and told my mom I wanted to turn it in and she took me to the mine office just a dusty old trailer and Gave that to them and they wrote me a service slip for a credit of one cent to my statement. And I felt really good even as a little boy. I felt like I was actually contributing to the order.
Speaker 3
So that's really true,
Speaker 2
Lindsay. Everyone would work for free? Well, again, Liz, the money was being put toward a greater purpose, to build the kingdom of God. Which, excuse my ignorance,
Speaker 3
is what exactly? Well,
Speaker 2
for the Kingstons, the kingdom of God equates to preparing for the second coming of Jesus. They need money and weapons when God destroys the world
Speaker 3
and the wicked. And the wicked is who again? People like Tyler and me?
Speaker 4
Just youtas.
Speaker 3
Just me, right. Obviously. Let me get this straight though. When God destroys the world all that's left is this divine order, you're telling me United States currency is somehow going to come in handy? Apparently,
Speaker 2
yes. The righteous will be very well-funded in a war against the wicked.
Speaker 1
It's just money. When you turn it in, then it becomes units and it goes on to your statement. They have accounts, or an account, that all the members' money goes to. Units here on Earth are equivalent to one dollar, one unit equals one dollar. But when you die, you get to use that in your kingdom in heaven. But if you spent all that money, then you wouldn't have any units to take to heaven with you. And
Speaker 4
also, if members have to turn in all their income to the order, how then do they afford, you know, food, toilet
Speaker 1
paper?
Speaker 2
Spare keys, light bulbs, extra iPhone chargers. They've already thought about that. The group has set up their own banking system.
Speaker 1
If we needed groceries or anything, you would go to the office and you would tell them, you know, I need $100 to buy groceries. And they would say stuff like, well, do you really need $100? Can you get by with $50? And you would leave with $50. Then that money would be gone for good instead of staying units. So spending money always gave me anxiety. I felt like I was taking money from God.
Speaker 3
Can't God be just like America and print some
Speaker 1
more? Going to public school, I remember watching the kids put quarters in the vending machine like it was no big deal and a soda comes out and I was envious of that. One day as I was walking past the soda machine I saw two quarters in the money return. Nobody was there. So I took those quarters put them in the vending machine didn't know what kind of soda to buy I didn't know what any of them tasted like, so I pushed a button and a Mr. Pibb rolled out of the machine. I had just spent these unconsecrated quarters, and I knew God knew, and I'm sitting in math class looking at this soda, and it looks delicious, it's cold. There's condensation drops on it, and I wanna open it so bad, and I'm trying to make my sin feel less So I read the ingredients hoping that one of the ingredients is not sugar in
Speaker 2
the group It was a sin to consume sugar, but
Speaker 1
not only is there sugar in mr. Pibb. There was caffeine also
Speaker 2
a sin a
Speaker 1
wave of guilt and anxiety just poured over me, but the deed was already done. So I opened it and drank that soda and it was as good as it looked. These
Speaker 3
guys have some ass-backward sins, if you ask me.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3
Sugar? No way. Force sex with a minor? Live your truth, Peter. You do you, man.
Speaker 1
Hallelujah. In the order, diet like money is a religious virtue.
Today, we’re talking about movies, the philosophy of hits in Hollywood, and why we might be at a fascinating inflection point in how the entertainment industry thinks about popularity and prestige.
We start by thinking about the big Oscar win for 'Oppenheimer' in the historical context. For much of the past 10 or 15 years, popularity and prestige have come apart in Hollywood. The biggest movies have almost exclusively been comic book franchises, sequels, and adaptations, while the Best Picture winners have often been small films, like 'CODA' or 'Moonlight.' But in the past 18 months, two things have changed. First, the old franchise model is showing some wear and tear, as Marvel movies consistently underperform their expectations. Second, original and often daring films—'Barbie,' 'Oppenheimer,' 'Dune: Part 2'—are dominating at the box office. Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw joins to explain how the franchise formula was born, why it's showing its age, and what might come next.
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