At a time when Hollywood seems more out of touch than ever, Seth Rogen’s new Apple TV+ comedy The Studio offers a refreshing and brutally funny look at the industry’s chaos — skewering the assholes, egomaniacs, and clueless decision-makers driving it all.
With a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score ahead of its debut on March 26, this new star-studded Apple series already looks poised to be the next big TV hit everyone’s talking about. Rogen plays Matt Remnick, the newly appointed head of Continental Studios who’s thrown headlong into the high-stakes world of balancing artistic ambition with the harsh realities of the commercial film industry. As if that wasn’t hard enough, his challenge is to do so while navigating the absurdities and dysfunctions that have come to define a town that was built on magic and dreams.
In a standout scene from the first episode, Rogen’s Remnick bares his soul in a conversation with Patty Leigh (played by Catherine O’Hara), a veteran producer who offers him a reality check. Remnick worries that there’s too much riding on his shoulders, and that he’ll be forced to care more about the bottom line than about making great movies.
“The job is a meat grinder,” O’Hara’s Leigh acknowledges. “It makes you stressed and panicked and miserable. One week, you’re looking your idol in the eye and breaking his heart. The next week, you’re writing a blank check for some entitled nepo baby in a beanie. But when it all comes together, and you make a good movie — it’s good, forever.”
In essence, The Studio isn’t just about movies; it’s about any art form caught between the grind of creating something extraordinary and the commercial imperative to pay the bills.
Hollywood — the actual, real-world version that’s lampooned in The Studio — is in turmoil right now, largely as a result of its failure to balance those competing interests. In both the show and in real life, the town’s broken business model is on full display, with studios increasingly chasing big-budget blockbusters and franchise films at the expense of original, creative content that audiences will actually enjoy.
Consider the recent release of Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s new sci-fi epic. With a reported $200 million budget, it’s tracking for an opening under $20 million — quite a slow start. But at least it’ll be seen in theaters, where it can make some of that gargantuan budget back. Compare that to Netflix’s The Electric State, directed by the Russo Brothers, which cost a staggering $320 million to produce and won’t even get a theatrical release. Worse, it’s currently the lowest-rated film in the Russo Brothers’ career, sitting at a mere 23% on Rotten Tomatoes. This is Hollywood’s new normal — massive budgets, bloated egos, and growing irrelevance.
But even amid all the excess, there are still bright spots. Anora, a small-budget indie from director Sean Baker, swept the Oscars this year, showing that good storytelling and authentic artistry can still shine. It’s against this backdrop that Rogen’s Matt Remnick in The Studio emerges as one of the only earnest people left in Hollywood’s fractured system.
These struggles, by the way, aren’t limited to Hollywood. Those of us in the journalism profession certainly know this cycle all too well. When everything is reduced to fungible “content,” quality takes a backseat to metrics, clicks, and eyeballs. In the attention economy, being good enough isn’t good enough; you’ll start out with all the idealism in the world, and then before you know it you’ve gone from an obsession with what sells to selling yourself.
“I’m anxious, I’m stressed out, panicking pretty much all the time,” Remnick says towards the end of the first episode of The Studio. I was so much happier two weeks ago when I was just angry and resentful that I didn’t have this job … You know, I walk past the tour guide every morning and they say that the office was built as a temple to cinema. But it feels much more like a tomb.”
It’s a moment that sums up The Studio perfectly: The show is both a brutal critique and a heartfelt love letter to the creative process. Rogen’s portrayal of a well-meaning, idealistic man caught in the web of Hollywood’s dysfunctional business is both hilarious and painfully relatable.
Hollywood is at a crossroads, and The Studio nails the struggle of trying to keep the art alive while swimming in a sea of money-hungry execs and lazy formulas. It’s a show about passion, failure, and the weird people who think they can fix the system — when, in fact, they’re often just making it worse. Whether you’re a fan of movies or simply someone who understands the battle between commercial pressures and artistic integrity, The Studio promises to be a must-watch, and likely the next big Apple TV+ hit.
