Last week, the Television Academy announced its 78th Emmy nominations, and Taylor Sheridan's entire slate got the reception you'd give a telemarketer. “Landman,” Paramount+'s flagship drama with Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott, walked away with nothing. “The Madison,” led by Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, got nothing either. Sheridan's grand total across two of the most watched shows on television: one nomination, for stunt coordination on “Tulsa King.” Meanwhile Ryan Murphy's “All's Fair,” a show even its own network calls critically panned, picked up two nods. I coached high school track and field for years. If a kid runs the fastest 400 meters in the state and the judges hand the ribbon to the boy who tripped over the last hurdle, you ask questions. Hollywood never does.
The same stretch gives us the money version of this story. Disney's “Snow White” remake finished its theatrical run having grossed $205.7 million worldwide against a production and marketing bill north of $340 million, a loss Forbes now pegs near $170 million once the studio's U.K. filings became public record. That is not a rounding error. That is a hedge fund manager getting a phone call from his limited partners. “Snow White” is not an outlier. Warner Bros.' “Supergirl” opened this month to a domestic take of $37.1 million against studio hopes of $50 to $55 million, a soft launch for a film built to anchor a franchise. Pixar's “Lightyear” lost Disney somewhere between $106 and $122 million on a $200 million budget after audiences balked at a same-sex kiss and a plot that asked more of them than a “Toy Story” spinoff should. “The Marvels” grossed $206 million worldwide against a $307 million net budget, becoming the first outright box office bomb in Marvel's history. Same pattern, different studio, still no lesson learned.
Two institutions, one disease. The Emmys reward whatever a closed circle of industry voters believes it should be seen praising. The studios spend a quarter-billion dollars on movies engineered to please that same circle, plus the activist critics who mistake a lecture for a plot. Both have stopped serving the people buying the ticket or clicking play. I have spent 30 years in investment management studying management teams who confuse motion with progress. A CEO who spends shareholder money to impress the board instead of the customer gets fired inside a fiscal quarter. A studio executive who does the same keeps his office, his parking spot, and his write-up in Deadline.
Here is what makes the Sheridan snub rich. The man is the living rebuttal to everything wrong with the rest of the industry. His shows do not lecture. “Yellowstone's” series finale pulled 11.4 million same-day viewers. “Landman's” second season drew nearly 15 million worldwide views in two days. He builds stories around work, land, family, and consequence, the stuff most Americans actually live rather than the stuff a studio diversity memo tells them they should care about. Sheridan told Bill Simmons on his podcast that his goal is to "sit somebody on their couch and move them," not chase a trophy. The Academy proved his point for him on the same morning he made it.
To be sure, awards are not supposed to be a popularity contest, and a healthy industry needs critics willing to praise a well-made film even when it is not a blockbuster. Fair enough. But when nine below-the-line nominations over a decade is the entire haul for the creator behind some of the most watched television in America, the problem is not quality. It is a closed voting body rewarding its own taste over the audience's judgment. Box office receipts and Nielsen numbers are messy, but they are honest. Nobody buys a movie ticket to score points at a dinner party, and nobody streams three seasons of a show they secretly hate.
Disney proved, in the same 12 months, that it still knows how to do this right. “Lilo & Stitch,” released the same year as “Snow White,” grossed north of a billion dollars by respecting the source material instead of lecturing the audience about it. The studios that remember who they are working for still win. The ones that forget, lose $170 million and get to explain themselves to shareholders.
I raised three sons on a steady diet of “Top Gun: Maverick,” “American Sniper,” and Sunday NFL football, not because those stories were polished for an awards committee, but because they respected the audience enough to tell a straight story about honor, effort, and consequence. Hollywood used to know that. It can relearn it, or it can keep losing nine-figure sums on message movies nobody wanted and handing trophies to shows nobody watched. The fix is not complicated. Make something people want to see. Stop being surprised when the people who never get invited to the ceremony are the same ones who paid for every seat in the house. Vote with your wallet and your remote. It is the only ballot Hollywood still has to count.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.