Hollywood needs a hero. As the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes drag on, studio production is in limbo, with much of the industry out of the job until the unions agree to new contracts. Ever since the writers and actors guilds hit the picket lines, the studio representatives at the AMPTP have refused to return to the negotiating table, which suggests that nothing will get done until someone steps up to the task of finding a way forward.
Charles D. King might just have the right stuff.
A trailblazing agent and producer who now runs the independent studio MACRO, King is a smart, levelheaded, and well-liked executive around town who understands every facet of the Hollywood business. And if he got the chance to sit down at the negotiating table, he would set out to find some common ground.
“There’s a barometer that I try to use in everyday in life and business,” King told IndieWire’s Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson on this week’s episode of Screen Talk. “I think about what is fair. I literally say to our departments and our attorneys, ‘Is this deal fair?’ I think that when [the studios] are sitting there and they know the compensation that CEOs are getting and the senior members of their teams and they know how much they’re providing back for their shareholders. … They should be sitting there thinking and realizing when they’re talking to both sides, what is fair?”
If King had a chance to be a part of the negotiating process, he added, “I would be really diving in and having those honest questions about what is fair. … There’s some calibration that’s needed — period — as our market has adjusted and we’re in a new reality about where things are going with primarily a streaming universe.”
Data transparency is a key factor in that process. King said it would be essential for talent “to negotiate deals and have adjustments made or bonuses applied when certain metrics are hit.” At the same time, he said it was important that studios felt confident that they could hit their own financial goals. “When I was an agent, I never wanted to beat someone up so badly on a deal that they were going to be upset on the other side,” he said. “You have to have parties feel good about where it is on either side and that’s where it has to get here.”
While studio heads like Disney’s Bob Iger and Netflix’s Ted Sarandos seem incapable of making progress with the guilds, King would be well-positioned to enter the fray. MACRO isn’t part of the AMPTP, but King’s decades of history in the industry have endowed him with a unique grasp on the dynamics of the studio system and how to facilitate change from the inside.
The first Black partner at WME, King has led the charge for bringing underrepresented actors and directors to the screen. With Ryan Coogler and Shaka King, he was among the first all-Black producing team to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. His company has produced a wide array of projects that have critical and commercial success for people of color, from “Mudbound” to “Sorry to Bother You.” Most recently, MACRO produced the new sci-fi dramedy “They Cloned Tyrone,” which topped Netflix’s charts the same weekend that many audiences were storming theaters to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”
King said he had mixed feelings about the success of his most recent project on a streaming platform as opposed to theaters (the movie has been released on around 100 screens). “We knew that this was a film that will play well with audiences in theaters,” he said. “When you’re reading the chatter and people are like, ‘Hey, guys, why isn’t this in theaters?’, it could’ve been cool to have more than that. The thing is, we know that millions and millions of people have seen this on Netflix. … It’s been very gratifying to know these films were seen by the world.”
That kind of experience has given him unique insight into the mechanics of contemporary dealmaking. “Clearly, there are market forces and pressures for the tech companies and streaming platforms that they have to keep in mind with some of the shareholder value,” King said. “But I do believe we’ll get to the other side of this positively where it’s going to be a win-win for everyone.”
King also addressed recent diversity setbacks for Hollywood studios amid reports that many Black executives have exited prominent roles in recent weeks.
“There were people at the height of 2020 who made proclomations and public statements to look good and sound like they were actually looking to make change,” King said. “What you’re seeing is some of the shakeout from that as there have been market corrections. The pressures facing a lot of those executives — especially those trying to change the dynamic from within — is that if they don’t have the buy-in at the top, those people are tired of being put in positions where they’re not empowered to actually make change.”
Over the course of the podcast, King addressed a range of other topics, including his longtime client Tyler Perry and the $90 million strategic funding that MACRO raised earlier this year as the company plans for a big future.
Watch the full podcast above or listen to it below.
Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous episodes here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk.
