From Margot Robbie to Marvel – The Hollywood Reporter

Even by Hollywood standards, 2023 was pretty nuts.

There were two historic strikes that shut down the town for months. Sure-fire money-printing movie franchises started collapsing at the box office, while some surprising efforts succeeded. Wealthy CEOs kept taking careful aim and publicly shooting themselves in the foot. And at a time of endless division, everyone actually seemed to agree on something: That several powerful creative women made audiences feel rather wonderful.

Below are The Hollywood Reporter‘s annual list of some of the industry’s biggest success stories — and most embarrassing missteps.

Won — Taylor Swift 

Arguably, Taylor Swift had one of the best years for a person working in the entertainment industry ever. She became a queen of all media with her blockbuster Eras concert tour (which could earn her a staggering $4.1 billion), released a concert movie that broke through the traditional studio distribution system (and grossed $250 million), she became Spotify’s most-streamed artist of the year (toppling Bad Bunny), and a 12-time winner at the Grammys (this time for directing, which is a nice flex), and was just named Time‘s “Person of the Year.” Not to mention, Swift boosted NFL rating thanks to her romance with Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce. Yet so much success going to a single person went down easy thanks to Swift’s generosity to her support crew (dishing out $50 million in bonuses) and to charities at her concert tour stops — everywhere Swift went she left people richer in her wake, banking a ton of good karma.

Lost — Harry and Meghan  

In 2020, the royal duo fled a life of ceremonial public service to cash in their celebrity status in the States. But after a whiny Netflix documentary, a whiny biography (Spare — even the title is a pouty gripe), and an inert podcast, the Harry and Meghan brand swelled into a sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped — and South Park was the pin. The show’s 20-minute “World-Wide Privacy Tour” takedown in March was savage, and was followed by Spotify dropping Archetypes, with a top executive labeling the duo “grifters.” Still, all the scorn and mockery beats otherwise having to attend 200-plus official royal family engagements a year, which sounds hellish. 

Won — Greta Gerwig/Margot Robbie

Greta Gerwig not only co-wrote and directed the biggest hit and pop culture sensation of the year with Barbie, which also became Warners’ biggest global hit ever, but she also became the first female director in history to have a title cross the billion-dollar mark. While Margot Robbie not only starred in Barbie, but produced the film as well — and reportedly made $50 million for her efforts. (As part of Robbie’s continuing effort to champion female filmmakers, she also produced Emerald Fennell’s buzzy indie thriller Saltburn). It may be “impossible to be a woman,” but Gerwig and Robbie proved Hollywood’s billion dollar glass ceiling is very possible to break.

Won — Netflix/Jenna Ortega

Last year, things were looking grim for Netflix. The streamer’s stock crashed, its revenue fell for the first time, and rivals studios were attacking with as much IP as they could find. But Netflix roared back in 2023, it’s stock up 60 percent and its third quarter revenue spiking (partly due to cracking down on password sharing). Helping matters: The launch of Wednesday, the streamer’s most watched non-Squid Game original series ever, which propelled lead Jenna Ortega to serious stardom (even if she now has to write the whole show herself).

Lost — Disney

Who wants to bet Bob Iger wishes he stayed retired? Disney got pummeled in 2023. The company’s stock extended last year’s doldrums and trades near it’s six-year low. Its Disney+ streaming service soared out of the gate in 2019, but has since hit growing pains. After having an extraordinary seven films cross the billion-dollar mark in 2019, the studio didn’t have one this year (for the first time since 2014, pandemic years excluded). Disney’s usual movie magic seemed to fizzle, from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny to Haunted Mansion to Wish to The Marvels (don’t worry, the MCU earns its own “Lost” entry, below). Disney also managed to become a culture war target, and while it’s tough to say how much of that is the company’s fault, it doesn’t help when your own Snow White star can’t stop telling people how much she hates Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The company’s normally optically savvy CEO likewise stumbled, with Iger saying striking actors demands were “not realistic” as he was attending a billionaire summer camp and enjoying his $27 million annual salary. (Come to think of it, Disney’s Star Wars franchise isn’t doing so hot either, but we don’t want to pile on). 

Won — Video Game Adaptations 

Video game adaptations never seemed to work, until suddenly they did, with a trio of smart takes that were wildly different from each other, yet true to the spirit of their source material: There was HBO’s acclaimed drama The Last of Us in January, the animated pop of Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie in April (which became the second-biggest movie of the year, earning $1.36 billion globally), and Universal’s teen-targeted horror thriller Five Nights at Freddy’s in October — a title which seemingly came out of nowhere to earn $295 million at the box office despite being released simultaneously on streamer Peacock, which just goes to show: Nobody actually subscribes to Peacock.

Lost — AI Characters

AI is the next big thing and it’s already boring. Whether it’s the evil screensaver in the mildly underperforming Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning — Part One, or AI-as-deity in Peacock’s well-reviewed, little-seen, Mrs. Davis, or the sci-fi flop The Creator (yes, that movie came out). Perhaps the that problem is that menacing, sentient AI characters aren’t new, even if ChatGPT is — 2001: A Space Odyssey crushed that trope with HAL 9000 nearly six decades ago and Hollywood’s been doing them ever since. Just because we now have AI tools that can show us what a rave at Hogwarts would look like, doesn’t mean we want even more AI in stories.

Won — Silver Foxes

Whether it’s Golden Bachelor Gerry Tuner (age 72) breaking Bachelor franchise ratings records, Patrick Dempsey (57) being named People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” (over Pedro Pascal this year, you sure?), or aging action heroes Sylvester Stallone (77), Harrison Ford (81), and Arnold Schwarzenegger (76) seeing their careers reinvigorated with leading man TV dramas, the AARP crowd was clearly in fashion. 

Lost — Yellowstone

The most popular drama on TV was nowhere to be seen amid production delays and infighting, with star Kevin Costner riding off into the Horizon (while threatening to sue Paramount), and showrunner Taylor Sheridan trying to juggle enough shows so that he can purchase the rest of Texas. Paramount announced two spinoffs, but while fans will certainly show up for whatever Sheridan creates next in the Dutton-verse, prematurely losing a massive flagship that could have run for several more years is a real loss (even if Yellowstone eventually serves up those final episodes, and we’ll believe that when we see it).

Won — Horror

You almost couldn’t go wrong with a horror title in 2023 (that’s almost — we’ll never forget you, Exorcist: Believer). On the big screen there was Megan, Talk to Me, Insidious: The Red Door, Scream VI, Evil Dead Rise, The Nun II, Cocaine Bear‚ proving yet again that a low budget-for-medium returns strategy still works. While on the on small screen, Hulu’s No One Will Save You and Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher were frighteningly popular.  

Lost — Scream Franchise

Here’s franchise that initially seemed to buck the year’s downward trend: Released in March, Scream VI , starring Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, scored the saga’s biggest box office ($168 million) since 1997s Scream 2. All the pieces were seemingly in place for a current-trilogy-wrapping seventh film when, in November, Barrera was fired for her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war. Then news broke that Ortega had also quietly left the film following a salary dispute — which, in turn, reminded everyone that original franchise star Neve Campbell likewise left after producers made an offer that, she says, “did not equate to the value I brought to the franchise.” So the current creative concept is wiped out, but also, the whole thing kinda smacks of “we don’t want to pay popular lead actresses a lot of money, we just want to watch them get chased around and stabbed with knives.” The worst part: All the groaner meta jokes and commentary about this we’ll have to endure while watching Scream 7. 

Won — Christopher Nolan

The only thing better than having the biggest non-Batman hit of your career in Oppenheimer, is having its success validate so many things you’re passionate about — like the wisdom of taking chances on original adult dramas that the industry typically believes won’t work (in this case, a long, talky, period drama biopic with an unlikely lead), and proving audiences value premium format experiences (Oppenheimer is the fourth-highest grossing Imax release of all time despite not being an action film). Bonus schadenfreude points for Nolan pulling this off after leaving his former studio home, Warner Bros, following its embrace of releasing movies on streaming instead of theaters, and after said studio seemingly tried to nuke Oppenheimer by scheduling it against Barbie — only for the two to feed off each other like some unpredictable fusion reaction. (Fun fact: The movie that Warner Bros. had originally slotted for July 21? Coyote vs. Acme).

Lost — Marvel / DC 

“I find this barely masked gloating over the low box office for The Marvels very unpleasant,” wrote Stephen King on Twitter in a viral tweet in November after the film became the biggest bomb in MCU history. “Why gloat over failure?” Well, you see Steve, it’s like this: Marvel has been going to the same creative well for years, putting out increasingly convoluted stories, amid weakening special effects, and amid an increasing number of releases, in both theaters and TV, and you were expected to watch all of it just to understand what the heck is going on, and the studio seemed to think audiences would just keep showing up in droves despite all of this. So by the time fans sat through Doctor Strange 2, She Hulk, Secret Invasion, Thor 4 and Ant-Man 3, some began to root against Marvel’s success in hopes that Kevin Feige and Co. would stop taking audiences for granted and do better — because, ideally, “fix it in post” should be a last resort, not a creative blueprint. Meanwhile, DC still cannot catch a break. While we’re excited to see what James Gunn brings to the table as co-chief of DC Films, the lousy Shazam! Fury of the Gods bombed, the actually-pretty-good The Flash bombed, Blue Beetle did modest, and Dec. 22’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’s hasn’t yet had the opportunity to disappoint, buuuuuut…. 

Won — Fran Drescher 

We’re not going to rehash the strikes here (largely because we already wrote a separate winners and losers story for the strikes last month). But if there was one person who clearly emerged a winner it was Fran Drescher, who went from being a warm-yet-hazy pop culture memory for her starring role on the 1990s sitcom The Nanny to the Screen Actors Guild’s dragon warrior. While she wasn’t always the smoothest communicator, Drescher’s obvious heart and passion were what the guild needed to lead its toughest fight in decades. “I can be me,” Drescher defiantly declared, and she was right. 

Won — Roger Ross Williams

Williams was the year’s ultra-prolific documentary king. The director (who made history in 2009 as the first Black director to ever win an Oscar, for his short film Music by Prudence) produced the Hulu docuseries The 1619 Project and directed the Apple docuseries The Super-Models and co-directed the HBO documentary Love to Love You Donna Summer and directed Netflix documentary Stamped from the Beginning (plus directed a scripted project, the Amazon biographical film Cassandro). Williams showed you can make buzzy nonfiction for streamers about important subjects, not just about creepy sex cults.

Lost — Diverse TV Shows

Amid all the post-gold-rush belt-tightening at the studios, many titles embracing diverse actors and narratives got cut during 2022, and this continued into 2023. Some examples: Amazon’s A League of Their Own, ABC’s The Wonder Years reboot, Starz’ Blindspotting, Disney+’s Doogie Kamealoha M.D., Netflix’s Glamorous, Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q. We’re not saying this is a conspiracy as studios can be counted on to make more of shows that are being watched, but it’s not a great look, either. As the Gay Times put it: “Two and a Half Men ran for 12 seasons and 262 episodes. Let that sink in.”

Won — The Las Vegas Sphere 

It seems only appropriate that Sin City finally got its own Eye of Sauron: The performance venue managed to give jaded modern entertainment audiences what a screen-obsessed culture really wants: Even more screens! Screens inside and out. LED screens so bright and sharp and numerous they boil your brain with immersive 16K resolution expanding across 160,000 square feet. The Sphere cost $2.3 billion to build — and has since made $75 million — but the Las Vegas attraction managed to pull off two miracles: Showing audiences something truly new and getting everybody to briefly think about U2. 

Lost — The CW

The CW was never a network that delivered huge ratings or received a lot of awards, but it did a solid job doing what it did: Make genre-friendly dramas for young adults that a decent number of viewers liked. Then new owner Nexstar Media Group cut several titles and loaded the channel up with things like FBoy Island. So a network that used to schedule savvy combos like Riverdale leading into Nancy Drew was suddenly slapping together a German sci-fi import, The Swarm, a.k.a. Der Schwarm, and Inside the NFL (a perfect Tuesday night for all those Germanic sci-fi-loving American football obsessives). Nexstar’s efforts might make The CW profitable by 2025, as is the company’s stated goal, but it’s sad to see a network that had an actual personality become a FBoy Island of broken toys.  

Won — Donna Langley

After decades of fighting in the trenches as a movie producer and studio executive, and surviving a multitude of shakeups during her tenure as NBCUniversal’s film studio chairman, Langley became the chief content officer over all of NBCUniversal in July. Langley was also the only non-CEO (and woman) among the quartet of powerful executives that met directly with WGA and SAG leadership and helped bring an end to the strike. In an era where media bosses and creatives are increasingly at odds, Langley’s talent-friendly attitude paid dividends — like snatching up Christopher Nolan. All this and she was also made a dame by Prince Charles in July, making her the only British royal running an American studio. If you have a meeting with Langley, bowing and curtsying is optional, but couldn’t hurt.

Lost — Jonathan Majors/Ezra Miller

Playing a major Marvel/DC character across a multitude of films is a Hollywood brass ring. In addition to being an incredibly cool gig, you become downright iconic to millions of fans worldwide which, in turn, gives you a level of casting bankability for your career moving forward. Unless, of course, you end up blowing it. Majors is supposed to help headline the next phase of the MCU as Kang the Conquerer and, having already been introduced in the first season of Loki and continuing into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — where critics called him the best thing about the film. Yet he’s currently on trial for misdemeanor assault and harassment charges (he’s plead not-guilty) and his career is hanging in the balance. Miller played Barry Allen/The Flash as a scene stealer in Justice League and then had his top-line debut in June’s The Flash, but steadily chipped away at their reputation amid multiple alleged instances of erratic and illegal behavior (they’ve said they’re undergoing mental health treatment). 

Won — TikTok

We don’t love it, either. But the divisive app continues to explode in popularity — who wasn’t checking out livestreams of Swift’s concerts? — and the share of Americans getting their news from TikTok quadrupled to 14 percent (it’s actually 32 percent for those under 30). This is despite — or, perhaps, because of — the service pushing inaccurate information, conspiracy theories, and even inspiring mental maladies among teens. While the media obsessively piles on Twitter/X (us too, below), at least nobody’s literally getting chronic spasms from scrolling through mean tweets. 

Lost — Twitter/X/Elon Musk

Call the hellscape what you want, Elon Musk’s management of the social network — one that’s long served as a critical promotional vehicle for studios and talent — has been so disastrous it’s resulted in articles speculating that the otherwise phenomenally successful businessman must be intentionally crashing the bus because nobody could be this smart and dumb at the same time. From alienating advertisers (U.S. revenue is down 55 percent since he took over in 2022) and turning off users, to retweeting antisemites, Musk has proved you can’t be a grown-up social media boss and play the impulsive Twitter troll, you have to choose your role — and it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. 

Won — Britain

UK-based productions largely kept on working during the strike, plus studios continue to expand their footprint: Warner Bros. is increasing its sprawling Leavesden hub where Barbie, Wonka and House of the Dragon were shot, boosting its number of stages from 19 to 29. Marvel has been stepping up filming in the territory as well, registering two new UK production companies this year. And compare that to …

Lost — Los Angeles 

While Hollywood keeps making more and more content, the amount of filming in L.A. has remained flat in recent years. Plus, the City of Angels has been getting plenty of bad press due to street homelessness and crime (violent crime is actually down, but theft is up) making it appear like the city is San Francisco’s slightly less post-apocalyptic sibling. As a major company’s top production executive recently told THR: “Unless there’s some specific reason to be in Los Angeles, we don’t shoot there anymore.”

Won and Lost — HBO/Max

And finally: HBO had an incredible year for Emmy nominations, scoring 127, and has the three most Emmy-nominated series (The Last of Us, Succession, and White Lotus). In addition, the company more-or-less pulled off a massive gamble by switching the name of its streaming service from the most respected brand in television to the most popular name for dogs. But its subscription numbers are sagging. “It’s not about how many subscribers; it’s about how much money,” defended Warners CEO David Zalsav in an on-brand quote when he wasn’t alienating creatives by attempting to gut Turner Classic Movies and shelving finished movies for tax credits (As long as we have money, why do we need customers and to make things?). And we couldn’t end this list without a shout-out to the loudest, most garish TV belly flop of the year: The Idol (which was basically: “What if Showgirls, but seriously tho”). One thing’s for certain: We’re not going to trust any suspicious-looking Twitter accounts that criticize this article.