The overall landscape of the entertainment world is changing. Increasing cost pressures, labor challenges, the emergence of AI, and the changing appetite of consumers are pushing TV and film makers in new directions.
“The business in general has been a little weird over the last year and a half or so,” said Marc Idelson, CEO at Reel Media, a Burbank, California-based managing general agency that specializes in insurance for the entertainment, sports, and leisure industries. He said it’s not been business as usual since the industrywide shutdown from May to November 2023 due to labor disputes. “It’s just been not the same as it’s been in the past,” Idelson said. “It’s been less production.”
That has meant less business for insurance specialists in the entertainment industry as well.
Financial challenges for TV and film makers have driven significant changes in recent years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, motion picture and video production shed 49,000 jobs from 2016 to 2026, a decline of 21%, while motion picture and video exhibition (mostly movie theaters) cut some 25,000 jobs over the same time, a decline of 17%. Employment in both industries was flat for years until the pandemic-related decline in April 2020.
But in the past three years, the pace of job loss in the sector has ramped up. According to the DOL, from late 2022, the motion picture and video production industry cut more than 100,000 jobs, or more than 30% of the workforce. Since 2023, labor disputes have persisted and again reached a near strike before agreements were settled in May 2026.
Some of the financial pain the industry faces come from recent “streaming wars,” or intense competition between video-on-demand platforms driven by increased demand from consumers for more content. That led to deep cutbacks from many large production firms, Idelson said. “And then Wall Street put pressure on some of the studios to actually make money from the streaming, not just spend money on the content.”
Today’s shifting landscape in entertainment creates some uncertainty for insurance specialists in the TV and film sector, and consolidation isn’t helping.
The pending $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros has the industry worried about what lies ahead, said John Hamby, senior managing director, National Entertainment Practice Leader, at Brown & Brown.
“Is that going to mean a change in the number of projects that are going to be created, or the types of projects, or will that reduce the ability to hire all the actors and crew?” he said. “And so there’s some fear in the industry about that right now.”
That fear also extends to how consolidation will affect smaller production firms. “There’s going to be continued consolidation in the ‘mini’ studio space, where smaller studios that might do one or two or three projects a year want to stay independent, but they can’t and may get swept up by the big guys going forward.”
Hamby said that’s the biggest risk for insurance specialists. “If our clients get acquired, then that account is gone,” he said.
Another challenge is the current geopolitical climate worldwide.
“We’re seeing a little slowdown in what they call ‘green lighting’ of new projects because they can’t go anywhere near where there’s political difficulties,” Hamby said. He said his firm had film projects planned for Abu Dhabi and in the United Arab Emirates this summer, but those are now on hold.
Hamby said while there’s been a slowdown in projects over the past year or so, it’s not going to be a long-term worry because consumers want more content. “I think there still will be a lot of new productions, in both film and TV,” he said.
Wanda Phillips, executive vice president and head of North America Entertainment at Arch Insurance North America, agrees. “While production activity has experienced some fluctuations over the past year, we are seeing renewed momentum driven by strong demand for new content across streaming, film, and live events,” Phillips said. “The entertainment insurance market continues to demonstrate resilience and adaptability in a rapidly evolving risk landscape.”