For 20 years, Participant Media has been Hollywood’s pre-eminent maker of activist entertainment, backing socially conscious films like “An Inconvenient Truth,” a climate change cri de coeur, and “Wonder,” about a boy with birth defects.
Its movies have won 21 Academy Awards.
But the company never quite managed to do good while also making money, at least not consistently.
Streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix have started to sell ads, and advertisers prefer all-audience, apolitical content.
Eat-your-broccoli documentaries and dramas that explore underrepresented communities (both Participant sweet spots) are harder to sell than ever.
Persons:
Matt Damon, Jeff Skoll
Organizations:
Media, “, eBay, Wall, Disney, Netflix