Under museum director Kerry Brougher, plans had been developed for a permanent core exhibition of film history titled “Where Dreams Are Made: A Journey Inside the Movies.” But many found the approach rooted in an outdated notion of Hollywood and its history. So regardless of others’ observations, we were undaunted.”Įven as construction proceeded, a still larger challenge loomed: figuring out what exactly this grand, costly film museum would be. “We’re used to the bumps in the road on the way to opening weekend. “Filmmakers are used to the vicissitudes of the struggle of telling ambitious stories,” said current academy President David Rubin, who at the time was a member of the board of governors. Boosted by a $50-million gift from Cheryl and Haim Saban, fundraising began to pick up even as the budget ballooned over $400 million. But having taken on $360 million in debt in 2015 to finance the project, the academy was in too deep to do anything but press forward. A March meeting of the board of governors turned tense and fractious, with some saying Hudson had let the project go off the rails.
ACADEMY MUSEUM OF MOTION PICTURES MOVIE
“Making everybody happy is a fool’s errand.”īut Los Angeles finally has the thing so many people expect to see when they visit - a movie museum.īy 2017, as the original opening date came and went, there was growing concern within academy leadership that the project was a financial albatross. “Who says that those nearly 10,000 people - every one of whom has firm ideas of what is exactly correct - are going to be happy?” said one academy insider who has been deeply involved in the museum but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The next step will be seeing whether the general public, and the academy’s members, will embrace the museum’s warts-and-all portrait. Tremendous time, energy and money have gone into thinking about, and then rethinking, how the brand ambassador of Hollywood should showcase movie history to the world. Why hawks like him command top dollar.įor the academy, the stakes - financially and reputationally - are extraordinarily high.
Spencer the hawk’s job: Discourage other birds that might dirty the gleaming, glass building. His name is Spencer, and he scares for a living I remember one of our board members, when he saw the first model, said, ‘This will be a beacon for our industry and a destination for all of Los Angeles and the world.’ And that’s true.”Įntertainment & Arts Academy Museum hired a hawk.
“But for me - and I think for the board - there was never a loss of faith. “Were there hurdles? Were there obstacles? Were there problems to solve? Yes,” said academy Chief Executive Dawn Hudson. almost every delay led to something way better.”įor an academy that has weathered the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and continues to wrestle with declining viewership for the Oscars telecast, the museum’s opening is not just a triumph of logistics but also a chance for the group to continue its attempts to celebrate the art form of cinema while acknowledging some of the industry’s failures. “When you think about how complex something like this is - with creative differences of opinion and just the logistical challenges of building in a major city - we should have expected a lot of delays,” said Sarandos, who is chairman of the museum’s board of directors. 30, Sarandos believes, along with other key players in the effort, that the long-awaited cathedral of movies is landing at just the right time - perhaps when the film industry needs it most. Now, with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures set to open its doors Sept. Like a troubled movie production, it seemed to some in danger of ending as an expensive, heartbreaking flop. Bringing it to fruition proved a long and at times tortuous process - beset by cost overruns, construction delays, competing visions, infighting, a pandemic and a racial reckoning. He was hardly the first to feel that way.Ī film museum had been a seemingly chimerical dream within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences virtually since its founding in 1927. What the city sorely needed, Sarandos felt, was a museum dedicated to movies. “You could do a random studio tour here and there but basically there was Universal Studios and Hollywood Boulevard - that was Hollywood.”
“I was shocked that there was no Hollywood to see,” says Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive and chief content officer. No showcase for its most precious artifacts. No single place where you could take in the sweep of its storied history. When Ted Sarandos moved to Los Angeles 25 years ago, he was surprised that the film industry - an industry he would soon transform as a top executive at Netflix - had no real center.
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