If you watched the Golden Globes recently, you probably saw how, during the opening monologue, host Nikki Glaser joked that the star-studded audience was "in the heart of Los Angeles, where no TV or film has been made for the past six years."
That's been about the long and short of the Hollywood mood, post-COVID, post-strikes, post-everything.
It's just really hard in the biz right now! Writers haven't been able to get on staffs, and directors can't seem to get financing. What's a creative to do?
But screenwriting instructor Corey Mandell has a different outlook for writers.
In a recent interview with Film Courage, Mandell addressed the doom-and-gloom narrative. He says writers are selling scripts again, agents are actively seeking new talent, and we're entering what could be the beginning of another boom period for screenwriters.
Check out the video below. Is Hollywood dead?
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"No, They're wrong. And Here's Why."
To understand where we are now, Mandell takes us back about two decades.
The streaming wars created an unprecedented gold rush for writers. When Netflix and Amazon entered the original content game, they needed material, and lots of it. Back then, HBO's entire annual budget for original content sat at around $2 billion. Netflix and Amazon were collectively spending over $50 billion, he says. Apple pledged $1 billion.
"I would get phone calls or texts every day from at least one of my writers, at least from one of my writers who just got signed by an agent or a manager, which is the precursor usually for a career or just sold a script or just got hired on to a TV show," Mandell said. "It was so crazy."
He shared the story of a student named Jennifer who had a blog with a couple of thousand followers. A streaming company reached out asking if she'd considered turning it into a TV show. She hadn't. They invited her in anyway and taught her how to pitch her own project to them so they could buy it.
That wasn't normal industry behavior. It was the result of streaming platforms desperate for content to justify subscription fees.
Of course, then the pandemic hit, and the streaming wars had to slam on the brakes.
"The Party Came to an Abrupt End at the Pandemic."
Everything stopped. Production shut down with the arrival of COVID-19, followed by the writers' strike, the actors' strike, and other union strikes.
The streamers reviewed their balance sheets and decided scripted content was expensive, so they'd pivot to cheaper alternatives.
Reality shows, true crime docuseries, international acquisitions. Content that didn't require paying writers or actors top dollar.
"And what was really chilling and was scaring a lot of people is that the streaming companies, they still needed all this content, but they decided they didn't want to spend as much money in scripted material," Mandell said.
The boom period had trained a generation of writers to expect opportunities that had suddenly vanished. Agents and managers started cutting their rosters.
Breaking into Hollywood had become harder than it had been in years.
But—
The Great Gatsby Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
"Nobody's Watching That Stuff Anymore."
As could be expected with any industry-wide trend, audiences grew tired of that cheaper, paint-by-numbers content over the last few years. There are now plenty of online jabs about how a lot of streaming content looks and feels the same.
Love this kind of content or hate it, the metrics streaming companies live by (follow-through rates, completion percentages) began to drop.
The spec market today is showing signs of life similar to pre-pandemic Hollywood, with multiple million-dollar sales happening throughout 2024. Scripts like Alignment by previously unknown writer Natan Dotan sold for $1.25 million. Julia Cox's Love of Your Life went to Amazon for around $2 million.
2025 has accelerated the trend. Eight spec scripts were sold in August 2025, the highest monthly volume since March 2017. By late summer, the industry had seen 19 spec deals for the year, compared to just 11 in all of 2023.
The box office is backing this up. Original films like Ryan Coogler's Sinners grossed $278.6 million domestically and became the first original movie since 2017's Coco to cross $200 million at the North American box office. Zach Cregger's Weapons followed with over $100 million in domestic box office returns.
As Mandell points out, audiences are hungry for fresh stories. And subscribers stick around for original scripted content.
"Agents and Managers Have Been Calling Me Regularly for the Last Six Months."
For Mandell, this is the signal that things have changed. Agents and managers aren't looking for only the established writers. They're actively seeking new, unproduced talent.
"'Who do you have that I should be reading? Who's your best student?'" Mandell said. "They are aggressively looking to sign not just writers, but new writers, writers who don't have a track record."
They only do this when they see a boom coming. These are professionals who think two years ahead, who "skate to where the puck is going to be," he said.
They're expanding their rosters now because they anticipate needing more clients to service the increased demand for content. Every producer, agent, and manager Mandell speaks with shares the same enthusiasm.
"They are saying, 'We haven't been this excited in six years.'"
This is obviously great news for emerging writers. Screenwriting competitions and industry access points become more valuable when agents are looking to build their rosters rather than cut them.
The lament about a lack of productions in LA still stands. Below-the-line and crew are still struggling, and we hate that.
The good thing is, if you're a writer, location doesn't matter. You don't have to be in LA. The writer's economy operates separately from the production economy, and the outlook for writers is fundamentally different. The business of buying and developing scripts is heating up.
If you're working on that spec script, finish it. If you're considering which path into screenwriting makes sense, now might be exactly the right time to commit. Don't give up.
