The final episode of Stranger Things finally dropped last week, the highly anticipated movie-length episode, crashing Netflix’s servers while crushing the hopes that the wait would be worth it. Early reviews seem pretty much mixed, with most viewers’ reactions reminiscent of the Sopranos finale:
What the hell just happened?
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This is apropos, considering that anyone watching the media industry these past couple of weeks could easily interpret the Duffer Brothers’ carefully constructed coda as an extended metaphor for the business of entertainment that no one asked for, but everyone deserves.
Because looking at the industry landscape right now, it looks a lot like Hawkins during most of Season 5 – a war zone where everyone’s surrounded by tangible and existential threats alike, fighting for survival and staving off the apocalypse against the forces of evil (or, in this case, the Ellisons).
For nearly a decade, Stranger Things found an audience – and created as close to a pop culture sensation as we get in today’s fragmented media landscape – by doing something that most execs (and every line producer) see as wildly inefficient and largely specious.
Sure, the show might have jumped the shark sometime around when the gang went from actual teenagers to the Hawkins equivalent of that Steve Buscemi “Hello, fellow kids” meme – or somewhere in that Russian POW camp – but the reason the show set records wasn’t that it was particularly original (most of its plot points were cloyingly cliche), but because it created characters that audiences could invest in, and a tone and style that was simultaneously familiar and wildly unique.
And, most importantly, it did so with first-time showrunners more concerned with storytelling than serving up an algorithmic content smoothie or creating the sort of IP that leads to dozens of spinoffs and licensing rights. Those only came after it established its popularity, not before – the Hollywood equivalent of the Upside Down, where only established properties with outlicensing potential and bold above-the-line names seem to get greenlights these days.
All Your Streams Belong To Us
But here’s the catch. For as much of an outlier as Stranger Things proved to be, the show has been rightfully anointed as the first original breakout series hit for Netflix, and estimates suggest that the franchise grossed over a billion dollars in direct revenue from new subscribers alone.
That cash, and proof of concept, firmly cemented Netflix as a major production house rather than a distributor, a precedent that created direct competition with the entrenched studio system – and fundamentally altered the industry as we know it.
Since Stranger Things debuted, Netflix’s spending on original content has increased from an estimated $3.5 billion in 2015 to a whopping $25 billion just a decade later, meaning that any incremental increase in revenue required not only more content, but also, less competition: which brings us to today, where the company that started off as a mail order DVD rental service is now positioned to become the dominant studio in Hollywood.
And while every production house might be looking for the next Stranger Things, in the economics of today’s industry, there’s a good chance that no one would take the chance on greenlighting the original concept in the first place. When creativity meets commerce, capitalism remains undefeated.
Of course, as this week’s highest-grossing box office blockbuster demonstrated, creativity or even cogent storytelling is pretty passe. Let’s take a look at the week’s biggest entertainment stories, and what they say about media careers and where the industry is headed.
Welcome to the real Upside Down.
Kind of Blue: Avatar Delivers with Little Buzz, Huge Profits
Here’s a kind of shocking statistic. James Cameron is one of only a handful of directors in Hollywood history to have directed multiple films that each grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. He has directed four of these billion-dollar films, three of them in the Avatar franchise.
As an event movie whose biggest enticement seems to be its positioning as “event entertainment,” complete with 3D glasses, special screenings, and more brand tie-ins than your average Pixar film, the stunning success and short-term windfall created by a three-hour-plus extended metaphor on colonization and environmentalism seems to have reignited Hollywood’s enthusiasm for theatrical releases.
Why take five seasons to gross 10 figures when you can do it in 10 days?
This enthusiasm, however, is likely to be short-lived. Obviously, few movies have the ability to gross a billion dollars, and this seems to be pretty hit or miss, unless, you know, you’ve got James Cameron attached. And with the overall box office still down precipitously over pre-pandemic highs, it doesn’t appear that audiences have fallen back in love with going to theaters.
Avatar should be seen as an outlier, and one of a dying breed of franchises whose releases become experiential events rather than just another title at the multiplex. With a rumored production budget of $400M, which would easily land it in the top 10 all-time, and an additional $200M allocated to marketing, Avatar cost over half a billion dollars to produce.
Infinite Credit Roll: The Pandora’s Box for Entertainment Jobs
Big movies cost big money – and that’s good news for production jobs. Avatar: Fire and Ash has (according to an imperfect IMDB search) over 1,000 credited cast and crew members – and that’s not counting another 960 visual artists.
As recently as the early 2000s, it would be pretty blase to have half a dozen similarly staffed shoots happening at the studios at any given time. In 2000, the average studio production averaged around 300 credited below-the-line crew members, a number that actually trended up through 2020 – growth driven, like Avatar: Fire and Ash, almost exclusively by the ubiquity of VFX and digital post-production.
Now, of course, the industry has largely shifted to leaner, more efficient, and cost-effective production models – meaning, of course, smaller budgets and even smaller crews; the average crew size for a studio movie has shrunk by about half since the halcyon days before the pandemic (from which the industry still hasn’t fully recovered).
Where Have All The Production Jobs Gone?
A quick look at trend data for new production job postings since March 2022 clearly illustrates the accelerating decline in demand for entertainment and media production positions (data courtesy of Revelio Labs):
According to Revelio’s workforce data, the week of March 18, 2022, entertainment companies had approximately 12,500 active job postings for production-related positions across television, film, and animation; of these postings, around 3,800 were for new jobs, with hiring demand surpassing the estimated 3,620 production jobs that were closed during the same week.
That week also saw the premieres of such seminal classics as Robert Pattinson’s The Batman, the noir Academy darling The Outfit starring Mark Rylance, and Mia Goth’s over-the-top turn in the slasher film X, which also featured the film premiere of Wednesday star Jenna Ortega. In other words, a lifetime ago.
Fast forward to the final week of December 2025, which saw fewer than 8,000 active production-related job postings. While that year-over-year drop doesn’t seem too precipitous, only 840 of those postings represented new jobs – coincidentally, the exact same amount of production jobs filled during that period.
While job postings don’t always equate to hires (or even real jobs, in many cases), the trendline is painfully clear – traditional production jobs are going the way of elevator operators and Miramax Oscar Parties.
And with more competition for less work than ever before, even those production pros lucky enough to find their name on a call sheet or in the end credits are being paid significantly less than just 3 years ago for the same roles and responsibilities (except for union members, whose long-term CBAs have led to slight salary increases).
In March of 2022, the average annualized salary of production staff and crew sat just above $50,000 a year – well below the estimated $76,000 Los Angeles residents needed to “live comfortably” at the time, but there were enough job opportunities to almost make living with 6 strangers in a crash pad in the Valley a reasonable opportunity cost for chasing the dream.
Today, however, the only professionals with a bleaker future than production and crew members looking for work are those still employed full-time in these roles. As the chart above shows, the average salary for production professionals was around $39,000 annually, approximately the same as Avatar’s per-screen average in its first week.
Given that it now takes a whopping $195,000 a year to enjoy a comfortable standard of living in Southern California (a number that’s still lower than in London and New York, the two other global production hubs), production jobs might be as much of a relic of the past as Technicolor processing, 35MM film, and Will Smith’s career.
The concept of studio culture is dissolving. Institutional buffers that once protected creative risk are thinning. Conversely, jobs tied to IP management, platform strategy, and cross-portfolio thinking will continue to grow, while those that rely on legacy processes and siloed authority will quietly evaporate (sorry, best boys and film loaders).
TL;DR: These changes are structural, not cyclical. Entry-level and first-pass roles are thinning out fast. The ladder didn’t break. It got shorter. Careers now skip rungs, which means fewer on-ramps and far less tolerance for learning on the job.
Unless, of course, James Cameron decides to make another billion-dollar blockbuster.
Silver Screen, Silver Linings
If your role exists primarily to execute someone else’s decision, you’re standing on thin ice. The good news is that many media and entertainment companies are still actively hiring. Don’t believe us?
Head on over to Mediabistro for a complete list of open media and entertainment jobs – including dozens of openings for production professionals, proving that no matter how bad the market might look, hiring never stops – and neither do we.
Featured Jobs
- Senior Social & Digital Media Manager (Sports). Prosport Management | Charlotte, NC | $60K–$100K | Full-time. Prosport Management seeks a senior-level social and digital lead to own the online presence of NASCAR professional athletes. This is a hands-on role combining strategy, high-end photo/video production, athlete voice, and sponsor integration.
- Head of Audience and Growth. 70 Faces Media | Remote (NY preferred) | $120K–$140K | Full-time70 Faces Media is hiring a senior marketing leader to drive audience growth, engagement, and consumer revenue across brands, including JTA, My Jewish Learning, Kveller, Hey Alma, The Nosher, and the New York Jewish Week. This role leads growth strategy across SEO, platforms, newsletters, fundraising, paid experiences, and emerging channels in a fast-shifting AI-driven media landscape.
- News Editor. TRT World | Washington, DC | Full-time TRT World is hiring an experienced News Editor to produce broadcast and digital news from its Washington bureau. The role includes scriptwriting, coordinating coverage, booking guests, commissioning graphics, and collaborating across TV and online platforms.
- Publisher. Piedmont Journalism Foundation | Warrenton, VA | From $125K | Full-time Piedmont Journalism Foundation seeks an experienced publisher to lead two award-winning local newsrooms, Fauquier Times and Prince William Times. This executive role oversees strategy, financial performance, community engagement, digital growth, advertising, fundraising, and newsroom operations.
Life in the Upside Down
Here’s the throughline most people miss while they’re busy panicking.
Speed is abundant now. So is volume. Output has never been cheaper. What that does is open doors, not close them. When production advantages flatten, opportunity spreads to the people who know how to move quickly and choose wisely.
AI is compressing the mechanics of making things. Consolidation is compressing the org charts that used to slow everything down. What doesn’t compress is judgment. Knowing what works. Knowing what doesn’t. Knowing when not to ship, even when you absolutely could.
That’s where flexibility lives. When tools lower the cost of execution, the ability to adapt, reframe, and pivot becomes the real leverage. Careers stop being ladders and start being maps. Messier, yes. But far more navigable if you know how to read terrain.
Stranger Things didn’t break through because Netflix had better algorithms than everyone else. It broke through because someone trusted tone long enough for an audience to find it and grow with it. That kind of patience isn’t obsolete. It’s just rarer. Which makes it more valuable.
That’s the opportunity.
In a landscape overflowing with content, work with taste still travels. Careers built around clarity, context, and conviction don’t just survive. They move laterally, diagonally, and sometimes unexpectedly upward.
The Upside Down isn’t the end of the world. It’s the moment where rigid paths fall apart, and adaptable ones start to matter. The lights are flickering. The walls are thin. But the people who know how to make something worth watching, and can adjust when the ground shifts, are still very much needed on the other side.
Matt Charney
Executive Editor, Mediabistro
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post misstated the title of James Cameron’s latest Avatar film. It has been corrected.
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