Six Hollywood Consequences of Tuesday’s Democrat Blockbuster

The massive showing by Democrats in Tuesday’s midterm elections impacts everyone who lives in this country. But the entertainment industry has a particular role, given its charge to tell stories — to explain America to itself. And now there’s suddenly a whole new chapter to write about a country that has decided to radically reject the politics of many of the past ten years.

But man, that sounds awfully high-minded. There are far more concrete examples. Here are six entertainment realms that could look a lot different after Tuesday’s domination.

Bring on the film money?

The federal film tax credit had a little bit of momentum with Republican lawmakers like Tim Scott, Brian Jack and Nathaniel Moran and Democrats such as Adam Schiff, Laura Friedman and Linda Sanchez introducing a bill last month to establish the 20 percent credit for certain labor costs. Where does Tuesday leave it?

Well, the good news is all the lead champions in Congress have won re-election and will be back to work next session (though Scott may have to spend a few extra minutes in the morning wiping egg off his face for his “unequivocal” assertion that Republicans would maintain Senate control).

The question is whether they can rally enough fellow lawmakers behind it. On paper, Republicans would want to join the cause, as it’s a win for them at a time when those won’t be easy to come by. Doubly so for President Donald Trump, who will be eager to crow about…something, and bringing some jobs back to the U.S. will allow for the chirp.

The snag is that the tax credit reduces the U.S. tax base at a time of massive deficits and when many Democrats are promising a restoration of benefits — i.e., the kind of thing you need a deep tax base for. Supporters will argue this is tax revenue that wouldn’t have happened anyway if production was going overseas (sometimes but not always true) and that it will benefit workers (yes, will trickle down, but the actual rebate goes to producers, some of the bigger of whom won’t be seen as needing a handout). On paper this should still have a decent shot. But Congressional turnovers can mess with priorities. Put this in the unknown column.

Texas artists saw it all along

No one around the cable-news dial could quite believe that Texas had elected a Democratic senator for the first time in 38 years or governor for the first time in 32. Harry Enten was so in disbelief he almost got into a fight with his accent.

We should have paid closer attention to creatives. They’ve been telling us how it’s possible — telling us of another Texas — all along. Natalie Maines of the (then-Dixie) Chicks famously and at the expense of her career told a London audience at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 that “we do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.”

But it’s been creeping in plenty of other Texas artists’ work too — in the films of Richard Linklater and his anti-exploitation 2006 movie Fast Food Nation and the arched eyebrow-to-false-jingoism Last Flag Flying in 2017. Mike Judge, pushing back against George W. Bush-era compliance in 2006’s retroactive documentary Idiocracy. Or even just the work of an Austinite like David Modigliani and his 2019 nonfiction piece Running with Beto. (Actually, Beto walked so James Talarico could run.) We haven’t always paid attention.

No doubt we’ll soon start hearing other artists around the country tell us a place is a lot more Democratic than its Republican politicians want to project. After Tuesday, it’s worth listening.

Anti-media trolling

You know how you’re going for some minor medical procedure and the doctor’s like, “In the short term, it will hurt like hell, but then you’ll feel a lot better?”

I suspect we’ll get a whole lash-out at mainstream media figures by Trump and members of his administration after Tuesday’s drubbing. “Outlets are failing,” “hosts should be fired,” you know the lyrics. But lame ducks tend to get lamer as their term wears on, and once Trump sees how little effect this is having — the meager few days of Jimmy Kimmel suspension he got after the Charlie Kirk joke last year will practically look like a Colbert canning by comparison — I suspect we’ll start seeing a lower-key approach or just his attention turned elsewhere.

Spasms from the FCC are still possible, Brendan Carr writing letters to this media company or not asking them to drop by for a not-so-friendly visit. But how hard do you want to go when — oh yes, you’re not a presidential cabinet department but an agency overseen and funded by….Congress? The Carr witch hunts and saber rattles of the past two years are going to get a lot quieter. Who knows? Maybe the media companies will stop quaking in their boots and even restore a DEI program or two.

David Ellison’s true colors

For months we’ve been told by Ellison apologists — and David Ellison — that the new owner of Warner Bros. wasn’t actually a Trumper; he just played one at UFC fights. Ellison needed Trump to get his deals through, so it was all realpolitik. Well, now he doesn’t need that — in fact, if anything, a Trump association hurts him with a new Congress. So does he reveal himself to be the pragmatist his defenders say (or even the liberal on many issues that he says he is)? Or, with his Trump cover falling away, does he just unmask as the conservative he’s been up all along? First test up is Alex Gibney’s Musk documentary, coming in a few months from HBO. Does he still release it despite its targeting of the leading GOP donor? Musk just paid a lot of money to Skydance, potentially so HBO doesn’t air it, though he has bigger challenges to worry about right now.

And there will be all sorts of other markers — films to buy, TV shows to air, news divisions to revamp — for one of the bigger moguls operating today. We’ll see what he’s really made of soon enough. At the very least John Oliver could rest a little easier today.

Speaking of Musk, and getting things right, Alex Gibney’s idea that if we just pull back the curtain his weakness will be revealed was practically born out in lockstep on Tuesday as Musk’s half a billion went for naught. “The Great and Terrible Oz kept people in check because they were afraid of his visage that loomed over everybody, and he used that power to exert an enormous amount of control,” Gibney told THR last month. “But when a little dog pulled aside the curtain, and you can see a frumpy man operating gears and levers, suddenly he wasn’t so terrible and he wasn’t so great.” Exactly.

One loser in all of this: Rob Bonta and the AGs who garnered a…modest settlement from Ellison in his WBD acquisition as pressure mounted from various politicians and leaders. Had the attorneys general just held out six more weeks, they would have had all of Congress and a whole new vibe on their side.

Celebrity…non-activism?

The Hollywood model for this electoral season has been really interesting. Many people you talk to around the entertainment business and beyond have said some version of Hollywood sitting this out. But that’s not exactly true. Entertainers lent plenty of financial muscle to these midterms — see under: all the fundraisers thrown by A-listers, from Damon Lindelof for James Talarico to Shonda Rhimes for Jon Ossoff, along with all the donations from the likes of Chuck Lorre, Sally Field and Casey Bloys. Damn, Don Henley alone gave a half-million dollars to various candidates in Texas.

What happened a lot less were public campaign appearances. Celebrities did that nonstop in 2024, and it either didn’t help or got them (and their Democratic candidates) pulverized. If your party’s message is “return power to the people,” then some very rich red-carpet types standing there telling you how to do it sort of jams the signal and generally casts an elitist cloud over your message. We ain’t in 2004 anymore.

No doubt 2028 will bring plenty of big names stumping for candidates. People want to help, and famous people want to help famously; nothing wrong with that. But after the stark contrast between 2024 and now, we might see a different tack. Maybe a candidate doesn’t turn down Beyoncé who wants to show up at a campaign event. But maybe also Beyoncé thinks twice before offering? It’s not like stumping makes celebs’ lives easier either.

One other change: the idea of celebs running for office. A time-honored tradition. But Michele Tafoya just rode her Sunday Night Football popularity to the Republican nomination for Senate in Minnesota — then got trounced by 14 points. I mean, if a celebrity can’t get elected in Minnesota…

That said, if McConaughey scratched his political itch and tossed his cowboy hat in the ring for, say, Ted Cruz’s seat in four years, how many of us would object?

AI pullback

What kind of actual regulation we’ll get on AI remains to be seen. Ed Markey may have promised all those subpoenas for tech executives, and there’s a general air of bring-Big-Tech-in, but actually stopping Silicon Valley from developing new models and products is hard. It would be like trying to stop politicians from issuing press releases — it’s what they do. Also, there’s a pacing misalignment because Congress moves slowly and writes laws and tech companies move fast and write code. Also, tech companies have a lot of money and a lot of lobbyists.

All those caveats said, the winds blow differently now. Many of next term’s 259 House Democrats and 54-56 Senate Democrats got there by promising tougher oversight on AI, particularly on data centers, and they’ll be incentivized to make some moves. And even if Trump won’t sign bills of that kind, the numbers are now lopsided enough that Senate Democrats would just need to peel off a few Republicans to get a 60-vote filibuster. (Josh Hawley, John Curtis and John Kennedy of Missouri/Utah/Louisiana come to mind; they’ve all expressed Big Tech-skeptical feelings.)

All of this could slow down how quickly the models get developed and thus how fast they get adopted by studios or consumers. Good news for creatives, most of whom are fine with AI as a limited-use tool, less so as a soul- and job-destroying blunt instrument of automation.