“We definitely are going to make billions, but we want to do it in a smart and thoughtful way”: Macro, amplifying marginalised voices, and the barriers of Hollywood’s industry logics

In 2015, Charles D. King exited William Morris Endeavor, where he had worked since 1997 when he joined the agency’s trainee programme before rising through the ranks to become its first ever African American partner, to establish a new talent management and screen media production company, Macro. Since then, Macro has cultivated a brand for both elevating the voices and visions of people of colour in front and behind the screen and catering to underserved audiences of colour by producing content with more diverse stories such as Fences (2016), Mudbound (2017) and Gentefied (2020-2021). As well as emphasising the social and cultural benefits of creating content with more diverse stories, cast and crew, however, King also presents Macro’s mission as an enormous business opportunity. ‘We definitely are going to make billions,’ King states, ‘but we want to do it in a smart and thoughtful way as we elevate communities while also doing good business’ (Callahan-Bever, 2017).
In these terms, Macro’s operations arguably represent an important break from industry and production norms. With a leadership team comprised mostly of people of colour and women, Macro appears to break from Hollywood’s ‘plantation’ modes of production where Black bodies have historically been exploited by White people for White entertainment (Ndounou, 2014: 31-34). Moreover, by depicting producing projects with people of colour as an enormous global business opportunity (King bristles at the description of people of colour as ‘minorities’ as he describes Macro’s target audience as the ‘global majority’), Macro’s marketing discourse departs from the conventional Hollywood logic that films and television series with mainly Black casts do not sell well internationally (Ndounou, 1-4; Havens, 2013: 1).
Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods involving the analysis of extratextual discourse and distribution figures, this paper explores to what extent Macro is as genuinely disruptive as the company and certain critics have claimed. The paper considers to what extent King, as the company’s figurehead, is forced to adhere to a neoliberal entrepreneurial logic that risks harming the company’s mission to promote diverse voices. At the same time, the paper considers to what extent the company has successfully catered to audiences of colour globally as it has relied on powerful media companies, including Netflix, Amazon and WarnerMedia, for distribution. Accordingly, the paper takes Macro as a case-study for shedding light on the relationships between screen talent management and Hollywood industry diversity.