Lights! Camera! Revolution! The Daily Wire Goes Hollywood
Conservative platform takes page from the late Andrew Breitbart’s playbook
Daily Wire Co-Founders Jeremy Boreing and Ben Shapiro insist conservatives must craft an alternative to liberal Hollywood. Now their plans are being rolled out for 2021.
Shapiro shared the platform’s vision to deliver entertainment content to the public.
“We’re going to be bringing out movies — edgy, entertaining, awesome movies that won’t mock your values. We’re going to be producing TV shows — comedies and dramas that take you seriously, and that don’t take advantage of your viewership to promote Leftist causes.”
Shapiro’s essay included a personal reason for the ambitious project.
“My mentor, Andrew Breitbart, always said politics is downstream of culture. What he meant by this is that more people are shaped by the culture that surrounds them than by politics directly: we consume movies and TV shows; we get together and discuss the latest in sports; we join in churches and at universities and at restaurants to discuss our lives. We swim in a sea of culture. In large part, we’re defined by the culture in which we swim.”
The shift makes sense on a number of fronts.
Boreing began his career in the early 2000s as a screenwriter and film producer. His film “Etienne!” took home honors at the 2009 CineVegas and Oxford International Film Festivals, during which he was a columnist for Breitbart’s Big Hollywood.
A year later, Boreing partnered with Bill Whittle to found Declaration Entertainment — an independent film studio. Boreing’s involvement as Executive Director of conservative entertainment’s “Friends of Abe” group brought him to a young Shapiro, courtesy of Breitbart.
In fact in 2014, Declaration Entertainment released a film titled “The Arroyo,” co-written by current Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Wire, John Bickley. A year later, Boreing and ex-Breitbart editor Shapiro founded The Daily Wire after leaving Truth Revolt.
The rest is history.
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On the night of the 2020 Presidential election, The Daily Wire announced that Candace Owens, host of her own YouTube-based program, would be joining the team to host a live-audience show in 2021.
Given that The Daily Wire is already comprised of several staffers with entertainment ties, their ascent into the production realm is not as shocking as it is predictable.
Podcast host Andrew Klavan has written six films featuring Michael Caine, Clint Eastwood, Michael Douglas, Nick Searcy, Cathy Moriarty and others. Writer Jared Sichel was the former Vice President of Content for PragerU — whose videos generate millions of views on YouTube despite chronic restrictions.
Daily Wire editor Cabot Phillips is a YouTube creator whose comedic videos amassed over 24 million views — and 450 million views on all platforms together.
Another Daily Wire podcast host, Michael Knowles, moved to Los Angeles after earning a degree at Yale. Knowles acted in two TV pilots, “I’m Back!” and “HollyWeird.” He later supplied the voice for Klavan’s “Another Kingdom” audiobook.
All this makes The Daily Wire’s journey into film and TV production completely believable. But it’s also an important endeavor.
Conservatives are aware of one simple truth; we are losing the cultural battle. Hollywood is owned by the Left, leaving little room for conservative art or input. Today’s entertainment industry promulgates material teeming with propaganda. Comedy was once a profitable movie genre in Hollywood — but Cancel Culture overwhelmed it, often leaving political correctness in its place.
I’m in college, and of course, there aren’t many of us here on the right. As a student in the humanities, I’m surrounded by the left’s Marxism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and most of all, Postmodernism. I can’t name one conservative in any of my major classes.
In fact, a recent study found that 93 percent of those in an Acting major are Liberal, 84 percent in Arts, and 88 percent in Writing.
This needs to change.
Instead of those on the right solely seeking out a degree in Finance or Business Administration, and so on, students should also consider creative pursuits. In order to balance out the scale in academia, this is vital. Parents, in turn, can inculcate the importance of the humanities at an early age: philosophy, sociology, literature, art, etc.
The Daily Wire team is getting involved in this fight, in part, because they have people on staff with experience in the entertainment space. But they also recognize it’s well past time for conservatives to get involved in popular culture. Because if we don’t now — then when?
Editor’s Note: HiT founder Christian Toto is a regular contributor to The Daily Wire.
Follow Gabe Kaminsky on Twitter at @Gabe__Kaminsky