R esting in the film executive’s sweaty palm was an extremely long rectangular pill stamped “X-A-N-A-X.”“Want half?” he says.It was a hot, windy night in mid-September, and we were walking to our cars after meeting for drinks at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. I had expected a lively, gossip-fuelled conversation, nothing for attribution, of course. Instead, our talk was more like a gloomy therapy session – in which I was the shrink.Over a vodka martini (his) and a Diet Coke (mine), he gripes that the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements had gone too far, too fast. He says he was “depressed” about moviemaking for the first time in his decades-long career, the result of endless remakes and superhero movies. (“Maybe we should remake Dumbo as a live-action picture. Oh, wait. It’s actually happening.”) And how was it possible that one of the all-time-great studios, 20th Century Fox , was being folded into Disney , ending an era of six major studio competitors?I rebuffed the Xanax by joking that even half looked big enough to tranquillise the Incredible Hulk and drove home. But the unsettling encounter stayed with me. I knew it wasn’t just one guy having a bad day. Hollywood is in the midst of a full-blown identity crisis.Based on the box office, studios should be full of people turning cartwheels and sprinkling confetti. After a sizzling summer, theatres are having their busiest autumn on record. October ticket sales were up a fat 45 per cent compared with last year, according to Comscore. Coming soon are anticipated holiday juggernauts like Aquaman and the animated Ralph Breaks the Internet . And the big film factories, after largely ceding the Academy Awards to tiny art films over the past decade, are back in the thick of the Oscar race. Crowdpleasers like Black Panther (Disney) and A Star Is Born (Warner Bros) are serious best picture contenders.But euphoria is almost nonexistent in studio hallways. The movie capital is instead mired in a profound malaise.