Summary
The US financial crisis may have come as a shock to much of the world, but in Hollywood it almost seemed like the inevitableculmination of a continuing trend. That is because the relationship between Wall Street and the Hollywood film-finance business - onethat was hot and heavy just two years ago - has been cooling for at least the past 12 months."The film business is being impacted the same way as every other business in the US right now," says P John Burke, entertainmentgroup head at Los Angeles law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, of the effect of the Wall Street meltdown. But in the film industry,Burke adds: "Credit has been tightening for the last year. And the crisis we're seeing over the last couple of weeks is reflective of wherewe've been heading over the last year.