These executives — consummate insiders who enlisted when young and worked their way up — now find themselves pushing 50 just as some brutal problems are pushing back: a collapse in DVD sales, a credit crisis that has curtailed financing for new movies, a group of corporate owners determined to pull more profits from studios to compensate for hard-hit publishing and broadcast television divisions.

“These folks were born from a place where they knew no failure — all they could ever see was up, both for the business and their careers,” said Peter Guber, a former chairman of Sony Pictures who is now a producer and industry elder statesman. “Now they must confront the unsettling truth that failure is close at hand and that it’s on their backs to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

To date, the current leaders have had to focus more intently on becoming masters of organizational behavior than rebooting businesses. “Consensus management is what they know,” said Mr. Guber. But as studios trim staff and producer deals, many are now hoping to emulate some of the entrepreneurial cowboys — David Geffen, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner come to mind — from the generation of moguls that preceded them.

Inevitably, the sudden shift has set off soul-searching among the loose network of allies and adversaries who must rewire the industry in the short span before a next Hollywood generation comes along to replace them. They are tightening belts, lowering expectations and becoming occasionally more cutthroat, but also grappling with some unusually philosophic thoughts about a business for which they now have to fight.

Rough and tumble is not in this generation’s DNA. Most hail from elite universities, in contrast to predecessors like Mr. Geffen or Mr. Diller, who had no college degrees. The co-chairmen of Universal Pictures, Marc Shmuger and David Linde, respectively attended Wesleyan and Swarthmore. Ms. Snider has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Los Angeles, school of law.