You should see more live theater to get an appreciate of what a real live performance is like instead of a loud recorded one…
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I’ve been to hundreds of live performances. I love theatre, ballet and opera. We go all the time. That communal experience is similar to a movie to me.
I’m actually sympathetic to Clovis’s argument here, at least to a degree. Seeing Avengers: Endgame in a theater with a bunch of cheering fans made the experience much more fun. Similar with the Star Wars prequels. Like, yeah, they ended up sucking, but the excitement in the room was SO HIGH at the time. There’s even something to be said for laughing along with people to a comedy, or screaming in horror, but that’s not as big a thing as people who’ve been hyped for something for years finally getting to see it happen.
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This is not true visually. If you get around an 80 inch HDTV, that mimics a movie theater experience very well. Even a good soundbar will give you a good if not great sound experience at a good volume. Take it from a sound person, people very heavily over weight a theatrical sound mix.
Yeah.
meh
IYO
How many movies do you see in theaters in a year?
One a week on average.
Ignore me or not, I read your articles in good faith, and I don’t think they say what you think they say.
First one, LA Times.
The box office is still down 17% this year compared with the same time in 2023. This decline has a lot to do with the fact that “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which cost an estimated $200 million to produce, is the only major superhero picture on the schedule this summer, with both Marvel and Warner Bros.’ DC unit in reset mode to varying degrees.
As of July 21, the number of wide releases for 2024 was 53, the same as at this point last year, according to Comscore. Revenue was still down by double digits.
This article is about a year when super hero blockbusters got out of the way of your beloved mid-budget pics, and they still didn’t get made, and people didn’t go to the theater as much. The article blames two main causes:
Since the onetime profit center known as the home video market collapsed, it’s been harder for studios to justify taking bets in that budget category.
However, Ampere survey data suggest that the power of A-list actors to draw audiences may be declining. According to a recent global consumer survey by the firm, 35% of respondents said they were driven to new content because they liked the actors or celebrities who were featured. That’s down from 40% who agreed with that sentiment two years ago.
Not because of too many blockbusters.
Second, WSS. It again has a very clear thesis for the decline of mid-budget movies:
These mid-budget movies are dying because they aren’t turning a profit in theaters, and they’re not earning enough revenue through DVDs and Blu-rays because the general masses are watching them on streaming services instead.
Still not because of too many blockbusters.
Independent Magazine also has a very clear thesis:
Due to competition with today’s countless entertainment options — streaming services and social media platforms in particular — studios know a film must have a buzz to bring the bodies to the theater
Today’s avant-garde dramas and genre-defying comedies materialize as prestige television. In the 90s or 00s, Columbia Pictures might have released a satire about a media mogul passing down his business to his spoiled kids, starring Robert DeNiro as the mogul, with Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Lawrence, and Ed Helms playing the adult children. Instead, we have the hit HBO series “Succession,” with famous producers, an exceptional writing staff, and a B-list cast. If Hollywood-of-old existed in 2022, MGM would release a movie about a young restauranteur trying to keep his debt-riddled family business afloat, creating a realistic portrait of foodie culture while examining themes of addiction and masculinity. Instead, we have Hulu’s series “The Bear.”
Foreign countries might not show interest in a Coen Brothers portrayal of the 1960’s folk music scene or an Adam McKay biopic of a former vice president.
CNN elaborates on the foreign audience note a bit, and there is at least perhaps some blame to be had for blockbusters:
Daniel Loría is an editorial director at Boxoffice Pro, covering global cinema. Big studios, like Warner Bros. or Disney, are dabbling less and less in the mid-budget movie, he explained, opting to instead invest in larger blockbuster releases which will make more money. (Warner Bros. and CNN are both part of WarnerMedia.) But in order for these blockbusters to be successful, they need to appeal to international audiences, too. So movies that may be culturally specific to the US don’t necessarily get the same amount of investment, he said.
Mid-budget movies may not be made because greedy execs expect international bucks, not just US bucks, so content without global appeal isn’t as shiny.
But then it goes on to join the chorus of blaming streaming.
I dunno, man. Even looking at your own hand-picked sources, I don’t even have to do any rebuttal. I just have to read them. They all zero in on streaming as the primary culprit here for you, not blockbusters.
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So there are about 50 movies a year you want to see?
How many more do you want?
It’s not as simple as that. Lots are bad so if more are made the ratio of good ones I can see goes up. Tons of potential great films are not made by our best artists while they waste time on big budget IP crap.
Maybe they should take the money from the bad movies to make good ones. Maybe if people quit patronizing bad movies, more good ones would be made.
Do you think Coogler gets to make Sinners without Black Panther’s success?
What happened to “one for them and then one for me”?
I think it’s all about economics. Studios want to make money. Most mid-budget “art films” aren’t profitable. If they were, more money would be allotted to them.
Bro.
Get on the right level.
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Even better is that Coogler said he burned every ounce of capital in the business he had built to make Sinners. That was especially true with his crew. He felt if the movie didn’t make it his career was over despite his previous successes (a reverse PTA in a way). I can’t imagine how much he was sweating before it came out. He knew he had something great by then, but making something great doesn’t mean audiences will embrace it. It’s an amazing story in Hollywood and he negotiated to own the movie outright in 25 years I believe.
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Part of why they are not profitable is the audience has been trained to go to theatres for only comic book films.
Pre Star Wars I don’t think one for me one for them was thing. That’s an artifact of the blockbuster age.
I agree he doesn’t get to make sinners without his comic book success but that’s a point in my column not yours I think. It’s a bad thing.
Watching movies on the Apple VR headset is pretty impressive as well.
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Come on, this is truly a preposterous claim. Looking at Wookie’s post with an overview of what movies grossed the most all the way back to the 30s, were the moviegoers back then “trained” to watch cartoons and simpler movies as well?
I readily acknowledge being a bit of an elitist in general. Thus, I think a better argument is “the average moviegoer likes simpler movies” rather than “explicitly comic book movies trained the audience to only watch comic book movies at the cinema”. Add the extreme competition from other channels and other forms of entertainment (and risk averse studios etc, like nunn and others posted about) to complete the picture.
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Again, nobody has claimed cartoons and kids moves never existed before Star Wars. The claim was it used to be the top movies were a mix and an adult focussed movie could be a legitimate huge hit. Now they are basically all IP and mostly comic book films. That is the change.
Today the godfather would be lucky to make $50m at the box office.
To be fair, sinners and the horror genre in general is bucking this trend which is nice to see.
Wookie did exactly what I knew he would because he isn’t interested in actual debate. He simply ignored all the points in the articles that focussed on the point at hand (which for that post was the loss of midbudget films) and pretended it applied to the larger debate. He just wants to be an asshole. Not have a real debate. He just wants to act “shocked” that as a debate evolves the context expands. It’s all stifling of actual discussion and I am just choosing to ignore him going forward.
I agree with this and a cursory look at top grossing movies from the 2010s onwards confirms it. However, I think you have some work to do to prove this is mainly because of Star Wars and comic book movies - if that is indeed your claim. Seems like you’ve nuanced your claims in this thread to include causes such as pure capitalism, risk-averse studios and competition from other entertainment sources (which didn’t exist before)? The rise of scrolling on the phone alone hasn’t been mentioned ITT I think, but imo this is also a huge part of why studios are even more safety-seeking in making movies than earlier.
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I also think this is a great point @clovis8. Prestige content has largely moved to TV shows. I personally like this trend. Even if Netflix produces mountain of garbage on the regular, there is still a ton of great TV being made (though the trend is perhaps going slightly in the wrong direction now).
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Imo Wookie just posts in a much more confrontational tone in general. I don’t generally like that style of posting either, since it tends to reduce the level of actual debate. Even if I find it humorous to read at times (Wookie’s one of the good guys in my book).
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I was guilty of it lots too but I have decided I am only interested in actual discussion and am just not making space for pointless internet points scoring anymore.