Nobody has mentioned the real problem is that most Hollywood movies these days are recycled garbage.
People are probably going to switch from Netflix over to Disney+ once it is launched. Once Netflix is gone, Disney+ would then jack up its price to $40/month. I think we have all seen this movie too many times before.
If you look at the pricing ($6.99/mo) and content of Disney+ its honestly meant to be an add-on to a person/family's existing media subscription set. Disney+ will only contain content from their large IP (Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney Studios) in addition to some National Geographic content.
There will be nowhere near the amount of content of Netflix. Additionally all content seems to skew family friendly, which isn't true of Netflix. Lastly, its clear given their recent takeover of Hulu (plus what was said in the Dinsey+ unveil) that Hulu will be their Netflix competitor.
I'm disappointed, but not suprised, to see this post so high. Despite all the ways of watching films at home, cinema is having its most successful years ever, so clearly many people are enjoying the films Hollywood is putting out.
I'm disappointed, but not surprised in your measurement of success. Many tout record box office takings as clear success but I rather think that really reflects on inflation (both real and artificial).
Look at admissions over time. I only have UK numbers to hand [1] but despite an increasing population, we're still at barely a tenth of our 1950 numbers. MPAA stats [2] seem to show the US in decline over the last few years but I cant find a nice table to do an 84y comparison.
So again, cinema might be taking absolutely more money than ever before, but that's probably through higher ticket sales. Numbers of bums on seats is not breaking any records.
A big (huge) driver is the Asian markets, with China having allowed more foreign movies in - and a huge upsurge of cinemas being built there. A lot of (blockbuster) movies are actively made nowadays with the huge Chinese market in mind, and / or are being co-produced and / or funded by Chinese companies.
(There's some common tropes in that category; PG-12, if that rating, has to feature at least one major Chinese city and one or two Chinese actors, and the Chinese are never the bad guys. These things also apply to the Americans. Basically, the two propaganda machines combined.)
I have also noticed a decent amount of new releases have both a Chinese and American production company associated with the movie, and there appear to be cultural and character references that resonate with both.
From the data in your link [1] Cinema attendance looks very healthy, and in fact in 2018 was at it's highest level since 1971 and is more than tripple it's low point in 1984. That much better than I was expecting and frankly in my eyes kills the 'Cinema is dying' meme stone dead. I don't understand how you can be looking at the same table and coming to such a different conclusion.
I'm not saying cinema is dying, at all. I'm reacting to a statement that said "cinema is having its most successful years ever". That is only true in gross and that's only true because tickets are so expensive.
If you're going to make qualitative claims, where the price of a unit is largely fixed at a point in time, I think you have to compare quantity of sales, not gross.
It's all marketing wank. A way for producers to pomp around with their "record"-breaking titles. And at a financial level, sure, whatever... But that's not how these statements are used.
The problem with cinema attendance, at least here in the United States, is you can't trust the numbers anymore.
Take AMC, they have their A List that allows you to see 3 movies a week for a monthly fee, if you head over to /r/AMCsAList/ you will find a good number of people that will go see movies they have little interest in JUST to use all their 'free' movies each week so now you have someone that may have seen 2-3 movies a month, seeing 12 movies. Occasionally you'll even see threads over there where people brag about how many weeks long their streak of seeing all their movies is.
Similarly there was MoviePass (I think it's mostly dead now) that was allowing people to do the same for over a year.
Those aren't the numbers I see [1]. For domestic US, Endgame is in 18th place.
Why not worldwide? Even the US numbers are rickety. There are multiple ways to account for inflation, multiple ways of record counting for sales, trying to factor in re-showings, etc. Adding on multiple currencies and economies is a power of extra complexity.
> There's tons more money out there now
Yes. Money. My whole thing here has been about weighing success by monetary takings. It doesn't necessarily track. The price of a ticket has far outstripped what retail indexed inflation. Tickets, after inflation, are eighteen times more expensive than their 1950s counterparts. You only a eighteenth of the 1950s audience to gross the same.
But while we're talking about bullshit headlines, looking up Endgame renders some gems [2]. Things like "Fastest to $1bn" aren't just historically incomparable because of inflation but because distribution has changed significantly. Movies in the US used to have months of lead-time ahead of the global market. There still is for many languages. Modern studios recognise the waste and damage in this. Endgame was globally available (to over half the population) within 4 days. "Highest Opening Weekend" grossses also have the same problem.
The US economy hasn't grown much, adjusted for inflation, compared to the world economy. That's primarily because of the rest of the world was much poorer.
The original statement of Endgame beating Avatar is still incorrect. Which is what started this chain of comments in the first place. Along with Endgame not even beating Avatar worldwide without inflation (currency exchange rates aren’t going to be that drastic with a decade population and financial growth).
Where did you get your numbers from? Endgame won’t beat Avatar at all without inflation worldwide. In the US it doesn’t beat Avatar with inflation adjusted. Then you have Titanic that just completely destroys Endgame after inflation in the US. Probably worldwide too. Though that’s harder to say and there wasn’t really China back then. Along with China being much smaller for Avatar too.
> cinema is having its most successful years ever, so clearly many people are enjoying the films Hollywood is putting out.
Is that really true or is it just films like "Avengers" who make Hollywood's balance sheet look better than ever?
I'm not entirely convinced that the film industry can survive without giant blockbusters like that.
You might say that there's always been blockbusters, but although I don't have any data on this I imagine the proportion of $ that these films make up has only grown over time. Maybe leading to a reliance on a few big hits.
I consider this one of the reasons we've seen a proliferation of super-hero/comic adaptions (an endless supply of material here) and other giant movies tapping into an existing fanbase (Star Wars, Fast/Furious, etc).
Some people I know in film have told me the following:
A lot of films that would have US pull no longer get made. That's because the US is at most 300m people, and there's billions more that aren't reached. Whereas any movie made now needs to have international trends. So you end up with comic books made as movies and tv shows. They have been tested in print, work with other cultures, and make money hand over fist.
Tl;dr. Making movies for a country is last century. New movies need to capitalize on international sales.
Poignant example is the World of Warcraft movie; it bombed in the US, but it was super popular in China.
This is also why Netflix will probably not die; for me personally, 90% of their original content is a bit shit, however I am also very aware that a lot of people enjoy that 90% I don't, e.g. my parents. And then there's the huge international market, each country, each region has its own preferences.
What I'm saying is there will be people that enjoy some content and keep their subscription for that show. Netflix doesn't need to optimize for one demographic.
That's an interesting take on the quality issues of these recent films. It's true that you sort of have to dumb down your content if you aim to make it popular for a wider population. If the movie plots require a bit of thinking or the use of brain resources then most viewers probably will not get it.
Though I understand Hollywood has always been about about making profits, but in the end this will only lead to more movies simply being treated as a tool to generate revenue rather an outlet for creativity and great story telling, which was exactly what made them great in the past. In that perspective, there's no difference between a movie and a piece of commercial software.
Big explosions and FX effects are not elements that make a film great as they do nothing to connect deeply with the audiences on a human level. They are shallow, cool and awesome for five seconds but that's about it. The more you watch these films, the more you become like the population they want to target.
Couldn't that be illusory? There's more people watching films now than there ever has been before. And if there were only one film released this year, it would surely break all the records because nobody would have anything else to watch. That wouldn't mean that film was the best film ever. A larger number of more diverse films could generate more total income and offer more satisfaction, but it would be much harder for them to break records.
I wish that Hollywood still made movies for the the 30+ non-geek audience of which I am a part of, I almost literally fell asleep during the last Avengers movie. There are some gems here and there (the last two Peele movies) but they are getting really far and few between.
I thought that Get Out and Us had at least some Hollywood funding, looks like I was wrong. For example “Cape Fear” and “The Fugitive” made in the early ‘90s were pure Hollywood movies that were interesting for grown-ups, too, I fail to see something like that filmed nowadays (both of them were remakes, too, proof that you can film a remake and still produce an interesting movie after all). I also miss smart action-oriented/thriller movies like “Enemy of the State”.
Hollywood released several hundred movies last year. In theaters.
They simply didn't advertise them as much as they did the blockbusters, because advertising is very expensive and most films are capable of making back their production budgets but not the advertising budgets (which can equal or even exceed the actual cost of making the movie, see e.g., Solo which was considered a loss because of the amount Disney spent advertising the film).
> Second is pretty much 90% self-produced TV series.
There's nothing wrong with producing TV series... there's something else you don't like, right? These particular ones? Or is it the fact that they are self produced?
You can't really blame Netflix for not having access to the most popular content. I'm pretty sure they'd love to pay if it meant being authorized to distribute it.
Despite my other reply in this sub-thread, no, I don't think recycling is the real problem. Access, price and availability of cheaper alternatives have all pushed cinema into decline.
I certainly don't disagree that they should embrace an open market and liberal distribution, but trying to draw performance outcomes from subjective qualities is silly.
People are probably going to switch from Netflix over to Disney+ once it is launched. Once Netflix is gone, Disney+ would then jack up its price to $40/month. I think we have all seen this movie too many times before.