HMMM: Hollywood Is Dying and Not Even Star Wars Can Save It.
[Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard:] From the outside, it looks like Hollywood is undergoing four of five simultaneous crises: there’s the systemic sexual misconduct; there’s the Worst Summer Box Office Ever; there’s the precarious position of the theatrical release and the theater experience; and there’s the rise of streaming and Silicon Valley’s incursion into the entertainment business.
It’s like the industry version of a geostorm.
Is it really as bad as all that? Or is this one of those moments where the situation isn’t so dire, that the wheels always look like they’re falling off the cart, but never do?
[Richard Rushfield of the Hollywood-themed email newsletter The Ankler:] I’d say it is as bad as all that, for the reasons you describe, which all go back to: the movie industry, in particular, has lost the plot. It’s lost sight of the reasons why people go to the movies. It’s been so focused on “What movies can you market?”—which is generally shorthand for “What movies will people just show up for without you having convince them that they actually should?”
In particular, Hollywood has lost sight of the way people under 30—the ones who used to be the core audience—consume entertainment and what sort of experience they are looking for.
The tone for the past five years or so has very much reminded me of the mood you’d get around newsrooms 15 years ago, when if newspaper people were told that no one under 40 was reading the papers, they’d just harumph that “It’s about time someone explained to those whippersnappers how great newspapers actually are!” And I can see this all working out for the studios similar to how losing a couple generations of readers worked out for newspapers.
Plus:
[Rushfield:] To boil this down, movies for me are about space. They are relatively condensed experiences—just a couple hours—but heightened (when they are good) by the intense craftsmanship that goes into every moment.
That’s why you can see your favorite films a hundred times and still find something new, why people watch them over and over even when they can recite the dialogue by heart. There’s this heightened reality that makes films special and begs to be seen in the best possible circumstances.
Television shows (dramas in particular) are about time—about building a relationship with the characters over the course of years. Game of Thrones didn’t become a vital experience in the minds of its viewers until the second or third season, after we’d spent 15 or 20 hours with the characters. That’s why in the great shows, the relationship with the characters grows over the years in a way that it might not if you were going to the theaters to see The Godfather Part 27.
Anyhow, there’s something about these Netflix movies every week that just radiates, non-special, non-heightened experience. That telegraphs You are not going to watch this fifty times.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): What struck me at Marshall last night was that before the show they had more ads for programs on Amazon, Netflix, etc. than they had trailers for movies.