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The Slow Death of Hollywood

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#221

Post by icebraining »

SergeAx wrote: post #112
liber8 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hollywood" has never, ever taken more risks than they are taking today. Netflix alone spent $12 billion on new content in 2018. They expect to spend $15 billion in 2019, and expect this to hit almost $18 billion in 2020.[1] There is more new, original content being produced than anyone could ever expect to watch in one lifetime. Compare this to a few decades ago when you had 3 or 4 networks on TV each making a dozen…

Oh, please. With all the questions for Hollywood, it's worst creations are still much better than any TV-serie ever made. When they produce a movie, they want to sell it to auditory, to lure us into theaters and make to pay for tickets. They are attaching stars and buying stories and making trailers and posters. The only purpose of TV-serie is to work out a Pavlov dog reflex: they want us to be before a TV every week…

That's not even wrong; lots of TV series don't have continuity, so they can't have cliffhangers and other tricks like that.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#222

Post by icebraining »

mc32 wrote: post #176
TylerE wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but I think it's safe to say that there were a lot more original movies a few decades ago than there are now. This is false. Sequels and book adaptions have dominated the top 10 every year for decades and decades.

Right. Movies don’t come out of thin air. They all need inspiration whether a book, a story, news item, etc. Its not writers making movie scripts ala SNL sketches.

I'd say all art needs inspiration, but there are certainly plenty of screenplays (just like theater plays) that don't come from a single item. As a random example, Woody Allen came up with the title "Midnight in Paris", then wrote the whole screenplay from the title.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#223

Post by icebraining »

[deleted] wrote: post #127
codingslave wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is rising, but so are the lowest rungs of american society. They have seen huge increases in standard of living.

[deleted]

How is the US in peak poverty? That graph clearly shows the poverty rate being way lower than in '59-65, and lower than at many points since then.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#225

Post by pmart123 »

magduf wrote: post #136
liber8 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hollywood" has never, ever taken more risks than they are taking today. Netflix alone spent $12 billion on new content in 2018. They expect to spend $15 billion in 2019, and expect this to hit almost $18 billion in 2020.[1] There is more new, original content being produced than anyone could ever expect to watch in one lifetime. Compare this to a few decades ago when you had 3 or 4 networks on TV each making a dozen…

Netflix isn't "Hollywood"; that should be pretty obvious from the context of this discussion. Netflix got into the made-for-Netflix movie production business because the traditional studios were pulling their content from Netflix. "Hollywood" is the studios producing movies that go to the big-screen theaters. We aren't talking about indie stuff here, movies only shown at art-house theaters, movies only shown on Netfl…

My understanding of the business is limited. I did hear Patrick Whiteside speak at a dinner though last year, and from his description, it seemed like most of these shows are packaged up and sold by the studios of even the agency itself. So say the agency represents a good writer who has a new script and Reese Witherspoon suits the lead role, is also represented by the agency, and wants the work. The agency essentially will go pitch the script and likely cast to Netflix, Hulu, etc. so often Netflix isn’t the one actually the entire conception and implementation of the show. They are just the ones buying the rights to own it and distribute it.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#226

Post by sytelus »

parasubvert wrote: post #194
Animats wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Pixar has a template: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. Pixar movies are "nobody becomes somebody due to external event". That's a common pattern, beaten to death in the Star Wars franchise. But it's not the only pattern. It's not Game of Thrones . It's not Star Trek. It's not even most winners of "Best Picture" Oscars.

This is completely nonsensical. Toy Story? Cars? Inside Out? Up? Coco? None of these follow that template. Sure, some like a Bugs Life and Rattatouille follow this, but in quirky ways. All conventional narrative structure involves an external incident. That sets up the central conflict of the narrative. Disney movies like Big Hero 6, Moana or Frozen are more likely to follow it, though again, there’s a lot more craft…

Many of these were Pixar movies, not Disney. Pixar almost always insisted doing things differently (guess who was it’s CEO). Disney on the other hand almost always insisted in serving “sugar”. There is even a phrase for this, it’s called Disney Effect: https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/family/disney-princesse...

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#227

Post by nradov »

davesmith1983 wrote: post #118
dragonwriter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling culture nakedly has always been Disney's thing, the familiarity of the stories has always been a selling point with much of the market (and the “its just recycling what I've already experienced” has always been the refrain of another part of the market.) That's also true of Hollywood more generally. To the extent Hollywood is dying it's because new media (that are no less enthusiastic about recycling cultur…

It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important. 1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful. So lets take some case studies: * Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a…

This type of rant is exactly why most of us find the "fandom" so tedious.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#228

Post by goto11 »

Retra wrote: post #191
goto11 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc. "catching on to the fact" suggest that this is some secret insight which undermines the enjoyment of the movie. But I'm pretty sure mos…

>According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. That's not an objective way to look at things. If there were only 1 model of car being sold this year, you can bet it will sell with record numbers and produce more profit than any other vehicle in the past. The fact that records are being broken so rapidly…

But the number of movies released has been steadily growing, not shrinking.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#229

Post by tomjen3 »

smogcutter wrote: post #138
sek wrote: post #40

I think it's a combination of things, but primarily we are in a low interest environment. Money is looking desperately for something to invest in and the problem of Hollywood and cable companies was that they made too much money. Netflix was a distributor who figured that out and was creating a low subscription model for content. When the content producers realised this Netflix was exposed, they knew they would not r…

The lower cost vs cable is a mirage. Once TV is finished balkanizing into separate streaming services, expect the cost of signing up for everything you had on cable to add up to about the cost of a cable subscription.

I have stayed with Netflix since it became available in Denmark and have been on/off with HBO but now that I have seen chernobil and finished got I have cancelled it.

Perhaps I will sign up for something else later or even return if something else comes on.

Re: The Slow Death of Hollywood

#230

Post by thrusong »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #92
williamDafoe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid in the mid 70s movies cost $3.00 in the Midwest. Westegg says that inflation is up 10x since then. Any movie less than $20 is actually a bargain. However, my dad's salary was 7,000x a movie ticket (Midwest CS professor before salaries exploded).

When I was a kid in the 90's, I could see a movie for $1.50 in the evenings or $1 for a matinee ... in the midwest. They weren't first run movies, but rather movies that were in between their time in the movies and when they went to video. I'm guessing a few of them might have been on HBO during that time frame, but it really didn't matter. Some years later, that theater quit doing the second run movies and switched…

You make some interesting points regarding the current exhibition business. Before, Hollywood had a monopoly over the cinemas. Between 70 to 90 per cent of ticket sales would go to the studio of the film, hence the expensive food.

But, when the industry switched to digital projectors, the studios offered the VPF (virtual print fee) where cinemas got to keep a big chunk of the ticket sales to offset the cost of the projectors.

You could equip a 35mm film booth for as little as $7500 using old gear. Brand new was about $50,000 while digital projectors debuted at $100,000 and up.

Now, the theatres are keeping more of the ticket sales (50-70%) and they're charging for all sorts of "innovations" or upgrades (3D, ultra giant screens, fake IMAX screens, Dolby Atmos sound). All in 20-year-old multiplexes from the late-90's/early-00's expansion boom.

Did you have to pay a surcharge for stadium seating? Surround sound? Cupholders? No.

I think the current cinema chains are ripe for disruption.

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