Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back • Hacker News Board

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#141

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #23

afavour wrote: post #13

The actual quote (with my emphasis added): > "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back." And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres. I won't mourn movie theatres (though I ho…

> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much re…

Hollywood started churning out tons of remakes about as early in their history as they possibly could, and never stopped.

Very true. From the 1930's until now, the percentage of Hollywood films that aren't recreations of an earlier film, a book, or a play is vanishingly small.

To be sure, there is still a good number of original films, even big-name ones, but those are very few and far between.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#142

Post by roland35 » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #118

Through my work, I have access to Placer.ai, which allows me to track foot traffic to any retail location or chain via visitors' cellphone GPS. Here's AMC's nationwide foot traffic from January 2017 through July 4, 2021. https://i.imgur.com/s3H7EYj.png

I took the liberty of overlaying the stock price over the foot traffic :)

https://imgur.com/a/jTkXhtx

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#143

Post by bananabiscuit » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #133

syntaxing wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how does Placer.ai work? Like you need to have some sort of AMC app?

Placer is able to track cell phones that have an app installed that uses their SDK. They currently have their SDK in over 500 mobile apps. The data is anonymized, but it would probably shock people how much information I can get from this system. I just pick a location and I can see how many people walked into that location over any time span in the past 4 years, where they live, how much money they make, where else…

Is there a list somewhere of apps that use placer so that I can delete those apps off my phone forever?

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#144

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #72

nineplay wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must just be looking at what's advertised heavily I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. It feels different. Spi…

That's a broader cultural issue for all sorts of art today, not a movie specific thing. The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. Even something intentionally over the top like Fast and Furious or Marvel has more "serious issue" stuff in many of the installments from the last 5 years than previously. It's easier in the news to see all the bad stuff that used…

The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread.

You can see this a lot in comedy. Comedy used to be mostly about humor, with occasional social commentary. Now it's largely about anger and shock value. "Comedians" are targeting the same brain patterns as social media.

I think that's a reason that people like Jim Gaffigan find such a strong following. There's a good number of people who are just burned out on the outrage industry treadmill.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#145

Post by mumblemumble » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #72

nineplay wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must just be looking at what's advertised heavily I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. It feels different. Spi…

That's a broader cultural issue for all sorts of art today, not a movie specific thing. The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. Even something intentionally over the top like Fast and Furious or Marvel has more "serious issue" stuff in many of the installments from the last 5 years than previously. It's easier in the news to see all the bad stuff that used…

Tangentially, last night I half-listened to an interesting YouTube video that used the history of Robin Hood movies to describe this trend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk

It's a slowly escalating 45-minute rant, but I think that this quote from toward the end summarizes it fairly well: "I'm admittedly a little tired of seeing heroes always surrounded by worlds of gray, because, if they're there long enough, they start to feel kind of gray, too."

I haven't ever seen the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood, but I suppose my equivalent is that, as far as I'm concerned, Batman peaked with the TV show in the 1960s. It wasn't just colorful, it was legitimately fun. To the point where even the bad episodes were good. The Tim Burton movies were also a bit like that. They were visually dark, sure, but that was Tim Burton's aesthetics, and it was a package deal that came together with at least a few glimmerings of that same twisted sense of humor that got him fired from Disney for making Frankenweenie.

Since then, though? It's a bunch of increasingly sad movies by apparently sad people whose creative drive seems to primarily come from the desire to demonstrate to themselves and everyone else that they are Grown Ups, and who are too busy Taking Their Jobs Seriously to have any fun at work. And so they're working so hard that, even though what they're producing is technically classified as entertainment, the end result is so joyless that watching it ends up feeling, at least to me, like work.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#146

Post by historyloop » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

Black Widow is destroying opening expectations in cinemas as we speak.

Barry Diller is clearly disillusioned with the process, this happens a lot with veterans. But there's a constant supply of wide-eyed youngsters to fill-in those positions with new energy.

I'd say it's a bit premature to declare permanent changes. Streaming will play a stronger role over time, but none of this is new or unexpected. And cinemas will continue to thrive.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#147

Post by newsclues » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #119

munificent wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not, It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020: * Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wond…

Airplane was not strictly an original, it was a remake/spoof of Zero Hour from 1957 and more broadly spoofing the "disaster" film concept.

Spoofs are derivative works but original works compared to remakes or sequels.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#148

Post by hallarempt » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

iNane9000 wrote: post #93

handrous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much re…

How do I find these movies? Amazon has some old, mostly low quality movies, but nothing good or recent. They got rid of the criterion collection years ago. Sincere question: How does one even find or acquire films today? I’d love to watch a movie, but literally don’t know how to go about it anymore. Netflix is not an answer as most of their content are not movies and basically spam to me.

My wife and I used to buy a DVD in the second-hand books/new dvd's shop round the corner every Friday for a Friday-night movie viewing. He knew our tastes -- it must be sweet, funny with a happy ending and no adultery or rape -- but the shop closed.

We regularly ask each other "Where's Roman Holiday but with a cute girl instead of Gregory Peck. Audrey Hepburn can stay."? Why all the drama in movies these days? We just wanna see two girls kiss and walk away in the twilight, hand-in-hand. But all we get is drama like Ammonite.

Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#149

Post by roland35 » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #102

handrous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much re…

> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not, It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020: * Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wond…

Interesting lists, although I think maybe books based movies are more towards original side if we map this as a spectrum instead of a binary value :)

New books with great stories are written every year, and I would rather watch that than spider man reboot #4 honestly.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#150

Post by BadCookie » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #118

Through my work, I have access to Placer.ai, which allows me to track foot traffic to any retail location or chain via visitors' cellphone GPS. Here's AMC's nationwide foot traffic from January 2017 through July 4, 2021. https://i.imgur.com/s3H7EYj.png

Interesting data. What’s holding me back from going to the theater is that my child is not vaccinated (too young), although I suppose the delta variant is also a small concern. I wonder how much difference it will make when the under 12s can get vaccinated. I’d love to go to the theater again if it felt safe for my whole family, but it doesn’t yet.