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

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

#191
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 don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me.

I recently started watched Loki on Disney+, 3 episodes in, I still have no idea who Loki is, where he comes from, what his intentions are and what he is capable of...

Same problem with WandaVision. I agree, it's exhausting.

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

#192

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

Movie industry is largely driven by massive advertisement campaigns. My guess that all of those spikes before 2020 were driven by massive AAA releases with big of ad budgets. Nothing like that happened during 2020. I think it's too early to ring the funeral bell, let's see a few massive releases first.

If that's true, we might not see it getting back to pre-covid levels for another year or so if it's going to happen. I think most the stuff we've seen over 2020 and now are things that were already in the pipeline or delayed. The lack of new projects during 2020 and early 2021 will likely affect the industry until mid to late 2022 at least, from what I've read that seems accurate.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before everything shut down last year, my local theaters played a showing of a classic film each month, often Hitchcock. The few I went to had plenty of attendees. Another local theater took the lockdown as an opportunity to do outdoor socially-distanced showings of previous blockbusters, like The Dark Knight . Plenty of attendees there, too. I'd be happy to have more showings like that.

Interesting! Where is this? In Amsterdam I know one theater that's showing old films and that's the 1% I was talking about ;)

I'm in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, USA.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before everything shut down last year, my local theaters played a showing of a classic film each month, often Hitchcock. The few I went to had plenty of attendees. Another local theater took the lockdown as an opportunity to do outdoor socially-distanced showings of previous blockbusters, like The Dark Knight . Plenty of attendees there, too. I'd be happy to have more showings like that.

Interesting! Where is this? In Amsterdam I know one theater that's showing old films and that's the 1% I was talking about ;)

Sharing from somewhere totally different: NYC has a number of theaters that show (mostly or half-half) not-new kids films, art films, and cult classics like Miyazaki or Blaxploitation films.

These theaters are typically small businesses owned by locals who have been in the business for decades. But there are also some US chains like Alamo Drafthouse that do this too.

On a slight tangent, in the suburbs of Lancaster, PA the chain theaters ran free re-runs of children's movies in the summer each Wednesday morning.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I understand it, this is also how proxy services that offer "mobile IPs" with millions available function as well. Kinda makes me pine for the good old days where they just annoyed the crap out of me with ads.

My cellphone doesn't leave my home. Makes location tracking much harder.

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

#196
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, this is also how proxy services that offer "mobile IPs" with millions available function as well. Kinda makes me pine for the good old days where they just annoyed the crap out of me with ads.

My cellphone doesn't leave my home. Makes location tracking much harder.

To clarify, I wasn't talking about them tracking you, I was talking about the SDKs used proxying connections unbeknownst to you using your mobile (or wifi?) data, which the SDK provider sells as a business.

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

#197

Before streaming, a movie studio actually had to convince an audience to leave their houses and buy a ticket to make money from a movie. This meant the studio had to pour a lot of money into marketing for each movie. The cost to market a movie could be up $30M to $50M range for a blockbuster movie. For a mid-budget drama like Meet Joe Black or A River Runs Through It, you could be looking at a marketing budget that m…

It takes off the pressure to make popular content. Quality content can be unpopular, niche, wonderful content. Popular content needs to be tolerable by as many people as possible, which means taking fewer risks on high-quality slightly controversial or intellectual or unfamiliar material.

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

#198
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, this is also how proxy services that offer "mobile IPs" with millions available function as well. Kinda makes me pine for the good old days where they just annoyed the crap out of me with ads.

My cellphone doesn't leave my home. Makes location tracking much harder.

Also beats the point of having a cell phone.

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

#199

I think this interview that gets at a broader point that I find depressing/scary: that the availability of so much data and analysis has ended up "quantizing" creative endeavors to the point where formulaic output is just much, much easier, and that any truly innovative or "misunderstood" productions become much harder to sustain. I really see this issue everyone nowadays, from movies, TV and music to things like the…

What would the other type of competitor be?

Those sports you mention like figuring skating and gymnastics already have execution scores 'style' if you will built in.

Personally, I have the opposite opinion. I prefer sports that are more quantified on difficulty alone (and the obvious 1st to finish). Looking at execution is one thing, like taking a step is clearly not as skilled as sticking it no debate there. But judging how pretty something is just doesn't seem fair to me nor personally as interesting as throwing hard skills.

Gymnastics in particular grinds me in that they have a lot of silly rules AND they actively decrement leading edge hard skills point value!

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

#200
post #186

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…

> Here are the top ten box office films of 2020 But see, 2020 was an aberration. You have to look at 2019. Sequel, remake, sequel, sequel, comic, sequel, sequel/comic, remake, comic, sequel/remake, Oh. Oh no. Let's keep going for top 20, yeah? Sequel/remake, ORIGINAL, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, video game, ORIGINAL, comic, comic. (from boxofficemojo) 2 in the top 20. Let's keep going? ORIGINAL, remake, sequel-is…

Looks to be a different source from the OP, but let's go down the chart for 1980 past the top ten:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/1980/

Kramer vs. Kramer (book)

Ordinary People (book)

Popeye (comic)

The Shining (book)

Cheech and Chong's Next Movie (sequel)

Caddyshack (original - franchise starter)

Friday the 13th (original - franchise starter)

Brubaker (book)

The Jazz Singer (remake)

Flash Gordon (sequel/remake)

Bronco Billy (original)

Raging Bull (book - biopic)

Maybe you should go back a few decades until you can find a time when the top 20 were mostly originals. Would have to be before the Star Wars/Jaws blockbuster era, probably.

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