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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

#211

Post by devonkim »

handrous wrote: post #58
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…

> 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. Yeah, good point. Fun films from the more indie side exist, but they aren't the norm, that's true.

Psycho Goreman is a great example of a mid-budget movie that’s 100% about the fun. The issue really appears to be about movie investors being unwilling to take risks like they used to, which makes sense given investor sentiments as a whole across the past several decades leaning more and more conservative as wealth loss protection is a requirement, which removes a lot of creative room for new IPs.

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

#212

Post by kmonsen »

afavour wrote: post #156
mumblemumble wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enou…

I think the simple answer is that movies tend to reflect the world around them. Not to get too political on HN but I think no matter your political stripes we can agree that the general mood of the country has been not great since at least 2015 or so. You could argue that means we need more escapism, not less, but somehow that doesn't happen.

That is actually not true, Gallup says right know we feel the best we have done in 13 years: https://news.gallup.com/poll/351932/americans-life-ratings-r...

I think there is something to what you are saying, and Americans are not feeling as well as the (average) GDP data should indicate compared to the Nordics, but in general data shows we feel fine.

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

#213

Post by redisman »

ryandrake wrote: post #208
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…

There was a thread[1] earlier in the week lamenting how tough it is to make modern comedies. Between the Twitter mobs scrutinizing anything for insensitivity and the need to appeal to international markets, it's really hard to come up with a universally funny and PC-acceptable comedy anymore. You can't do slapstick or silliness. You can't (even gently) poke fun at "groups" anymore. Best you can do is a cynical "dark…

If you cater to the international market (“make everyone happy”). The you’ll inevitably end up with cookie cutter inoffensive garbage like we’re spewing out now. Get a few reliable IPs and milk them for all they’re worth.

If I think about some indie blockbuster comedies none of them really did anything that would get the Twitter crowd going crazy. Napoleon Dynamite and Super Troopers for example I could see being hits today

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

#214

Post by nebula8804 »

werber wrote: post #3

The "movie business" is far from dead, there's an insane amount of production now and the breadth of those productions is far wider. The only death is the exclusivity of the industry, stories like the movie Tangerine (shot on iphones) or the recent release Zola (based on a twitter feed) are reaching audiences along with a ton of others that never would have seen them. Contrary to that, the highest grossing films of a…

>or the recent release Zola (based on a twitter feed) are reaching audiences along with a ton of others that never would have seen them.

This is just an anecdote but my local AMC theater in upper NJ is playing Zola and on Saturday night the theater was empty. I was the only one in the room. Are these movies actually making money? It seems like the demand is not really there for anything other than Superhero movies.

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

#215

Post by arcturus17 »

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…

I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

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

#216

Post by blooalien »

alisonkisk wrote: post #197
onelastjob wrote: post #190

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.

> Quality content can be unpopular, niche, wonderful content.

I was about to say this exact thing. I've seen some amazing content on various streaming services that would have simply not even existed in prior decades. Even some of the "big boys" of media have been able to produce some shockingly good content these days thanks to the lowered risks and costs of available outlet channels for their more "experimental" media offerings.

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

#217

Post by romanhn »

vincentmarle wrote: post #191
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 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.

Those shows most definitely assume prior knowledge of the universe. That said, having avoided "superhero movies" for years (due to not being impressed with random one-offs that I watched), I finally bit the bullet and watched the whole set in order with my kids and it made a huge difference, with enormous payoff in Infinity War and Endgame. FWIW, I think both WandaVision and Loki are fantastic.

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

#218

Post by bloat »

masayune wrote: post #129
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 you find these good, low budget movies? would love to know your discovery process

I use Letterboxd. Its pretty easy to get started, look up a bunch of movies you know you like, read some of the reviews, follow some people who seem like they know movies and would be into interesting stuff, and then see what comes your way.

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

#219

Post by ipaddr »

umeshunni wrote: post #198
ipaddr wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also beats the point of having a cell phone.

Isn't the point to play games and being able to login to most sites these days?

It also gives you backup internet..

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

#220

Post by Flatcircle »

mullingitover wrote: post #67

We're arguably repeating history, where 100 years ago film was the upstart (but rapidly growing) business and vaudeville was the established incumbent. Film offered far more creative possibilities and were dramatically more immersive than the entertainment it replaced. Today the film industry is the incumbent - profits have peaked, and the upstart video game business has already eclipsed it. Once again, video games h…

Video Games are still priced extremely high, like home video cassettes were in the 80's.
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