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'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

variety.com

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Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#61

Post by anamax »

darth_avocado wrote: post #28
ramenat2am wrote: post #12

That really shows the hunger for original stories and IC among cinephiles. Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.

Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. Historically a lot of low and mid budget movies relied on DVD sales to recoup costs even if theater releases didn’t get you as much money as you expected. With the safety net gone, studios don’t want to take the risk. They make big budget movies with massive marketing budgets that rely on known IP and established fan ba…

> Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales.

DVDs and even video tape are relatively recent.

Hollywood was a lot less risk averse before DVDs and video tape. Heck, Hollywood was less risk averse before TV became mainstream.

Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#62

Post by slg »

simonbw wrote: post #48
lazypenguin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because nobody has made Steam for Movies. Let me have a movie collection that I can buy movies $1-$5 per movie and never lose it and I promise you I will buy a lot more movies. Just like people buy hundreds of steam games

People are saying that you can buy movies online, but I think they're missing the key point of putting lots of movies on massive discounts and promoting the movies that are currently discounted. Like sure you can buy basically any movie on Amazon or Apple's store or wherever, but I know that wherever I go, it's going to cost $4 to rent a movie, except every once in a while when it's on sale and I get it for $3, and b…

I just opened the Apple TV app on my phone and "$4.99 Essential Movies" is listed prominently just under the top charts and new releases. I'm not trying to be rude, but this whole thread has people just speculating on stuff with limited self-awareness. The reason you aren't building a big film library is probably because you aren't that passionate about films, it isn't because no one is providing you a list of cheap movies. It's all there already, you just had to open the app.

Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#63

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

lazypenguin wrote: post #32
darth_avocado wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. Historically a lot of low and mid budget movies relied on DVD sales to recoup costs even if theater releases didn’t get you as much money as you expected. With the safety net gone, studios don’t want to take the risk. They make big budget movies with massive marketing budgets that rely on known IP and established fan ba…

It’s because nobody has made Steam for Movies. Let me have a movie collection that I can buy movies $1-$5 per movie and never lose it and I promise you I will buy a lot more movies. Just like people buy hundreds of steam games

Steam had John Wick on it at one point

Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#64

Post by jordwest »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #31

All they had to do was simply hire a talented person who knows how to make compelling narrative art. This is lost on the movie industry, though Hollywood has been treading water for over a decade now, failing to examine its failures and coasting on inertia. In general, there is sooo much free money on the ground for large, hierarchical American corporations to do the following 1. Give young talented people resources…

[dead]

Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#66

Post by hangsi »

darth_avocado wrote: post #28
ramenat2am wrote: post #12

That really shows the hunger for original stories and IC among cinephiles. Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.

Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. Historically a lot of low and mid budget movies relied on DVD sales to recoup costs even if theater releases didn’t get you as much money as you expected. With the safety net gone, studios don’t want to take the risk. They make big budget movies with massive marketing budgets that rely on known IP and established fan ba…

This is from the interview on Hot Ones (released August 5, 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXma6K9mzo&t=816s

> Sean Evans:

> I think a scenario lots of viewers can relate to is sitting on the couch on a Friday night, going through the streaming services, cycling through the movies and thinking to themselves "they're not making movies for me anymore". As somebody who's been intimately involved in movie making for 30 years, what are the macro Hollywood conditions behind that sentiment?

> Matt Damon:

> Well, so what happened was the DVD was a huge part of our business - of our revenue stream - and technology has just made that obsolete. And so, the movies that that we used to make: you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theater because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release and 6 months later you'd get a whole other chunk - it would be like reopening the movie almost.

> And when that went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make. I did this movie "Behind the Candelabra" and I talked to a studio executive who explained: it was a $25 million movie. I would have to put that much into print and advertising to market it - what we call P&A - so now I'm in $50 million. I have to split everything I get with the exhibitor, the people who own the movie theaters, so I would have to make $100 million before I got into profit. The idea of making $100 million on a story about this love affair between these two people... Yeah, love everyone in the movie, but that's suddenly a massive gamble in a way that it wasn't in the 1990s when they were making all those kind of movies - the kind of movies that I loved and the kind of movies that were my bread and butter.

Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#68

Post by protocolture »

anamax wrote: post #61
darth_avocado wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. Historically a lot of low and mid budget movies relied on DVD sales to recoup costs even if theater releases didn’t get you as much money as you expected. With the safety net gone, studios don’t want to take the risk. They make big budget movies with massive marketing budgets that rely on known IP and established fan ba…

> Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. DVDs and even video tape are relatively recent. Hollywood was a lot less risk averse before DVDs and video tape. Heck, Hollywood was less risk averse before TV became mainstream.

When Hollywood didnt have to compete so much for spectacle with television and could afford to have a cheaper B movie on every roll as a value add.

Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#69

Post by radley »

righthand wrote: post #51
extra88 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSRP of an Apple TV device is $129. The iPhone's market share in the U.S. is already over 60%. But neither matters because the Apple TV app is available on basically everything and can be used to buy movies. https://support.apple.com/en-us/119890

But if you use the app you’re only streaming from Apple servers. That Apple server copy can be revoked at any time. And 60% is not 100%, my point stands you need an expensive device just to purchase and watch it. Probably multiple expensive devices if you want to actually watch it on your TV. When can I download my movie onto my Linux laptop and play it through an HDMI cable?

> When can I download my movie onto my Linux laptop and play it through an HDMI cable?

Probably because the Linux market is too small to support an iTunes for Linux.

By my understanding, the Linux market prefers free, open source, community effort. So essentially the real question is: why aren't you making movies yourself and sharing them free with your Linux peers?

Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

#70

Post by delfinom »

darth_avocado wrote: post #28
ramenat2am wrote: post #12

That really shows the hunger for original stories and IC among cinephiles. Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.

Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. Historically a lot of low and mid budget movies relied on DVD sales to recoup costs even if theater releases didn’t get you as much money as you expected. With the safety net gone, studios don’t want to take the risk. They make big budget movies with massive marketing budgets that rely on known IP and established fan ba…

The calculus has changed because people don't give a flying fuck about celebrities on golden thrones these days, especially since your average YouTuber is more popular. The cost of celebrities in movie spins is fucking massive.

Hollywood has also completely failed to cultivate a new generation of celebrities. God, we had a few years of nothing but Pedro Pascal to the point we have memes inside memes.

And the cost of production has gone way down, you don't need a specialized studio to put in CGI these days when some guys Blender can do better.

So Hollywood is busy being in a downward spiral eating itself while so much room has opened for "indie" to eat their lunch and dinner.

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