Backrooms and a new Boards of Canada record coming out on the same weekend feels like some kind of cultural signal.
'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
41–50 of 201 posts
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#42Earlier 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
The iTunes movie store launched 20 years ago. It’s far from perfect but it is essentially steam for movies. Sadly it’s been de-emphasised over time. But it is still there and was pretty good for a while.
The iTunes movie store is not friendly outside of the Apple ecosystem. Making the entire idea not really affordable since you need a expensive electronic device to utilize it sanely. Might as well find another way to get to it at that point.
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#43Earlier 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
You can buy at several places that interop with each other—iTunes and Amazon are the two biggest. They don’t have literally every movie, but they have most that most people want to watch. https://moviesanywhere.com/participants
Cost ranges from $5-30. Fewer dirt cheap sales than Steam, but the standard price point at launch is lower, in exchange.
(Having to explain “buying movies” makes me feel old!)
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#44Earlier 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
As someone already mentioned. Steam for movies already exists (iTunes, also Amazon’s offering). The problem seems to be that hardly anyone wants to actually own a movie anymore. There are places where the ownership model seems to still be thriving (books), but for video and audio, ownership (vs. streaming or renting) is largely dead.
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#45The what? Horror something? ....started on 4chan? Yeah, immediate aboutface here. And reading wiki articles about it that throw around words like "creepypasta" like that's widely understood? Liminal spaces I get. Reminds of Severance . And anyways, how is this worth going to a theater for? A24 has done well. Is 81M considered breaching 'mainstream'? Because these niche horror things being portrayed as part of the gre…
A darkened theater with a glowing screen is precisely the sort of liminal space that is the topic of the movie. $20 to fall through the skin of the world for a couple hours? Seems like a no-brainer to me, given how rare and precious any liminal feeling at all is these days. And, if I go support this, maybe they’ll finally make a House of Leaves movie. One can dream.
I’d hardly consider a movie theater a liminal space. To me a theater is a destination, not a transitional area.
That said I do like your description of “falling through the skin of the world.” A+.
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#46Earlier 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
You can buy at several places that interop with each other—iTunes and Amazon are the two biggest. They don’t have literally every movie, but they have most that most people want to watch. https://moviesanywhere.com/participants Cost ranges from $5-30. Fewer dirt cheap sales than Steam, but the standard price point at launch is lower, in exchange. (Having to explain “buying movies” makes me feel old!)
Unlike with steam, things can appear disappear from your iTunes library if you move countries. At least music can.
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iTunes movie store launched 20 years ago. It’s far from perfect but it is essentially steam for movies. Sadly it’s been de-emphasised over time. But it is still there and was pretty good for a while.
The iTunes movie store is not friendly outside of the Apple ecosystem. Making the entire idea not really affordable since you need a expensive electronic device to utilize it sanely. Might as well find another way to get to it at that point.
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.
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#48Earlier 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
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 buying it is going to be some higher amount that is almost certainly not worth it. When steam has sales, I might browse and buy quite a few games that I'm not gonna play right away. Or I buy things in bundles because it just seems like such a good deal. If movies were usually $10 to buy, but the Amazon store had a very visible section of movies that were $5 or less, but for a limited time, I'd be way more likely to buy multiple movies that I'm not intending to watch right now.
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#49All 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…
I saw a Youtuber recently make a compelling argument that one of the features Hollywood has been missing is the pipeline of young, imaginative talent that music video direction used to provide. Backrooms, Iron Lung, etc. make a good case that YouTube can be that new pipeline.
Re: 'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
#50Earlier 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…
Games industry has an oversupply problem that is the root cause of flash sales. I thought about mentioning that in my answer.