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

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421–430 of 492 posts

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

#421

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…

> 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.

I disagree. The masses that buy millions of tickets every week to watch the latest opening do so because that is a primary form of entertainment. Most people are that boring and will watch whatever is at the movies that week. I don't think they are going because they really like movies, because come on... but I could be just gatekeeping.

Excluding blockbusters that rack up hundreds of millions in opening week, most people will go see whatever is playing and not thing too much about it.

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

#422

Ok, here's my problem with the movie theatre industry. There's 100+ years of fantastic historical content and we're not doing anything with it. 99% of what's shown in theaters is new releases. I understand we don't want to "go stale" as a society and that movie producers also need to make a living, but the balance is just way off. I would pay good money to see "the good the bad and the ugly" with my kids in a couple…

https://stanfordtheatre.org is a repertory cinema (though currently closed due to covid) that has themed schedules (one month Hitchcock, another month Satyajit Ray, etc).

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

#423

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…

Optimization is eating the world.

Premature optimization?

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a significant number of scenes in Airplane that are directly lifted from Zero Hour. I haven't checked recently, but I think it's almost a scene-for-scene remake in many respects.

Here's a video comparing the two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs It really was a remake of a "serious" drama as a comedy.

I didn’t realize Hailey was behind both.

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

#425

Barry: Call me. I'll show you where you can find great art in movies, an order of magnitude more than what was available before. I'm a big believer in data and not personal anecdotes, but if I can do it, Barry can (and you can). I never imagined so much incredible art existed on video as what I've seen in the last 5+ years on streaming. The standard for what I will watch has risen dramatically - I don't have to compr…

Perhaps it's a bit off topic, but do you mind sharing some recommendations? I'm always in the lookup for new stuff, but the one thing I think has become worse for me is finding sources of recommendations. The age of old forums is gone and mainstream sites like IMDb are very hit or miss for me. I'll take both movies/shows, and the places where you discover them :)

From the same commenter:

https://pastebin.com/S3Px6RA6

Enjoy!

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

#426
post #260

Barry: Call me. I'll show you where you can find great art in movies, an order of magnitude more than what was available before. I'm a big believer in data and not personal anecdotes, but if I can do it, Barry can (and you can). I never imagined so much incredible art existed on video as what I've seen in the last 5+ years on streaming. The standard for what I will watch has risen dramatically - I don't have to compr…

Where's the data? Let's have some references to all this high quality stuff.

From the same commenter:

https://pastebin.com/S3Px6RA6

Enjoy!

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

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this type of behavior happens only in USA. I can't imagine hearing more than a gasp during movie in my country.

On the other hand think of the reaction people had when watching the First Star War Prequal when the opening crawl started on opening weekend(we didn't know yet), Avengers: Endgame when Tony got the Gauntlet. Watching all of the Doctors show up at the climax of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Episode simulcast in theatre. Its a communal experience then. the first glory shot of the Enterprise in 2009, The cheer of the…

[deleted]

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

#428

Ok, here's my problem with the movie theatre industry. There's 100+ years of fantastic historical content and we're not doing anything with it. 99% of what's shown in theaters is new releases. I understand we don't want to "go stale" as a society and that movie producers also need to make a living, but the balance is just way off. I would pay good money to see "the good the bad and the ugly" with my kids in a couple…

Every top comment on HN is someone with an unprofitable use case complaining that no one serves them. Change my mind.

Every premium cinema near me makes plenty of money showing old movies. Here's one example: https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/events/cult-classics

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

#429

Ok, here's my problem with the movie theatre industry. There's 100+ years of fantastic historical content and we're not doing anything with it. 99% of what's shown in theaters is new releases. I understand we don't want to "go stale" as a society and that movie producers also need to make a living, but the balance is just way off. I would pay good money to see "the good the bad and the ugly" with my kids in a couple…

Same with me but I can see that not many people are like that so it's not profitable.

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

#430

Ok, here's my problem with the movie theatre industry. There's 100+ years of fantastic historical content and we're not doing anything with it. 99% of what's shown in theaters is new releases. I understand we don't want to "go stale" as a society and that movie producers also need to make a living, but the balance is just way off. I would pay good money to see "the good the bad and the ugly" with my kids in a couple…

I can think of at least 4 big movie theaters in DC that did this. The Uptown used to do revivals between big releases. I saw Blade Runner, Ben Hur, 2001, and other classics there. They did not make money on those and had to convert to 100% current releases. I think it is now closed. The Air & Space IMAX theater used to do “Sci Fi Sundays” where they played a classic science fiction movie on Sunday evenings as the las…

> In every one of these theaters I am always shocked to see how few people a classic pulls in. Went to see Blade Runner “Final Cut” at AFI on a huge screen and there were like 40 people. 2001 in a 70mm print was about half full. Inception or Interstellar in IMAX (the real one, 70 ft tall screen) was less than half full.

Maybe you chose bad examples.. but all of these movies are movies I like quite a lot and I would not have gone to see any of them in the theater. Why? Because I've seen all of them a dozen times already and I'm sure I'm not alone. If they want to pull in more people, they should probably pick movies people haven't already watched repeatedly to the point of fatigue.

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