Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

The Oscars are the heart of the problem. One definition of “celebrity” is “person who is celebrated”

Hollywood is so used to getting high on its own supply that it really thinks we want to see an AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. People there just don’t have any information at all about what anybody outside their bubble thinks so of course they make samey big budget pictures and samey small budget pictures. Unless they shut down their communications channels and disperse geographically they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and be wondering why they keep getting the same results.

And that gets us to why they will never reform, they know their numbers are terrible but think this is (1) cyclical and (2) due to technological changes so they’ll never get it that running ads that make it sound like somebody else cares about Tom Cruise doesn’t really make people care about Tom Cruise, it just makes them ignore advertising messages.

> AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise

The video you are referring to was not produced by Hollywood, it was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, basically as a test of the new Seedance AI.

I'm not saying that Hollywood isn't out of touch, I'm just saying that nothing about Hollywood can be inferred from that video.

The main issue was the content the movie industry produced which looked like a lot like some AI slop. I think the DEI lecturing was another nail in the coffin. Unless that changes and they magically add something new to the cinema experience I think they will keep diving into irrelevance because now everybody can produce AI slop.

Is this article a weird cut-paste of older content? This passage makes no sense in the rest of the context, the tense is all wrong.

>Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes will attract new audiences and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership.

Edit: I read 2019 not.. 2029. That's actually incredible. Are they going to get in on tiktok for 2039 next?

The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California.

This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.

One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.

The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.