The disappearance of the hit-driven business model
dearproducer.com
dearproducer.com
The movie market was like a fiefdom, much like the music industry 20 years ago, and now streaming and internet have democratized access and content creation. You don't get $20M budget at the cost of hundreds of other independent films? Yeah, sorry, boo-hoo.
We're living in a golden age of TV. In the past decade there have been many in depth TV series that only a handful of movies dared to explore precisely because the industry was hits driven.
More than that, I've seen some exceptional B-movie sci-fi movies on Netflix in the past 10 years as well.
People who win at this type of game have the equivalent of survivorship bias. They don't realize how much is sacrificed to create their hit movie and how the industry contorts content to serve their distribution model.
This is the part of the article I don't grasp. The article kept saying things like:
> however, subscription services cannot only cater to niches, they must try to be everything to all people, which places more value on the content platform and its library than the quality of each individual piece of content.
That seems like a more accurate description of the old model. A box office blockbuster film must be everything to everyone. A NYT bestseller must be be everything to everyone.
The subscription model in both visual media and books has unlocked unexplored niches. There is tones of anime all over Netflix. I have read a bunch of "progression fantasy" on Kindle Unlimited, exemplified by the Cradle Series by Will Wight. This sort of media would never have survived under the old model, as it is too niche. Will Wight doesn't care about making NYT bestseller, he is focused on cultivating his 1000(0) followers.
But, for profit-driven businesses like Amazon, the goal isn’t to barely make money, but it is to maximize the amount of money coming in.
It was quite sad for me when "The OA" and "Mozart in the Jungle" were cancelled.
It's not like these companies are okay making less money in some projects, and making more money in a few. They want to _maximize_ money from all projects.
And niche shows are often cancelled.
Yes, and the more depressing part: to make the model work, there will also be a huge effort to mold everyone into the blockbusters’ public, the bestsellers’ buyer.
Your movies will make a lot more when you have options to nudge people’s tastes.
1. Fantasy. They have interesting and engaging fantasy worlds. There's a lot of mixed results here, I personally don't think DBZ or Cradle are that interesting.
2. The main characters are empowered to actively participate in events that surround them. The trope here is that they fight back against the latest unfairness of the world, but more creative storytelling can make this very fresh and interesting.
3. The main characters aren't defined by their circumstances. They prove themselves by their work ethic or cleverness, not by being born to a powerful family.
Most works in this category are rehashes of CRPG or Xianxia tropes. I'd personally recommend Mother of Learning as the best progression fantasy I've read.
That's where they lost me. Here's a list of 10:
https://www.cbr.com/niche-streaming-services-what-to-watch-f...
It seems vimeo found their niche(?) of a market providing white-lable OTT service, which I'd assume makes spinning up a streaming provider for a niche market even simpilier.
> In this new model for storytelling, volume is more important than quality.
> which places more value on the content platform and its library than the quality of each individual piece of content. (this one is repeated twice)
> The subscription model means content providers are paid regularly no matter the quality and quantity of the product
The idea that the hit model with large budget waste is the only way to drive talented people is just wrong, people can produce great content on low budget, it's just another kind of talent, for another kind of content. Certainly platforms should not try to produce content alike the ones of the hit model, but I'm not that sure that the public, and neither the industry, is losing that much.
It's the other way around - they have more monopolized (or rather, oligopolized) the content creation and distribution aspect. Say you're an independent producer... small "arthouse"-style cinemas have closed down shop everywhere because it simply isn't worth it to run them any more without serious financial assistance, which means you essentially have to put your movie up on Youtube/Vimeo/whatever and completely lose out on income besides the assistance money from moviemaker funds, crowdfunding, government facilities and rich sponsors.
Alternatively, you focus on monetization via Netflix - but unless you are already well-known enough that your name will get your movie into Netflix anyway, you have to do that upfront because of Netflix' technical requirements [1], so you lose out on quite a bit of artistic freedom, not to mention the "Netflix look" aka color grading [2].
[1] https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake3j5/why-does-everything-o...
The first thing is that making a living off of art is hard, so we're really talking about the difficulty pre adoption of widespread streaming services vs. post widespread adoption of streaming services (I guess 2015 or so).
YouTube is a different model but there are many people making a living from producing content. As an extreme example, Mr. Beast is a triple digit millionaire [0].
I've heard anecdotally that getting series made on Netflix, especially if you're a star is (or at least was) easier than getting a green-lit for movie funding.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2022/11/30/could-m...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/business/media/pandemic-s...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-10/closed-mo...
[3] https://www.sharesmagazine.co.uk/news/shares/cineworld-hits-...
[4] https://www.ndr.de/kultur/film/Studie-zum-Kinomarkt-Situatio...
My belief is that it's easier now than ever to make a movie or TV show by getting a deal with a streaming service. This is in comparison to making a living from the industry that the post is talking about ("hits-based" movie making).
Record stores went out of business when vinyl was replaced by cassettes. Video rental went out of business during the early days of the internet. Brick and mortar music stores declined with the availability of mp3s online. Book stores declined in popularity with the rise of Amazon. So, too, are cinemas declining with the offering of on-demand movies and TV.
I guess your assumption is that small art houses are the drivers of weird, niche culture? I would disagree. The availability of platforms that get media in front of more peoples eyes and the lowering cost of creating and distributing that media are what I would guess as the main benefit of producing weird, niche media.
I love cinemas but the world changes and if their model only exists when the movie industry has a stranglehold on the distribution, then, as much as I hate to see them go, they're just not viable anymore.
I've seen some good gems but most feels like it was made in a weekend with a title and a thumbnail that let's you know the entire movie. Example: "3 Years", thumbnail is a couple's faces looking not so sure.
The actual talent is getting commoditized, and there is no profit sharing anymore - because the streaming platforms don't release the viewing numbers.
The profits will be kept by the rent seekers i.e. the streaming services and the talent will work for a wage.
Unfortunately this has come with a real decrease in artistic/creative value.
For all intents and purposes almost everything that Netflix now has on its platform is basically crap, I've last spent about half an hour trying to find something nice to watch but nothing. I would have settled on the spot for light but original comedy like "American Pie", but couldn't find it. The same goes for HBO Max (granted, the first season of "White Lotus" was ok-ish, but by the second season you could see half of the directorial and writers' takes coming from half a mile away).
Anyway, I find myself terminating movies earlier and more readily than in the past due to the higher frequency of disappointing dialogue and story lines along with the fear of wasting my time. My response is cancelling streaming subscriptions for a year or so and then resubscribing for a few months in hopes that a few decent new pieces of content were created.
Part of it is they are just producing so much content that the marginal quality of each script that now gets made is lower, but I do think script writing is an art that has been reduced to a series of tricks and cliches and storytelling has massively suffered.
Trouble is, they all are pointing to a different couple of shows.
I mean, you’re aware that ‘Succession is the only good show’ is not an objectively true statement, right? That other people might disagree with you about that?
So I don’t know what your prescription here is. Do you want to just be able to subscribe to SuccessionTV?
Since you asked: what I would like is just to buy Succession. Do you know what happens when you want to watch something that's not on any platform? There is this cambrian thing called Blu-ray or you go straight to precambrian with DVD.
But if I'm not mistaken, there's no way to "buy" a digital copy of a movie or a series. Or even "rent" it. I don't really think I'd watch Succession a second time.
Mostly everybody prefers torrents, if they're available, that not always happens, specially in other languages. If not, you need a Blu-ray reader and paying not so nice prices from Amazon. Add some reaping software if you don't quite believe that optical disks last a hundred years.
If you come to think it, platforms really aren't. They're subscriptions to catalogs. Also moving catalogs. I've paused a season for some days, then found out that it had become pay-per-view at Amazon.
I suspect that the real power of "platforms" is copy protection... again. Studios wouldn't allow non-DRM shops, so they insist in DRM in the browser and thus they've given all the power to the gatekeepers.
Take any of the last 3 years, and then let’s compare that to the past, and let’s compare what came out in e.g. 2022 and 1992.
That you think things have gotten better is one of those things that makes me lose hope for the future of humanity, because clearly we are so different that we’re perceiving completely, vastly different realities - we might as well be living in parallel universes and it’s just a perversion that we can perceive each other.
Of course, it's also the case that an absolute shitload of good-to-great films do come out every year. Very few (but some!) of them get huge budgets and a big marketing push, but there are lots of them. Average quality may be low, but the volume's so high that there's still more good stuff coming out than I, personally, can keep up with.
Pick any of the last 5 years.
If there are shitloads, then you should easily be able to name 5 great films from that year.
What are they?
Note; I can easily do this for any year from let’s say 1990 to 1995, but personally I can’t for recent times. Am I just missing the quality? Maybe. Excited to see what you come up with.
Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Both Knives Out movies
Parasite
Nope (probably just in the "good" grouping, not great)
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That's, uh... just from the "popular this week" screen. And only the ones I've seen, so I know they're good. But I'm pretty sure all those are last five years, or close to it.
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Digging back to 2018 and later (we can say 2018 counts since 2023 just started, right?):
Annihilation
Sorry to Bother You
High Life
Midsommar
Uncut Gems (god it's so good)
Jojo Rabbit
The Lighthouse
The Green Knight
CODA
Spontaneous ([EDIT] It seems very dumb but wow is it a gut punch, when you start to think about what you're watching and make some connections to real life)
Red Rocket (small-scale brilliance)
RRR
Watcher
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I just realized I misread you as asking for 5 good ones from just one of the last 5 years, not 5 total from the last 5 years, but I think that gets the point across? Despite my leaving off a whole bunch that may be more taste-specific, not having watched even 1/3 of the films from that span I have good reason to believe are good, not exhaustively mining that timespan (I bet I could double the size of that list without changing how I was selecting them), and also omitting a bunch of more-popular movies that I think were at least decent.
[EDIT] Hell some years you could get to 2-3 good ones just by looking at what A24 produced that year, nothing else.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
2021 - Nightmare Alley, The Card Counter, Zola, The French Dispatch, Come True, Don't Look Up, I Care A Lot,
2020 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Mank, The Sound of Metal, Possessor, His House
2019 - Climax, Uncut Gems, Parasite, Vivarium, First Cow
2018 - The Clovehitch Killer, Prospect, Mute, Anon, Mandy, The House That Jack Built, Cam, Sorry to Bother You
2018 had a glut of Netflix sci-fi B-movies that I think are very solidly good if not so great. I think they're underrated so I included them. I might have also messed up on the years.
These are all films I've seen. There are many others that I suspect are even better that I haven't seen.
Do we really need to have another movie about super heroes or another movie about rescuing some retiring tough guy’s kid from a bad guy? Or another movie that spends the first half rotating between character building scenes filled with silly, rote dialogue and no story line? Or another movie that takes an old, tired story and simply replaces the characters with a new set of characters intended to signal the importance of a particular demographic group? Or another Jurassic Park, Hangover, Rocky, Transformer, Terminator, Star Wars clone? Yawn.
But why don’t they cater to older folks? Typically, the further one progresses in one’s career, the more money one makes, and the more disposable income one has. I know that I now regularly spend sums now that I would have considered unbelievably profligate in my youth. Why don’t advertisers and producers target me, instead of some kid who still thinks $1,000 is a lot of money?
How many people are really tons richer as they get older? Not especially many, this is an upper middle class phenomenon.
Given this small audience, are those people willing to pay 20x more per month for a streaming service to make up for that? Probably not.
If they get young people hooked on this cheap content now, they can keep charging them for it for their whole lives. How many times have you bought /The Goonies/ or /Die Hard/? The copyright holders of /Euphoria/ hope to be doing the same thing in 40 years.
It's similar to consumer packaged goods (deodorant, laundry soap, etc.) where the lifetime value of a customer is loads better if you get them into your brand when they are young. Convincing a 65 year old to change brands of shaving cream is both expensive (they have high standards and preferences from decades of shaving) and has low return (they won't be buying shaving cream for much longer). Convincing a 15 year old to buy your brand of shaving cream is relatively easy (they don't have any habits around which brand to buy, and also not much experience/preference) and they will be buying it for decades to come, so it will be a big return if it works.
Today, broadcast TV seems to be mostly procedurals and cable TV is mostly reality. If you like sitcoms, there has definitely been a dropoff since those have lost popularity.
Streaming is where can find the good TV shows. Remember, 1992 is before HBO started making good dramas and those were pretty rare before then. The big advantage of streaming is the variety, there are a bunch of mediocre shows in genres that barely existed before.
I just finished watching Derry Girls on Netflix, a comedy set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I would rather watch the 18 episodes of that than any amount of 90s sitcoms.
I don’t watch TV, save for a few (less than 20) shows I don’t think anything truly brilliant has ever been made as a series, ever.
That said, I would agree that shows made between 2005 and today are generally better than shows between 1980 and 2015.
Though better is relative; shows with very few exceptions are junk.
I don't have time for all this content and I if I trust my friends as filters, there's till too much.
If not, just recommend me top-k TV/Web series, and top-k "exceptional B-movie sci-fi movies on Netflix".
Thanks.
Also, giving more projects $5m is not a victory if the cost of a proper production is $20m. It’s just an explanation for why quality is dipping.
Or following your logic and “hundreds of other films”, it seems like you’re under the impression that a good film can be made with $100k.
I’m finding more blind spots and jumps to conclusions in your comment than in the admittedly poorly written article.
Give that, it doesn’t surprise me that you’re one of the ones who are looking at what’s being served as tv shows and actually enjoying it.
If you ask me, “the golden age of TV” is a meme based on a handful of shows, all of them made at the onset of the new economy when the nascent methodologies of the new economy led to authors having outsized influence for a short period of time.
There’s something seriously brainwashed about looking at what’s at offer today and still concluding that because the Sopranos exists we’re still producing good content.
I will give you the enjoyable b-movies, but also remind you that those have existed always, and often in greater numbers.
Don't think this is true. If you consider a lot of self-produced Youtube clips as C-movies, there are way more today. And audiences have voted for what they want: they want more lower-production-cost movies in their exact niche than academic film-art blockbusters like Ben Hur.
Wat
Perhaps with the collapse of the drive-in, the matinee, there has not been a compelling business model for the studios to finance B-movies for decades now.
Those aren’t opposites. In a democracy, if everyone is allowed to post political pamphlets in the town square, the central location of the square doesn’t mean it’s not a democracy.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - $56,000 [1]
Butt Boy - $100,000 [2]
The Blue - <$100k [3]
Call Me Brother - <$100k [3]
Frances Ferguson - <$100k [3]
Greenlight - <$100k [3]
Love in Dangerous Times - <$100k [3]
Man in Camo - <$100k [3]
I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.
Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":
* Chernobyl
* Rick and Morty
* True Detective
* Fargo
* Severance
* 1883
* Mindhunter
* Westworld
* The Knick
* The Peripheral
* Succession
* Years and Years
* Orange is the New Black
* Halt and Catch Fire
* Insecure
* Watchmen
* Atlanta
This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_(film)
[1] https://byrdtheatre.org/news/2019/10/a-girl-walks-home-alone...
[2] https://www.cautionspoilers.com/film-reviews/butt-boy/
[3] https://musiccitydrivein.com/2021/02/19/film-threat-award-th...
Watchmen…
Lol
Rick and Morty is also bad. After two episodes I was already bored of the shtick.
Fargo is by far the best series on that list. Seasons 1 and 2 are incredible.
Highly suggest to reconsider. It explores many previously unexplored concepts later on. The beginning was ugly, especially if you liked Back To The Future.
Probably the most clever time travel film I have seen.
What 'centralized' in a world that now has 'creator economy' as a thing.
> Also, giving more projects $5m is not a victory if the cost of a proper production is $20m.
Is there any objective definition of that 'proper'. Rhetorical question, obviously, for there isnt.
> it seems like you’re under the impression that a good film can be made with $100k.
It doesn't seem like it. It is like that. Many movies like Paranormal Activity, Parasite were made with low budgets.
> Give that, it doesn’t surprise me that you’re one of the ones who are looking at what’s being served as tv shows and actually enjoying it.
Yeah, people are actually enjoying TV. That shouldnt be a big surprise.
> If you ask me, “the golden age of TV” is a meme based on a handful of shows
How is that any different from the golden ages of cinema in which unending series of rehashed crap were produced to profit off of audiences that had no alternative but to pay for them.
...
Its much better for things to be distributed, democratized and in the hands of more people than small cliques of profiteering feudal lords monopolizing them and deciding what happens. Especially regarding content.
High end filmmaking has gotten 'cheaper', in that you can use virtual production to simulate environments etc. And undoubtedly shooting 'digital' is cheaper than film development. Although nowhere near as much cheaper than you might think, once the cost of a DIT and professional colour grade is thrown into the mix. However the standards of both independent film and TV production are enormously higher than they were 15 years ago.
It's not that it's impossible to make something cheaply - I'm involved in the kino kabaret movement, where amateurs and professionals alike join together to make effectively zero budget films over a weekend.
However - the cost of producing a decent film has not dropped to a few thousand. Quite the opposite. Given the high production value of contemporary indies, it's inarguably more difficult now to make something that will play festivals and sell to distributers for an 'ultralow' budget.
Moreover, lots of the budgets you see quotes are as low as they were because the film was effectively subsidised by a small production company. In other words, everyone worked for free and used borrowed gear, often worth hundreds of thousands. For reference a fully kitted out Arri Alexa 35 or LF is over 90k euro to buy, and over 1k per day to rent.
A decent budget for a short film is in the 40 - 50k range, once everyone is actually getting paid for their time. Couple of million dollars / euros would be a low budget film, with favours pulled in and everyone working for less than half of their rates for commercial work.
That proposition would mean that the reason why majority of the last decades' top budget movies were rehashed crap was because of the exorbitant profit margins and exorbitant money paid to stars rather than anything related to the movies' production. So it was just a case of capitalism hollowing out things for profit like in any other field.
> However - the cost of producing a decent film has not dropped to a few thousand.
I don't think anybody ever made that argument. What people say is that things became much cheaper and therefore democratized. Which is in line with what you said.
The original post in this thread advocated for making hundreds of indie films vs one film for twenty million.
> That proposition would mean that the reason why majority of the last decades' top budget movies were rehashed crap was because of the exorbitant profit margins and exorbitant money paid to stars rather than anything related to the movies' production.
It's more complicated than that - at the top end film budgets are vastly higher than they were a decade ago. Regularly topping 200 million. But more importantly, studios have making far fewer films and pining their success as a business on a 'super' hit driven model. This is almost a separate industry than film at this point, with grosses in the multiple billions before merchandising is taken into account. It's not really what the original article is about - they're talking about hit 'indie' films, in the 20 million ball park.
Arguably the issue with movies of the last decade has been the creation and duplication of transmedia franchises at the expense of making standalone original films.
That doesn't mean that each indie film would cost $10k. Not that someone couldnt pull off a good movie like that for $10k. However, more people being able to make movies from $10k or whatever low amount would mean more chances of good movies being made.
> But more importantly, studios have making far fewer films and pining their success as a business on a 'super' hit driven mode
Yeah. Profit maximization instead of risk taking. The same problem everywhere - gaming industry has been consolidated in the hands of few big companies which started making endless rehashes of previously successful games to suck out more money from gamers instead of making new things. Profit maximization. Capitalism.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
The Wire
You're the Worst
The Good Place
Too many decent-to-great sitcoms and sketch-comedy shows to list.
Ditto adult animated shows.
Justified
Evil
Several great limited series (e.g. The Haunting of Hill House)
I could keep going. The last couple decades have given us a lot of really good shows since The Sopranos. I watch a fair amount and still have a backlog of probably-great stuff I haven't gotten to yet (including, actually, The Sopranos!) and continue to stumble on shows I've never even heard of that turn out to be really good.
The rest is a list of mediocrity.
So, point not made.
Camera technology is so ubiquitous now that an unknown can create content on a shoestring budget. It's now more about gumption and talent instead of gumption, talent, and having enough money to rent professional equipment.
I can remember an indie film shot on a digital SLR camera with a $6,000 budget picking up festival awards a decade ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battery_(2012_film)
Of course, everyone having access doesn't make everyone's content good, but Spielberg got started with a Super 8 camera in his teens.
I remember when, in the 80's, sci-fi conventions were perhaps one of the few means of recognition that the Super-8 indie guys get exposure (and maybe a career) with the likes of, for example, "Hardware Wars".
If we're talking about supporting an industry with professional talent, pointing to the entry level capital cost isn't the way to do it, because there's an element of Baumol's cost disease, where the relative cost of your talent rises because everything else got cheaper. And you want to have the ability to pay people to go the extra mile without duping them. You can certainly make more varied kinds of productions on modern tech and budgets than before, but if there isn't an income stream that keeps the talent base there, you end up with privileged talent that can buy their way into an arts career, not veterans who built an artisanal skillset in the process of staying employed.
I suspect we're actually going in the direction of more and more adaptations. The Marvel movies and Star Wars shows are basically that; Dune, White Noise are both book adaptations. Anime succumbed to it a long while back and most of what's released each season is from a manga or light novel. It's a robust model because it can frame the production budget as an advertising cost, while also tapping into the success of the source, spreading out risks.
But adaptation, as good as it can be, pushes the medium to be in service to its source material, and to "give fans what they want". It's not building off the nature of the medium itself, so it's also somewhat unsatisfying if you really want the films and shows that push boundaries.
I don't know who is right here, but I'll provide an anecdote.
I know someone that wrote and directed a movie that had a very well known actor (you've heard of him) and had a limited run in theatres. Through that process I go to know a bit about the industry itself and it was very much a good old boys club where you absolutely had to play ball. Things like processing the formats was done with extremely expensive systems and if you tried to go around them no one would respond to you.
I don't know if it's better now, but I can imagine it is.
The past few years they've been concentrating resources on fewer larger budget movies with a much greater chance of success. The likes of the Marvel MCU, Star Wars and other sequels and remakes. They've chosen safe formulaic stories with evidenced success and pumped large amounts into the marketing of these films. The initial success of these drowned out any prospect of a low budget hit and have killed off the mid tier movie (those that were just fine and perhaps eeked out a small profit). Commentators in the past have noted how this focus could kill off the industry.
Now a triple whammy. Firstly, there's less current evidence to justify funding these smaller films, as a consequence of the past few years. Secondly, the popularity of the formulaic big hit is starting to wane and thirdly, streaming, a wild card, has introduced uncertainty and volatility into this business model.
It's the same problem as everywhere else: When people get too greedy, they ruin the show for everyone else. The amount of content that Disney pumps out in the MCU is too immense to follow up - the cinema movies, okay, but even then if you want to start fresh it's like two days worth of non-stop binge starting from the OG Iron Man... but forget about all the side content on Disney+.
The amount of money customers can set aside for entertainment is shrinking: three years of covid have eradicated savings, inflation has skyrocketed, and the future is looking uncertain AF - so the first thing that gets cut is entertainment. "Cord cutting" has become so commonplace it's a meme, but cinemas or even Netflix (!) have been hit by people trimming their budgets, and it doesn't help either that maintaining Netflix, Disney+, HBO and whatever else has grown so expensive it exceeds your prior cable TV bill. So that means people will go and see one, maybe two MCU movies a year and that's it - no budget left over for anyone else.
Saving went up because of the lockdowns.
> The amount of content that Disney pumps out in the MCU is too immense to follow up - the cinema movies, okay
I would diagnose a radically different problem - the MCU only has a lot of content measured in minutes of film. Measured in plot, there's almost nothing. I watched the 2016 film Doctor Strange. That was a huge mistake. I couldn't tell you anything about the film other than "Benedict Cumberbatch is in it" and "don't waste your time; there is no reason you'd ever want to see this". Ask me what happened, or indeed if anything happened, and I'll be stumped.
It doesn't come as a surprise that with the decline of the idea that a movie should tell you a story, movies are getting less popular.
Yes, for those who were able to save money of stimulus checks or whatever instead of having to use them to pay down debt. For those not in that fortunate position... well, 50% of Americans have less than 500$ in savings [1].
> It doesn't come as a surprise that with the decline of the idea that a movie should tell you a story, movies are getting less popular.
Yeah... Disney has mastered the art of making money with (admittedly excellent) special effects. The problem is, they may have lowered the expectations people have for good storytelling - but raised the bar immensely for "acceptable effects". Not every independent movie director has access to people like the VFX dude behind OwlKitty (who does VFX work on scenes of popular movies where he inserts his floofy cat as a character or funny sidekick [1]).
[1] https://news.prudential.com/generational-gap-grows-work-mone...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpLQXR116cLVUa1LRY8KS4w
Savings can't be eradicated by anything if they don't exist in the first place.
[1] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/releasegroup/gr2284737029/
Why would subtitling or dubbing make a difference? That doesn't change the plot. Is the value of Arthurian stories lessened by the fact that they were originally written in medieval French?
Translating the language will generally ruin wordplay, but that's a very different thing.
The bit where he says "What's this, my mantra?" and the monk says "No, it's the wifi password".
But it doesn't matter to them. When you have one hit like Avengers: Endgame, and some more like Black Panther, Infinity Wat, etc., HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE have LIFE CHANGING MONEY.
They won't give two hoots about ruined market or killing the golden goose.
If the goose gave a diamong of the same size of the golden egg, the owner wouldn’t fret killing it at all. One is enough.
Except I suppose with the second Star Wars, where they threw out the most of the movie in order to "subvert expectations"
First seasons and new IPs are fairly traditional and follow common writing tropes (although poorly, as if the knowledge has eroded).
It’s only when something gets popular that it gets the “updated for modern audiences” treatment.
To see how it should be done look at South Korean(and some Japanese) dramas on Netflix. Not all are great, but the average is way better. It came to a point I think I just saw one western TV production last year I liked and there were probably 5 or more Korean ones. Why is it that they can make interesting and surprising stories into TV/films in places like Korea?. Similar for Japan, but I found many Japanese dramas seem to be too focused on picturing "internal struggles" of characters in a way that seems a bit overdone for a western audiences. For examples of what I mean see "Alice in Borderlands" (Japanese - suffers some previously mentioned issues, but overall very good). "Glory" (Korean - when you read the brief it sounds like something that would be horrible to watch, but they pulled it off great), "Train to Busan" (Korean film about freaking zombies that is actually good), D. P.(Korean,again brief seems completely cheesy "Military police searches for escaped draftees" in actuality it has great story, it shows some really hard realities of military draft, like abuse etc in a way that is really believable a normal person could end up in such situation etc.) And many more. The only western TV drama that was good was "1899" (German/UK production). This was really good too.
So why is it there is so much bad quality tv/films produced in the west? Such great opportunities wasted? I had great hopes for the Mandalorian. I couldn't watch more than 2 episodes because the story was written for 10 year old. Etc.
The peak blockbusters still come occasionally, and the grittier, meatier content is available in droves on streaming services from US and UK productions at least. This is the golden age of television, despite Disney. If you aren't seeing some of the incredible series listed in sister threads, I suggest you give them a shot.
Or just peruse rotten tomatoes. There's more richness out there, but the signal to noise may have gotten slightly worse.
"Trivisa" was also fun to watch, as was "The Untold Story". Not from SK, but still foreign, and enjoyable.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_wailing
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/trivisa
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bat_sin_fan_dim_ji_yan_yuk_...
I also legit appreciate the 'channels' on their home screen. While I rarely watch them, they surface some things that I enjoy later on.
Season 2 just dropped as well so it's a good time to get into it. The full manga was told in those 2 seasons as well, apparently (haven't read it yet, just based on reading discussions on the show), so unlike a lot of Netflix shows, it tells a full story if it doesn't get renewed for another season.
I haven't seen any of the others you recommended yet, although Train to Busan was on my radar already.
I could agree the average quality has dropped. But surely you agree that the sheer volume of high-quality content has ballooned. How many high-quality TV shows can you name from the 90s?
Compare that to the last 10 years of shows like: Succession, Ted Lasso, The Queen's Gambit, The Handmaids Tale, Better Call Saul, Ozark, House of Cards, Stranger Things, Silicon Valley, The Crown, Fargo, Mr. Robot, True Detective, Veep, and even (controversially) Game of Thrones.
Perhaps I didn't watch that much content in the 90s :-) or there is some other factor. For example existence of really good content puts the bar higher, or the fact we had few really high value productions many had high hopes for flops? (like the recent "The Rings of Power")
However, there is one thing I'm eagerly waiting for. AI and other software led improvements to the ability to "remaster" some productions by fans. Perhaps then the entire series of "the rings of power" can be turned into a really good 30min short? Who knows.
Horror's doing wonderfully, there's a bounty of good stuff, US and Europe both (since you specified the West—Asia, broadly, also puts out a few good horror films per year). 10+ films I'm very glad I watched per year, probably, and I do not manage to watch all the good ones.
Mid-budget sci-fi usually has a couple solid ones per year, too (Moon, The High Life, Annihilation, et c.), plus the rare high-budget good sci-fi film (maybe one or so per year? Dune, Blade Runner 2049, that kind of thing).
Usually a couple good-to-great westerns per year, at least, though they may not be the ones with the largest marketing budgets.
The average is trash, sure, but there's plenty of good stuff and you can just ignore the trash and still have plenty to watch.
> So why is it there is so much bad quality tv/films produced in the west? Such great opportunities wasted? I had great hopes for the Mandalorian. I couldn't watch more than 2 episodes because the story was written for 10 year old. Etc.
I'm with you on this. I think the average quality in Star Wars land is just so bad that a show that could be considered a peer of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys seems amazing by comparison. (I did finish it—playing "spot the influence/rip-off" was entertaining and occasionally made me feel smart for being familiar with whatever better thing the writers had also watched, I suppose)
> If the company spends time and energy on only certain audiences, the numbers fall, and that company becomes a niche; however, subscription services cannot only cater to niches, they must try to be everything to all people, which places more value on the content platform and its library than the quality of each individual piece of content.
Netflix's revenue stream fell recently. I have seen analysis that this was in part due to its "quantity over quality" model. My personal opinion is that finding quality programming in Netflix is difficult, and when I cut any streaming services from my monthly budget, Netflix will be the first to go.
Contrast Netflix with HBOMax and Disney+, each of which have consistently incredible quality.
It may be wishful thinking, but I suspect that this transitional period will last perhaps a few more years, and then the streaming consumer will be more willing to pay a premium for true quality, in turn driving a new hit-driven normal.
> subscription services cannot only cater to niches, they must try to be everything to all people
There are niche streaming services. Shudder for horror, MUBI for foreign and art films, Nobudge for first-timer and low budget films. I'm certain there are or will be others.
In the old days of network television, a new show might struggle in the ratings trying to gain its audience, but a producer might champion and protect it enough until it gains a footing. For example, Lucille Ball kept this weird little scifi show called Star Trek alive until it became the hit franchise that's still going to this day. The Netflix algorithm would have cancelled Star Trek after a season and it would have been forgotten.
On the other hand, perhaps many shows got cancelled because a dumb producer just didn't get it, or there was behind-the-scenes politics where they fell out with a director or lead actor. But it seems overall that Netflix perhaps needs more of a human taste behind the scenes and less reliance on data-driven decision making.
I actually really liked the latest season of Stranger Things. Season 3 was the one that I really struggled with. Sure, I get that the kids are teenagers now, but why does that mean that the adults have to have dumb teenage drama too?
To be frank, Netflix went from a leader to the weakest of the streaming services I subscribe to, and I hardly ever watch anything on it any more. If it weren't for my wife and daughterm, I'd have dumped them a long time ago. Amazon Prime and Disnay+ have far more compelling shows.
The Netflix challenge used to be a staple of data-science students, but there's some evidence it had limited predictive power. If so, the massive data the streaming platforms have compared to Hollywood does not give them an edge in finding hits that will keep subscribers from defecting in a recession (contrary to the article, I don't believe breadth and volume of irrelevant content matters, if anything it has negative value because that means more dross I have to scan over to find the rare shows I am actually interested in watching).
Agree on HBO, but I wouldn't be able to tell with such certainty whether Disney+ has consistently higher quality than Netflix, or Disney+ has simply the benefit of owning almost all recognizable world-building IP in the industry (Disney itself, Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, plus everything they acquired when they acquired FOX).
For example: Not being a die-hard Star Wars Fan and being oversaturated with the Marvel franchise for years now, content from these universes on Disney+ is in no way of higher quality to me than comparable-size content of Netflix i.e. Stranger Things, Mindhunter, Peaky Blinders,...
I find myself increasingly browsing Disney+ like "oh, interesting!...maybe another time...", but that might be just me.
In addition, I keep noticing how Disney+ is producing big-budget series which end up with only ~8 20-30min episodes, whereas Netflix and HBO still consider ~50mins to be the minimum.
However they’re hard pressed at the bottom by YouTube two hour repeat videos of Baby Shark (the absolute most watched video in history - https://youtu.be/XqZsoesa55w - 12 billion )
By Season4 the aimless world-building reached a degree that it's unlikely they could ever connect back to the same audience as Season1...
HBO's Watchmen on the other hand...a pity that they killed it after just one season...
I never watched HBO's watchman because I was a fan of the original comic books and modern remakes of almost everything are terrible. You could be right though, I haven't seen it.
You should give HBO's Watchmen a try nonetheless. It's set a few decades after the story of the graphic novel, basically continuing the path of "alternate history", (not so much the path of the original characters)
The thing is FX tools are getting cheaper, distribution is cheaper, the production tools are cheaper. That leaves ... labor.
What may really be dead is the megastar, unless that megastar brings the bacon (for example, Tom Cruise is basically a producer for the films he stars in, but then again he has the money of dozens of former "hits" in the old model).
But then again, we are in the golden age of television. Movies might be suffering, perhaps because television is so much better. Television has the budget and FX is cheap enough that the OMG effects are no longer the monopoly of the film business.
And the article fails to address the shocking lack of good new IP and movies that are coming out of the film industry before the sea change of the subscription services. I personally point to the Matrix as the last time a good movie that wasn't just a sequel or a template or a remake was made. Yeah, uh, that was 1999. Funny writing that date, because it almost sounds like a date from the 1800s. There used to be multiple tentpole event movies every year before then, iconic movies.
What changed? Is there LESS money available now with mass release? Is it the lack of DVD revenue? China revenue means less creativity to offend The Central Party?
And what is a producer ultimately? The go between the financing and the "real" creatives. Is the guy really just complaining that his role in the modern pipeline is reduced, the financing more distributed and available from more sources, so they are less valuable? D&D from Game of Thrones were getting crazy amounts of credit for the series, but the pipeline of content ran out and suddenly they didn't look like geniuses anymore.
I’d say Interstellar was a great and new movie in 2014. Also, the last movie I’ve seen ;)
"The key people working directly with the creative producer are the director, who oversees the creative vision of the film, and the line producer, who oversees the budget. The creative producer is the ultimate form of middle-management who sees the whole picture with the core reason to exist being at the detail-level, focusing solely on a project as a supervisor of the creative."
The author produced hits with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and he also produced Manchester By The Sea. He explains well the impact of streaming on people like himself in the US.
I would just like to add that Netflix was able to fund a lot of projects in other, non-US film industries. A whole bunch of movies and miniseries made in India would never have been funded before Netflix and Amazon came there. I am thankful for that.
The other side of the coin.
The blockbuster movie and the multiplex cinema created a self strengthening cycle but it's over. I think we will see entire chains going under and with them, the blockbuster will die too.
It is indeed the time of the home theater. A family of four wants to go to the cinema, that's at least $100 if not $200 outright. Or they can watch Disney+. This is a no brainer.
If they cut the ticket price dramatically, people would go to back to the theatre.
Pricing structure for cinema is completely wrong.
Studios need to drop their pants and share revenues with theatres.
The pandemic reset peoples behaviour for streaming to be the default and cinema for special occasions with movies people really want to see on a big screen. It seems like when people do want to go to the movies they want to see stuff on the biggest and best premium screens and they'll pay for that as well because they're going less frequently.
Streaming has both a convenience and a price advantage, damned hard to compete with that.
Not really different than waiting for the DVD, though, is it?
I think price is definitely part of the equation. Going to the theater is a nice way to get out of the house. That argument gets worse and worse as you realize you're paying $20 for popcorn and an extra $10 for a drink. Add in the ticket costs and a family of 4, and it just becomes prohibitively expensive for what you're getting.
So yes, it is different.
People have been complaining about the cost of going to the cinema for years, it's not a new complaint, I don't think it explains why behavior suddenly changed this year. I think Streaming with its massive quantity of content does, you won't have to wait long for a movie you're kind of interested to be available and there's plenty to watch in the meantime.
There is nothing forcing streaming platforms to release movies right away. Now that the pandemic is over, you're going to see streaming platforms claw back where they can. They're already starting - banning multi-logins, forcing more ads, etc.
> People have been complaining about the cost of going to the cinema for years, it's not a new complaint, I don't think it explains why behavior suddenly changed this year. I think Streaming with its massive quantity of content does, you won't have to wait long for a movie you're kind of interested to be available and there's plenty to watch in the meantime.
Behavior changed because of the pandemic. Now that it's over people are going to the cinema for good movies - again, see top gun maverick, or spiderman no way home. But they're not going to go for just anything. It's too expensive to go all the time. So for a B movie, yea, why bother when it's on netflix? But the cost is too high to go see that movie in theaters.
(includes half an hour of ads before the movie starts, at least that is what it used to be 5-10 years ago, I haven’t been to a cinema in years)
At least it seems to be consistent i.e. you can schedule to get in there 25 minutes late
Avatar: The Way of Water at 6:30 has the same pricing.
A package of candy from a local store will be $1.50 - $3. (Each.) There's no way you're getting up to $100. (You could spend more by buying food inside the theater, but you'd have to be stupid to go for that.)
Fair enough - Netflix doesn't charge $10 for snacks & drinks, but I don't get them either.
Similarly, a glass of wine in a restaurant is "overpriced" compared to drinking on your home cough from a liquor store.
What I mean is: make a fair comparison, please. Different experience, different price.
(Though I concur that Poland ticket price sounds much more reasonable)
And it looks like one of the recent big hits "Ruthkanda Forever" got poor ratings probably due to being a bad movie.
The industry may try to backpedal to pirates vs vampires soon.
The artists/entrepreneurs directly dedicating their lives, sacrificing day-to-day, and taking real risks within the larger industry typically tend to be the ones with the best insights into recent changes. These are the voices you hear early on, then later on when smaller Big Cos fails or stocks drop after commiting to [old out-of-date but safe business model] you hear the same explanations (that were surely obvious 5-10yrs ago if people listened!).
These things are rarely all-bad. It's just different. Ultimately Amazon Prime and Netflix teams still want good content. Good always sells, even with shitty low-budget marketing. So they'll eventually adapt and develop models that select for quality, without sacrificing the new model of betting on 1000 creative people instead of 10 safe ones.
So if Netflix/et al turn a smaller group of talented producers into a central corporate factory floor then naturally talent and script spotting also becomes systematized. And corporations love making safe bets with things like focus groups.
Who knows... maybe eventually it's still a win given the influx of capital being thrown against the wall by these big streaming services. Maybe the analytics on views-to-completion will weed out the crap like TikTok does scary well.
What we're seeing is the higher end Netflix bets being corporate garbage, the way boy bands were. But we're also seeing tons of low-end budget "Netflix movie" garbage that got made merely to fill the queues. That's something that major music labels never did in the 1990s at this scale.
The side effect of that much money being thrown around a quanity > quality is that it also happens to filter down into lots of quality filmmakers.
So the problem is no longer bets/money but how to surface quality. Because I personally think they will still benefit from sourcing quality in the long run once they mature their algorithms.
The popular content online is becoming very short clips of the stupidest shit I've ever seen. It's like listening to looping House music and wondering if everyone else at the party realizes the DJ has absolutely no talent. I digress. Point is the idea of quality may fully be taken over by cheap Chinese products on your doorstep 2 day delivery. I see a pattern.
So far I was surprised by how much Amazon and Google have blundered in this space (despite spending 100s of millions $). Netflix seem to be going in a better direction (time will tell) and Apple are focusing on the family friendly/casual niche (and I think doing ok there). MS we’re early movers in this space (with GamePass) and seem to be doing well.
But in the context of a 'hit-driven business model' a subscription service versus free-to-play versus DLC-supported games doesn't make much of a difference, both game developers and gamers have been moving towards long-term support of fewer 'evergreen' games and IPs for a long time.
Even before subscription came around, executives spoke of the need for “more singles and doubles than home runs.” Productions are slated years in advance and creatives are rarely insulated from date-driven delivery. Date driven delivery means something ships on a schedule regardless of quality. Low quality means appeal isn’t as broad. In the scheme of things, subscription revenue doesn’t quite make up for hits when they hit (look at entertainment earnings this last decade) but it’s more predictable and that can be more valuable to publicly traded entertainment companies.
From where I sit in the entertainment industry for the last 20 years, the hits model still exists, but the bets are smaller. You see it among independent, privately owned studios. It’s easier than ever to be independent, but it puts creatives in a spot where they have to put their money where their mouth is. The author wants to work on hits while also pulling a predictable salary. Can’t have it both ways.
1899 is good, but not DarK-good.
It's also a shame that Mozart in the Jungle was cancelled.
I don't agree that volume is more important than quality, even if some layers of the industry may act like it is. I wouldn't invest time and money for a streaming service full of bad content.
If a streaming service is a super market, I will not buy there if it doesn't meet my quality expectations, regardless how many (bad) products it has.
But for sure:
- If I can't do all my shopping in your supermarket but in the supermarket of others, I may rather go there instead.
- If you want to sell me on your new yoghurt you decided to distribute, just putting it on the shelf of all the yoghurts may not be enough to create a blockbuster hit. You will need to reach me outside of the supermarket as well.
- If you used to produce yoghurt and people flocked to your farm or small shop just to buy it, those times have likely changed, yes.