Promote actual movies a little more rather than spending hundreds of millions on dumb movies and leaving no room for real cinema.
Sadly, they have no idea what they’re doing with the whole of DC and this movie was destined for failure.
So what you are complaining about is rather shallowness or masses who want more popcorn fun rather than taking chances with experimental productions (just to be clear I am all for it, ie Tarantino broke through by similar 'taking creative chances', but folks do rarely visit unconventional stuff en masse).
Haven't seen Flash yet but these movies all aim to be next juicy Endgame. If you want to blame anybody for current direction of Hollywood, blame all folks visiting Avengers franchise.
I have a theory that the low interest rates in the past several years created massive distortions in the movie business. Firstly, incredibly expensive movies that, while entertaining (like the last Indiana Jones), have very little hopes of turning a profit. Secondly, streaming services having mountains of money and making things that are, well, too good and unprofitable long term. For instance, according to some unofficial numbers, you can make four Sound of Freedoms with the budget of a single Amazon Lord of the Rings episode!
Nobody can do that. Go down the list of films in 2023 on IMDB. How many of those didn't make back their money domestically? A LOT. The profit from even one of your movies barely pays for a single other flop.
Matt Damon commented in an interview that the problem was the collapse of DVD sales. With DVD sales, you could occasionally get a long slow burn after the movie was done (see: John Wick). Without DVD sales, it's either get it at the box office or you're done.
My claim is that there is an underserved market and companies are starting to invest in it and create movies that aren't ultra low budget. More movies to come, and like any market with limited competition, an opportunity to watch for.
About DVD/Blueray sales, a separate and interesting discussion. Digital purchases were supposed to replace those, but with non-portable DRM and cumbersome UIs with subscription services, this isn't happening yet. I wonder if anyone will "solve" the problem of buying a movie in the 21st century, or maybe buying movies is dead for good?
You can't help those who are unwilling to help themselves. Literally no one forced them to sink 300 million into Dial of Destiny, for example. Or all the other crap they are putting out.
"Cutting spending" usually means removing funding from actual good movies and ideas, and doubling down on money-makers, no matter how dumb, stupid, or creatively bankrupt those money makers become.
People on /r/boxoffice are saying that if <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbenheimer> works (and so far it seems so), a) there will be business school case studies. b) Expect other informal studio cooperations like this.
Ahh yes. The studio have been hit trough no fault of their own.
I think the studios have produced total shit for a long time. Destroyed franchizes with incompetent writing and it is catching up.
Latest Indidana Jones is case in point. Everything about that movie except Harrison Ford is bad. And the latest reincarnation of Olive Oyl of Popeye fame is so unfitted for the role of action heroine it is not even funny.
A quick search suggests each had a $100M budget, so it's worth noting they're not exactly cheap. They'll still need pretty big opening weekends to turn a healthy profit.