IBJoel

This is it exactly. Writers are now fighting tooth and nail with tech and finance bros about how to make content and what kind

PhantomStranger

Problems have been building for years but foreign revenue papered over Hollywood's deep-rooted creative issues until that money started drying up. People with MBAs make far too many decisions in the creative process. I'd argue the talent drain has had an effect and it's tougher than ever for talented people without connections breaking into the industry. Hollywood has become increasingly incestuous in its business practices, outsiders are squeezed out when they threaten the status quo.

The rot is deep and how society consumes films is changing. I would probably look outside the United States for an answer. L.A. is an insular place. If I was trying to save one of the Hollywood studios, I'd likely move it out of California.

ntnon

Many of your points are well-intentioned and not unreasonable, but basically only work if three things happen: draconian and ethical government oversight; people being honest and not taking advantage of others and - crucially! - not being greedy, and everybody agreeing to be bound by the same rules as everybody else - and living up to that.

Never in a million years.

ntnon

There are literally thousands of names in the credits of major movies. If we assume that everybody there gets paid basically-nothing and there are no other costs, budgets will still be immense.

And there are definitelt other costs, and many get paid a lot. And on that latter point, while it seems obvious that some people are radically over-paid (just as others may be noticably UNDER-paid), there is an element of supply and demand. If I want Chris Pratt in my movie, and someone else offers him $500 to be in theirs, I offer more. And someone else offers more. And before you know it, he can reasonably demand - and get - millions. Yes, I can then hire a cheaper actor. But then I lose half my funding and half my audience. If anyone even wants to show my no-budget, no-star movie...

ntnon

It must be tough to essentially film a six hour film and then have to cut and shape it into a more reasonable length. Logically, you don't film anything THINKING 'this can easily be cut,' so you necessarily want most of what you film to wind up on screen.

Also, as prices rise and expectations are higher, people do feel 'ripped off' if they don't get their money's worth. I think films have, on average, gone from 90m to 120m for that reason alone - to give audiences a feeling of 'worth'.

Hazel Motes

Theater chains owning their own land ala McDonalds would be a godsend for the film industry. But unless Elon Musk wakes up one day and decides he’s a major cinephile, something like that will never happen. But as someone who worked at an 19 screen multiplex for a long time, I know that rent is gonna kill the movie theater just as quick as the streaming giants will. If someone bought the biggest theater chain in America (whatever that is, I’m Canadian I don’t know) and bought the land the theaters are sitting on, it’d be like 3000 collective feet being taken off the neck of the film industry.

orangerunner

The rising cost of land is a huge factor right across every industry. The late 1990s we saw the trend of stadium-seat megaplexes opening on rural land outside the major cities and downtown theatres closing as a result. At the same time we saw younger moviegoers (the prime customers) have less and less access to cars coupled with the rising cost of gasoline.

DJariya

The last thing you want to do is have streamers become the dominant force in making movies. They care much more about quantity over quality.

Same goes with DTV distributors like Grindstone or Vertical. They will just make more trash under $10M cheapies with shitty scripts starring washed up actors or no-names. Mel Gibson and Aaron Eckhart have been making a lot of those these days.

Those who simply don't care and just look at movies as "content" to kill time, then more of the above will be coming.

Alan Smithee

#1 thing right now is FIX the digital cinema standard so that 2.35 scope is handled properly! That means either put an anamorphic lens over the projectors to stretch the native 1.85 frame similar to how 35mm worked (though many theaters would likely screw that up) or put out a new standard where the frame is natively 2.35 and 1.85 content is presented with side bars, opposite of the way it’s handled now. Scope should be the BIGGEST format but the current digital standard letterboxes it just like video. Theaters with proper 2.35 screens have to zoom it, resulting in lower resolution. The industry never should have gone along with that.

The Questyen

Yep. This is a huge problem in the videogame industry also.

orangerunner

I'm not sure how every individual movie theatre screen works but I think most modern stadium screen theatres use a 1:1 ratio screen, for simplicity let's say 20 feet X 20 feet. By the nature of its shape, a 2.35:1 ratio won't give the audience the biggest picture. The maximum width is 20 feet wide X 8.5 feet in height.

With a 1.85:1 ratio, this will give the audience a bigger overall image of 20 feet wide by 10.8 feet in height.

The 2.35:1 ratio just gives the audience the sense of a wider "vista" composition but doesn't deliver an overall bigger picture.

In fact a 4:3 ratio (think early IMAX) would potentially deliver the biggest picture at 20 feet in width X 15 feet in height.

If a theatre chooses to mask both sides of the 20 foot screen with the curtains by, say 3 feet, for 1.85:1 presentation and then moves the curtains right to the edge exposing the whole 20 feet of screen width for a 2.35:1 presentation, then yes, the audience feels they are seeing a larger, wider image.

fujishig

There are a lot of parallels:
Overinflated budgets and timelines killing profit margins and studios
Consumers going mainly for the bigger known franchises hence sequelitis
Consumers waiting for things to be cheaper/not falling for FOMO (moving to digital allowing everything to be available on demand at any time)
Competition from more convenient platforms (streaming/mobile)
Somewhat underpriced subscription services offering more bang for the buck making the value of a day one purchase seem lesser
General consolidation of studios as smaller ones can't survive
Needless padding of runtime/playtime to give more bang for the buck
Higher up interference to guide the product to something they feel is more palatable to the audience (though this has been the case forever)

Obviously there are lots of things that are different: real estate, the theater/studio relationship and how each makes a profit, etc.

Runaway

It still isn't impossible to make big movies on lower budgets. Not that the Sony makes good movies with Morbius, Madame Webb or even Venom, but they have a buffer of 150M to get better scripts, before they reach the budgets of proper Marvel. The Creator is a good movie, looks great and didn't cost 200M.

Nesbit

On the subject

Bluelitespecial

I was just going to post the same video. It covers a lot of the same ground already being discussed here but with the usual humor of a RLM video.

Nesbit

Any excuse to spread the RLM gospel.

PhantomStranger

I'd also forbid using CGI. It's a cheap, lazy crutch which has noticeably affected creative filmmaking. I think people would be surprised to learn how much green screen and CGI are used even for so-called dramas these days. If the action can't be filmed within the camera - cut the scene from the screenplay. CGI is a cancer on good cinema.

Bluelitespecial

One takeaway from the RLM video was they said Mission Impossible 8 is nearing a budget of $400 million. 😲 How on earth does Paramount expect to make money? They won't even break even.

kefrank

I'm very confused by this - I don't think I've ever been to a movie theater where the physical screen has a 1:1 aspect ratio, stadium seating or otherwise. Even the legacy true IMAX theaters have a 1.43:1 screen, which is the most "square" screen I've seen and I've been to a ton of movie theaters. As far as I've been able to observe, the vast majority of movie theaters have a roughly 2.35:1 physical aspect ratio with curtains that are moved in from the edge to reduce the aspect ratio as needed, with a "fixed image height" approach, unless they've been purpose built in recent years for some other purpose. Out of curiosity, where have you seen a 1:1 physical screen in a movie theater?

orangerunner

After some further research, I take back my false assumption that stadium-seat movie screens commonly use 1:1 screens but I think this ratio would provide the most versatility when having to accommodate the various aspect ratios. If the width is always stagnant at 20 feet, then the top and bottom can always be masked-off accordingly. If theatres choose a wider 2.35:1 screen, then any 1.85:1 or 1.37:1 presentation gets compromised with a smaller image.

Of course every auditorium's height and width limitations may not accommodate a 1:1 screen either. Ultimately there's no one perfect-sized screen for every composition.

Giantrobo

Over the weekend I heard a discussion on a podcast about how everyone whines about reducing movie budgets and how studios should make smaller films to fix things; but recently, quite a few "smaller films" that had good reviews bombed bad. People simply didn't support them. It reminds me of the discussion in the Black Community where people say "we should demand Hollywood make more Black lead films". The problem is when it happens, Blacks don't support them. They bomb and Hollywood shrugs its shoulders and points at the failures when the discussion comes up again.

So one wonders if reducing budgets will really help. I mean big or small do those budgets really hurt anyone NOT directly involved with the making of the films? I've noticed for many years that people, right or wrong, tend to equate "Bad films" with big budgets. So is the "reduce budgets" thing just a part of that mindset?

DJariya

For the average and casual film goer, No. They don’t care about budgets or box office revenue. They just want a good movie that is worth the money and time invested.

Hollywood people and nerds are so obsessed with box office and opening weekend that it’s become a big part of the discussion. And I think it sort of detracts from actually talking about a really good movie or a filmmaker. It’s just “Will this make money?” Or “How will this do opening weekend?”

And if it didn’t make money, then some people assume, “Oh, no one saw it, so it must suck”. Smaller films or Mid-budget films that don't have the big marketing budgets then get screwed because low box office means= "No one cares" which sucks.

fujishig

I mean it's probably easier to recoup a smaller budget film with streaming and whatnot than it is a huge budget film that is apparently easier to write down?

kefrank

I'm still struggling to follow you, but I'll just say there are good reasons that no movie theaters have a 1:1 screen.

Runaway

I think big budget movies aren't the problem, but a lot of those movies have higher budgets then they should have. Black Widow's budget was nearly threetimes higher then Venom and it's basically a movie about a spy. Of course the latest Mission: Impossible movies had ballooning budgets as well.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the money is just wasted becaucse they do have the money and it's not spent intellegently. The movie has three credited writers, neither was expierenced all of them got paid and the finished script is as average as it can be and if the studio wasted money like that in every department of the movie, it's is no suprise a movie that should cost between 100 and 150M costs 289M.
For 100M it's still a big budget movie. Due to covid it only made 380M at the box office but even without covid it never was a billion dollar movie. Just spent your budget intelligently and it's easier to make your money back.