How would you "fix" movies?
 

With all of the doom and gloom about the box office of Furiosa and The Fall Guy (both of which I saw in theaters and loved), how would you "fix" it?

I've talked about this in other threads but I thought it would be fun to have a catch-all.

Here's my plan:

• Shrink the entire industry. It's too big and too expensive - not everyone has to have the chance to make a movie.
• Contract everything, starting with budgets
• Put out mid-tier movies again in theaters
• Close excess theaters - fewer screens with more attention paid to make each screen a good experience. I only go to the Drafthouse now because they enforce their no talking/no phone policy. Every place could do that too.
• Make movies affordable - offer half-price or better tickets Sun-Wed.

Start there and see how it goes.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

More movie-specific popcorn buckets!


You’re welcome Hollywood.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Eliminate or reduce incentives to spend huge amounts on filmmaking and especially scrapping completed films. Taxpayers shouldn't subsidize studio failures

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Definitely cut overall budgets. There's a reason the big studios are hemorrhaging money, but Blumhouse is making bank. Rather than trying to make 200m movies that make 1b, they should be trying to make 20m movies that make 100m.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Draven, I am not trying to be an ass just posting counter questions. Sorry if it comes off that way.

I have never been to the Drafthouse how do they enforce the policy?

Bloated star salaries are one that could be done away with...like a salary cap with sports. But even then mega stars get the big $$. :shrug:

Good topic!!

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

I've only seen it enforced once- an usher told some people to be quiet and they were. There are multiple messages before the show that if you talk or text, you get one warning and then you are escorted from the theater without a refund. If someone makes any noise, you are supposed to hold up a card to report it but again, I've never had to do that. It's heaven.

EDIT (I had a meeting :) )

Yes. If the industry can't support it, then not everyone can work there. I have the same feeling about restaurants. Whenever one goes out of business, everyone likes to blame everything like that restaurant has some kind of right to exist. It doesn't, and if it's not successful, oh well.


That's on the studios to manage. I'd stop giving them tax breaks if they fuck it up.

Not if that's the only way to see them (we could have a lot fewer streaming networks too).


Answered with the Alamo point above but this is doable. You just have to set the expectations and ENFORCE THEM. Make your theater a destination and people will come.


Considering studios make most of their money opening weekend, this is more about getting butts in seats. Make movie-going something affordable again and more people will do it. Right now, studios seem to be throwing up their hands if they don't make their budget back opening weekend.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

At least around me the bigger chains have had half price tuesdays and in Summer, Sundays. I'm not sure extending that to most of the week will help that much (honestly if you lose FOMO I think you lose a lot of the movie going audience) but there are probably a ton of empty theaters on those days so who knows?

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Studios, and the portion of the Public who follow "Box Office" the way Sports Fans follow stats.. need to change their mentality that if a film doesn't make 10x its cost back during opening weekend it's a "Flop". They also need to stop thinking that if a film doesn't break 1billion it "under-performed".

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

I agree that budgets are out of control. If a movie has a $150M or more budget, the chances of it being successful financially are slim to none these days. Even major IPs are struggling just to break even. But then again, costs are a lot higher for everything.

But, there was absolutely no reason Universal had to spend $350M plus for Fast X. They already set that up for failure.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Why do you say that? A F&F movie hasn't had WW box office below 600m since the 4th film.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Get a fucking editor. Every movie doesn't have to be 2.5+ hour epic.

Quit showing 30 goddamn minutes of trailers and commercials before said 2.5+ hour movie.

Seriously, consider the time frame it takes to see a normal movie nowadays. Travel to your local theater. Possibly stand in line to redeem your ticket and/or buy expensive snacks. Use the bathroom. Watch the movie and commercials. Drive home. 4 hours wasted on likely a middle of the road or worse film. Nobody wants to put in the time for that when you can sit at home and stream almost virtually any movie you want to see in seconds.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

I'd say the opposite, it's easier than ever to get into a movie on time, mainly because of assigned seats (and if theaters are still out there without assigned seats, ugh).

I agree that people don't really appreciate what (a well run) theater offers, and many are happy to just watch stuff on their phone.

I will also say anecdotally, as someone raising small kids, watching a movie is no longer an event if we're at home (unless I force it to be), and I kind of miss that.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

This is a weird one - there has to be some kind of reason this keeps happening. I'm a video editor for my job but I've never cut a movie - that said, I can easily see where trims can be made in most 2+ hour films. It's so weird that this continues to happen.

Another reason I love the Alamo Drafthouse. One commercial of their upcoming movie parties, less than 15 minutes of trailers and we're off.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Because Fast X was a huge money loser despite grossing over $700m. With a $350M plus budget, it needed to gross over $1B to profit.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Read my post again. I said nothing about getting to a movie on time.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

I get that. What I meant is that before you'd have to get there early to guarantee a better seat. Now you no longer have to. And you can time it so that you miss most of the trailers. If you bought your tickets as a group you can text a ticket to that one guy who doesn't show up on time. You can often preorder food or even get it delivered to your seat. I mean yes it is less convenient than watching it at home but it is probably more convenient than ever to watch a movie in a theater.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Funny but I never even considered that in my timeline. I hate movie audiences so much that I have basically shunned any showing that would have a lot of people there if I could help it.

I see movies at least a week or more after they are released and usually on a weekday afternoon. Typically, I either have a private showing or at most a half dozen or less people there. :D

I just think movies need to be shorter, period. Almost every movie nowadays is exhaustingly over the 2-hour mark and then add in all the other time wasters as a bonus. I know some epics call for being a longer length but there is zero reason why a Transformers movie should be 150 minutes long. Fuck that. I yearn for the days of 90 minutes or less movies. The studios seem to think that they are maybe giving you more bang for your buck if they make it longer but nine times out of ten, it just makes the film bloated, boring and tedious. And the audience is less apt to want to return quickly to that experience, especially for lesser "event" movies.

And even better new for the studios...if they make a tighter, more interesting movie and it should cost them less on the overall budget. Less shooting time. Less effects needed. More showings available in the theater. Happy returning audiences. And on and on.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

Agreed there, but that's mostly because that's a LONG time for me to hold in the gigantic soda I just gulped down (which helps me cut down on concessions, though).

Titanic is the first movie I can remember where I felt "why is it so long" (2 VHS tapes!) and that did gangbusters, I wonder if that had an effect.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

I was going to post about a similar topic in the Movie Theaters thread but Im glad this topic was was started and I have a few ideas and Im sure I'll post more later.

- Extend the streaming window and bring back exclusivity to theaters. Movies should not be be going to streaming after 30-45 days. 90 days at minimum.

- For Screenwriters and executives movies do not have to be all things to all people in fact they are better when they are not. If you think the gender and race quota to your characters is the most important thing in writing a movie over the creativity of a good story than don't do it. Go find another career.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

The irony is that people used to lament the days when studios used to make the directors cut their films. Film buffs like me cried "Foul!" and admonished the studios for doing this.

Now when you see the director's/writer's/producer's cuts of a lot of these movies released in the last several decades, the studios made the correct decision, and the movie was better for it. I can't even begin to state how many comments I have seen here or on other movie forums over the years where people say, "Yeah, it was interesting to see the longer version, but I am sticking with the theatrical cut for my future viewings."

Now the filmmakers all seem to have final cut and their egos all get in the way. They do not want to cut anything, and we end up with these overlong messes of movies.

And do not get me wrong. I know there are a lot of movies that suffered due to the studios requesting cuts and there are a lot of movies that are improved without the studios' meddling. But there seem to be more complaints of "unnecessary", "bloated", "plodding", "dull", and even "ridiculous" on most of the extended special uncut versions that we get today. The studios heard us bitching about it years ago, but then went too far the other way. It needs to get back to a nice middle ground which I sincerely doubt will ever happen at this point.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

All that would do is make the movies worth less to streaming services in trade for terrible theater numbers. I don't see the issue with theaters being people knowing they can wait and see something on streaming. I think it's a more fundamental issue that people in general just don't want to go to theaters anymore. Between the cost, lack of attention span of younger people, and time investment. It's not something the younger generation cares about like we did when we were that age. They have far more options to take up their free time. Much of which is now cheaper to do than see a movie.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

there has been a dearth of these superhero movies. maybe we need more of those. ;)

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

The corporate motto is to privatize financial success and socialize the losses and risk. All of the classic films we love were high-wire acts of financial risk and creativity, think Jaws, Star Wars, The Godfather and even Titanic. I think the corporate influence has driven the creativity out of the process and turned it into financial analytics and public test screening data in an attempt to formulate a hit which will play in any culture and language around the world.

They should have left the minimum six month gap between the theatre and home video - especially when DVD, cheap big screen HDTVs came along which narrowed the difference between home video and the theatrical experience. But "shorter gap = faster profits" was all too compelling to pass-up for the sake of growth.

Maybe the whole industry just can't come back to what it once was? Even if we know what went wrong and why, it doesn't mean it can be easily fixed. Time, technology and audience expectations have all moved on.

Re: How would you "fix" movies?
 

My son is a big movie fan (he's 20) and we go through a lot of classics (just watched Vacation and Who Framed Roger Rabbit the other day - his first viewing of both) and he's my theater buddy too. My daughter, however (who is 18), hates sitting through movies. She just thinks they are too passive - she loves going to traditional theater, fthough so it's not that she can't be off her phone or something. She likes the applause and interaction with the performers.

Superhero movies are the only movies I feel the need to see in theaters, mostly to participate in the cultural conversation about them. Everything else can usually wait, though I do go see random things with my Alamo movie pass.