4 ms·

I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. They were flush with cash during the early

I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. They were flush with cash during the early 2000s thanks to TV and DVD. It was like a golden age with lots of studios producing unusual material. The problem is the internet has damaged their tiered selling technique, yet their projects are still as expensive and risky.

thewopr 10y ago
But what's interesting is that TV is having such a different trajectory (TV as in video packaged as episodes, the lines have blurred). Netflix and the like. I often wonder if TV is winning because it has built-in sequels. If a series doesn't stick, whatever, money lost. If a new series does well, you can milk it for many many more seasons. TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for TV.
- tw04 10y ago
  That's because instead of trying to fill 3 movies, TV can just flow naturally until it's done. Yes, for some shows they end up with filler either because they want to drag it out, or they don't have quite enough to fill an entire last season... but for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box.
  - sirclueless 10y ago
    for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box. Don't they? I feel like TV is a lot more constrained than movies. The forced "last time on XYZ" cadence means that it's very difficult to have natural story-lines when things need to be wrapped up in a suitable emotional resolution and/or cliffhanger every 22 or 45 minutes. Especially when the writers are working with 25% of the screen time being commercials (thankfully much less of a problem with Digital-first TV from Netflix, HBO etc.). I think it's a lot easier to write and produce a quality movie about just about anything. Yes the mass-produced sequel machines look pretty cookie cutter, but you also get some extremely well-told stories like In Bruges or Wes Anderson's stuff. There's anything-goes stuff like Swiss Army Man. I feel like this kind of thing couldn't realistically be produced for TV. The acting, writing, and production value falls off a cliff very quickly as soon as you leave the mainstream. Even a single season of a TV show means 6-10x as much content as a movie, and consistently conforming to the structure of a serial TV show means the content feels inevitably more repetitious.
  - manarth 10y ago
    > TV can just flow naturally until it's done If only it stopped when it really was done: Firefly, The 4400, Terra Nova, SGU…
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Firefly+Serenity could be a pretty great ~20 episode series. If it followed TV success, it would have 50-100 forgettable episodes to go with 20 good ones. I think this applies to an awful lot of stuff on TV. The economics of it mean that buying season 5 is a better choice than taking a risk on something new. I think better stories would get told if series were generally shorter.
- bing_dai 10y ago
  I disagree with the opinion that "TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for TV". Popular movies are almost always made into sequels/reboots/remakes. Out of the top 20 movies of domestic grosses[0], only 4 are not sequels or reboots(Zootopia, Secrete Life of Pets, Central Intelligence, The Angry Birds Movie). [0] http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2016 http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2016
  - thewopr 10y ago
    Yeah, that's actually kinda my point. A sequel is kinda the same as additional seasons (or episodes) of a TV show. With a TV show, additional seasons are basically assumed unless it doesn't do well with the target market. But movies are sometimes prepared for sequels, and sometimes not. But apparently, sequels (or additional seasons of a show) are the best way to make money. So movie studios have an inherent handicap in that they tend to create episodes (movies) that have to stand alone, whereas TV, if good, will just gain viewership as they create more seasons. I'm curious too with your number. How often does it take a series until the second or third season to gain notoriety and a large following. I feel like "Breaking Bad" took into the second season to really get a following. There must be other examples.
- GBond 10y ago
  Agile (Netflix OS) vs Waterfall (Hollywood blockbuster), perhaps?
objclxt 10y ago
> I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. If that were true, other movies studios would be in trouble: but look at Disney, who are doing gangbusters with Marvel and Lucasfilm. Warners are in this situation because they got complacent: they had one major cash cow (Harry Potter), and they failed to find other franchises that could offer equal returns - unlike Disney.
- Throwaway23412 10y ago
  That's the weird thing. Is Disney Studios printing money because they're so incredibly excellent at making movies or because their competitors are doing so poorly at competing?
  - je42 10y ago
    Disney looks like that have a process to deliver great movies. They are not hoping have one. There are engineering one. Repeatable.
    - bitJericho 10y ago
      At the same time their movie are starting to wear on me, being that the arc is always so similar. If star wars 8 fails to be a novel movie, I think things will not go well for ep 9. Same goes for althe marvel movies.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        The Marvel movies are already formulaic. The reasonable success of Ant Man and The Guardians of the Galaxy sort of points to them having a good formula.
  - cycomachead 10y ago
    I'd say somewhere in the middle. Disney has gone through some _really_ rough periods both in the '90s and '00s but now they seem to be on a pretty good upswing. Interestingly, it seems like a significant part of that upswing is through acquisitions (aforementioned Marvel and DC, also Pixar), though they still have an amazing breadth of talent and style.
InclinedPlane 10y ago
It's still a golden age for movies, it's going to take a long time for them to fall, no matter their mistakes. The growth of the developed world and the advent of the digital age has meant that global blockbusters make more than ever, with their non-US revenue eclipsing US revenue. So far this has generally favored easily digestible action movies, which is why they've been dominating the film industry for the last decade or so. That's not going to go away anytime soon. And as long as the RoI for such films looks like "spend $250 million, make $500 million, a billion, or more" then they're going to keep pressing that button as often as possible, because making a profit of $250 to $700 million dollars on a 1-2 year project is still "a big deal".
justinlardinois 10y ago
> I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. What makes you think something happened to the music industry? It's still alive and well.
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  Taken as a whole, sure, but the recording industry is a shadow of its 90s self. The analogy here may be that the studio system is floundering while upstarts with fresh business models flourish.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  > What makes you think something happened to the music industry? It's still alive and well. Honestly I am more excited by music now than I've ever been. People often cite the 90s and early 2000s as these halcyon days, but I feel like interesting music is way more accessible now than it has ever been. I can queue up tunes from virtually any independent label at the press of a button, I can order vinyl and have it on my front stoop within 24 hours... and that's just from the consumer side. From the artist side, genres are colliding left and right at a neck breaking pace, musicians are spanning scenes that wouldn't have held shows in the same city 10 years ago, and we are seeing crazy creative musical output. If you aren't having a god damn certified blast in music right now, well, I dunno what to tell you.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    I think that's the point though. The music industry is thriving, because a lot of the dinosaurs passed away, and the newer businesses took it into a new direction. It was a bad business to be in for a while. Now is the start of the bad time to be in major movies. Independent and niche movies are getting more time than ever, because bigger studios can't figure out how to cope with companies like Netflix.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

thewopr 10y ago

But what's interesting is that TV is having such a different trajectory (TV as in video packaged as episodes, the lines have blurred). Netflix and the like. I often wonder if TV is winning because it has built-in sequels. If a series doesn't stick, whatever, money lost. If a new series does well, you can milk it for many many more seasons. TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for TV.

tw04 10y ago
That's because instead of trying to fill 3 movies, TV can just flow naturally until it's done. Yes, for some shows they end up with filler either because they want to drag it out, or they don't have quite enough to fill an entire last season... but for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box.
- sirclueless 10y ago
  for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box. Don't they? I feel like TV is a lot more constrained than movies. The forced "last time on XYZ" cadence means that it's very difficult to have natural story-lines when things need to be wrapped up in a suitable emotional resolution and/or cliffhanger every 22 or 45 minutes. Especially when the writers are working with 25% of the screen time being commercials (thankfully much less of a problem with Digital-first TV from Netflix, HBO etc.). I think it's a lot easier to write and produce a quality movie about just about anything. Yes the mass-produced sequel machines look pretty cookie cutter, but you also get some extremely well-told stories like In Bruges or Wes Anderson's stuff. There's anything-goes stuff like Swiss Army Man. I feel like this kind of thing couldn't realistically be produced for TV. The acting, writing, and production value falls off a cliff very quickly as soon as you leave the mainstream. Even a single season of a TV show means 6-10x as much content as a movie, and consistently conforming to the structure of a serial TV show means the content feels inevitably more repetitious.
- manarth 10y ago
  > TV can just flow naturally until it's done If only it stopped when it really was done: Firefly, The 4400, Terra Nova, SGU…
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Firefly+Serenity could be a pretty great ~20 episode series. If it followed TV success, it would have 50-100 forgettable episodes to go with 20 good ones. I think this applies to an awful lot of stuff on TV. The economics of it mean that buying season 5 is a better choice than taking a risk on something new. I think better stories would get told if series were generally shorter.
bing_dai 10y ago
I disagree with the opinion that "TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for TV". Popular movies are almost always made into sequels/reboots/remakes. Out of the top 20 movies of domestic grosses[0], only 4 are not sequels or reboots(Zootopia, Secrete Life of Pets, Central Intelligence, The Angry Birds Movie). [0] http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2016 http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2016
- thewopr 10y ago
  Yeah, that's actually kinda my point. A sequel is kinda the same as additional seasons (or episodes) of a TV show. With a TV show, additional seasons are basically assumed unless it doesn't do well with the target market. But movies are sometimes prepared for sequels, and sometimes not. But apparently, sequels (or additional seasons of a show) are the best way to make money. So movie studios have an inherent handicap in that they tend to create episodes (movies) that have to stand alone, whereas TV, if good, will just gain viewership as they create more seasons. I'm curious too with your number. How often does it take a series until the second or third season to gain notoriety and a large following. I feel like "Breaking Bad" took into the second season to really get a following. There must be other examples.
GBond 10y ago
Agile (Netflix OS) vs Waterfall (Hollywood blockbuster), perhaps?

objclxt 10y ago

> I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. If that were true, other movies studios would be in trouble: but look at Disney, who are doing gangbusters with Marvel and Lucasfilm. Warners are in this situation because they got complacent: they had one major cash cow (Harry Potter), and they failed to find other franchises that could offer equal returns - unlike Disney.

Throwaway23412 10y ago
That's the weird thing. Is Disney Studios printing money because they're so incredibly excellent at making movies or because their competitors are doing so poorly at competing?
- je42 10y ago
  Disney looks like that have a process to deliver great movies. They are not hoping have one. There are engineering one. Repeatable.
  - bitJericho 10y ago
    At the same time their movie are starting to wear on me, being that the arc is always so similar. If star wars 8 fails to be a novel movie, I think things will not go well for ep 9. Same goes for althe marvel movies.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      The Marvel movies are already formulaic. The reasonable success of Ant Man and The Guardians of the Galaxy sort of points to them having a good formula.
- cycomachead 10y ago
  I'd say somewhere in the middle. Disney has gone through some _really_ rough periods both in the '90s and '00s but now they seem to be on a pretty good upswing. Interestingly, it seems like a significant part of that upswing is through acquisitions (aforementioned Marvel and DC, also Pixar), though they still have an amazing breadth of talent and style.

InclinedPlane 10y ago

It's still a golden age for movies, it's going to take a long time for them to fall, no matter their mistakes. The growth of the developed world and the advent of the digital age has meant that global blockbusters make more than ever, with their non-US revenue eclipsing US revenue. So far this has generally favored easily digestible action movies, which is why they've been dominating the film industry for the last decade or so. That's not going to go away anytime soon. And as long as the RoI for such films looks like "spend $250 million, make $500 million, a billion, or more" then they're going to keep pressing that button as often as possible, because making a profit of $250 to $700 million dollars on a 1-2 year project is still "a big deal".

justinlardinois 10y ago

> I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. What makes you think something happened to the music industry? It's still alive and well.

acjohnson55 10y ago
Taken as a whole, sure, but the recording industry is a shadow of its 90s self. The analogy here may be that the studio system is floundering while upstarts with fresh business models flourish.
santaclaus 10y ago
> What makes you think something happened to the music industry? It's still alive and well. Honestly I am more excited by music now than I've ever been. People often cite the 90s and early 2000s as these halcyon days, but I feel like interesting music is way more accessible now than it has ever been. I can queue up tunes from virtually any independent label at the press of a button, I can order vinyl and have it on my front stoop within 24 hours... and that's just from the consumer side. From the artist side, genres are colliding left and right at a neck breaking pace, musicians are spanning scenes that wouldn't have held shows in the same city 10 years ago, and we are seeing crazy creative musical output. If you aren't having a god damn certified blast in music right now, well, I dunno what to tell you.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I think that's the point though. The music industry is thriving, because a lot of the dinosaurs passed away, and the newer businesses took it into a new direction. It was a bad business to be in for a while. Now is the start of the bad time to be in major movies. Independent and niche movies are getting more time than ever, because bigger studios can't figure out how to cope with companies like Netflix.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]