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Like they've survived the past 20. Hollywood ticket sales have been declining sharply since 2002. [1] That's also the year that their inflation adjusted profits
by rjf72 7y ago
Like they've survived the past 20. Hollywood ticket sales have been declining sharply since 2002. [1] That's also the year that their inflation adjusted profits also peaked. Hollywood started making more and more awful movies while trying to argue that 'this is what people want.' Well, it clearly wasn't, isn't, and won't ever be. Nonetheless they'll continue down their current trajectory because they think they're right, as this article emphasizes.
Here's an extremely relevant article about Hollywood. [2] Hollywood has been one of the earliest adopters of active utilization and commercialization of "AI technologies". Scripts are actively analyzed using machine learning systems to try to predict profits. Guess what the AI says? Stuff that made money in the past will keep making money, and things that didn't won't. And what do we get out of Hollywood? Repetitive rubbish whose only novelty is tossing in some identity politics to, in this article's phrasing, offer a "more representative portrayal of the world in which we live."
More to the point, think about some of the all time greatest movies (as well as money makers). Here's [3] a list of the top 10 by gross. Tellingly, only 3 of the top 10 were made after 2000. But now consider the other films - Gone with the Wind, Titanic, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, ET, The Ten Commandments, etc. These films were all, if not extremely unique, certainly not derivative rubbish. Now look at the 21st century films and you'll see a whole bunch of generic superhero movies and sequels. Even if not the product of AI, it's certainly the product of a mindset that's no different than a profit oriented regression analysis of the past - the less glorified truism of what "AI analysis" is.
Maybe the biggest problem with Hollywood is summed by one sentence in the AI article I referenced: “[AI analysis] takes a lot of the risk out of what I do.” No, it just makes you comfortable releasing crap that you'd otherwise recognize as crap. Interestingly the producer that gave that quote ended up releasing two mega-flops after the article and has not released anything since. It's not like we've even scratched the surface of possible ideas, but Hollywood has become uncreative, lazy, and averse to any and all risk - to the point that they'd rather drown than try something else, so long as it happens slowly.
[1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/solving-equation-of-a-hit-film-script-with-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/solving-eq...
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films#Highest-grossing_films_adjusted_for_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films...
- ghaff 7y agoAnother significant factor is that international receipts have become increasingly important. And this biases towards films with a lot of explosions and away from quiet films with a lot of complex dialog.
- narag 7y agoAlso what about more modest movies? If I'm not mistaken, Mad Max, Predator or Terminator were made with budgets that were ridiculous compared to their sequels.
- mrob 7y agoGeneric superhero movies make more profit. The IMO hugely underrated Batman v Superman tried to do something different, but critics hated it (Armond White being a notable exception[0]), and despite making a profit it was considered a financial disappointment. But formulaic Marvel movies continue to sell well. Audiences don't care about art. [0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/batman-v-superman-culture-war-gets-mythic/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/batman-v-superman-cul...
- rjf72 7y agoThis is based on perception, but it is not supported by the numbers which is why I made sure to source my comments. Profits are riding on inflation alone. Only one superhero movie made it into the top 10! Even on ticket numbers for the big movies, everything is in decline. For instance Avengers Endgame is, by far, the biggest movie in recent decades. Yet it sold 3 million tickets fewer than e.g. Titanic. This is made even more remarkable by population growth. The population since 1998 (when Titanic was released) has increased by nearly 28%. Even the US population has increased by more than 19% since then. Titanic sold 94,524,324 tickets. A population normalized comparable success would move more than 112 million tickets, and that's using just a 19% growth factor. Avengers: Endgame, the mega-hit of the 21st century, sold 91,353,296 tickets. The industry is dying and blaming absolutely everything except their own decisions which, in turn, is likely contributing to their own demise as they refuse to accept responsibility for their own declining results. One of the countless parallels shared between Hollywood and the big budget game industry.
- 7y ago