This will sound incredibly naive, but ... just make movies with a smaller budget. The thing is FX tools are getting cheaper, distribution is cheaper, the produ

This will sound incredibly naive, but ... just make movies with a smaller budget. The thing is FX tools are getting cheaper, distribution is cheaper, the production tools are cheaper. That leaves ... labor. What may really be dead is the megastar, unless that megastar brings the bacon (for example, Tom Cruise is basically a producer for the films he stars in, but then again he has the money of dozens of former "hits" in the old model). But then again, we are in the golden age of television. Movies might be suffering, perhaps because television is so much better. Television has the budget and FX is cheap enough that the OMG effects are no longer the monopoly of the film business. And the article fails to address the shocking lack of good new IP and movies that are coming out of the film industry before the sea change of the subscription services. I personally point to the Matrix as the last time a good movie that wasn't just a sequel or a template or a remake was made. Yeah, uh, that was 1999. Funny writing that date, because it almost sounds like a date from the 1800s. There used to be multiple tentpole event movies every year before then, iconic movies. What changed? Is there LESS money available now with mass release? Is it the lack of DVD revenue? China revenue means less creativity to offend The Central Party? And what is a producer ultimately? The go between the financing and the "real" creatives. Is the guy really just complaining that his role in the modern pipeline is reduced, the financing more distributed and available from more sources, so they are less valuable? D&D from Game of Thrones were getting crazy amounts of credit for the series, but the pipeline of content ran out and suddenly they didn't look like geniuses anymore.