The Entertainment Industry's Dilema

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JRT

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I figured we should have a thread about this, since I think a lot of things have been affected and I'm curious to know what people's opinions are and what they predict.

I'm a little curious as to the next steps for the Entertainment Industry, specifically the media aspects (as I'm posting in this section). There's been arguments here in the past about the entertainment industry company making wrong decisions based on plot and if they'd suffer for it, but any of those opinions are a far cry from the actual situation of COVID-19 shutting things down completely.

I guess I am first wondering about the future of movies. Regal has closed down, and AMC has stated they may be forced into bankruptcy because they will run out of cash by the end of the year/early next year. There's a chicken-egg scenario going on where the studios don't want to release stuff until they can guarantee seats for ROI purposes, but the movie theaters can't fill seats with reruns. Just recently announced, Pixar's SOUL is coming to Disney+ (regular, not premium) and Coming 2 America is now being transferred to Amazon. If the economic shock happens to the theaters, how will Hollywood adapt? I assume they will embrace streaming, but it could end up affecting the product.

This is also affecting streaming -- several series that were greenlighted or expecting another season have been cut short. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/making-sense-of-tvs-wave-of-un-renewals) New seasons of shows have been delayed, etc. While we have a lot of choices remaining, I do wonder what will happen to some of these series. Layoffs have affected Hollywood this year, folks like Disney and Warner have cut back.

It does affect our hobbyists as well -- the shocks affects the comic industry (which in terms of the "superheroes" isn't very healthy) by cutting back product. No conventions for anybody this year--a few virtual events came from SDCC and NYCC. Small events like GaryCon and large events like Origins and GenCon all cancelled. Not to mention all the live events that have suffered--sports, concerts, etc.

The one area I think that isn't affected is Video Games really.

So, what do people think will be the next effects from this. Will the studios consider buying on investing to save a theater chain? Will we have more reality shows as expensive scripted TV becomes costly? Will the streaming revolution really turn into first exhibit of major releases due to this pandemic?

And how has it affected you personally. For me, the big disappointment is not getting to a movie or concert this year, as well as missing my local comic convention (Terrificon). I look forward to some of the big blockbuster movies, as well as seeing a few live events per year.
 
If this breaks Hollywood (doubtful) I imagine we might see a resurgence of smaller studios from all over the world getting into the movie game like it was the 70's. Massive culture-defining blockbusters designed for mass appeal will give way to a wider variety of niche productions. It's for the best.

This has already happened to television. Back in the day there were a limited amount of shows on a handful of networks; anyone who watched television knew who Hawkeye Pierce was and could recite the theme song to Gilligan's Island. Nowadays television is a veritable Tower of Babel and I say that's good!
 
Kids killed theaters for me. So I won't really miss the movie theater. That and jackass's with cell phones.

My feeling is a content slowdown every so often isn't the worst. More good stuff has come out in the last 80 years than I could possibly watch. Time to see what I missed.
 
I tried to do my part. My daughter and i went to see The Empire Strikes Back at a Regal a couple weeks ago. I was kind of shocked. When we got there we were the only people in the lobby the whole time we stood there, for about ten minutes. We got the refreshments and went in. There were about twenty people that showed up. The theater was as clean as a whistle, better than ever really. Great experience. I’m sad that the studios keep pushing movies back farther and farther. There won’t be any theaters left to show these movies in if they keep it up. I was talking about this with a friend of mine. Yes, they want Black Widow to make lots of money, but part of the experience is anticipation for the release date. You keep pushing it back and nobody’s gonna care when it’s finally released on streaming. They are shooting themselves in the foot.
 
When I was a kid (actually into my 20s) there were several small local independent theaters that survived for decades showing second run and older films, did animation festivals, themed multi-feature showings etc.
As with many things, I don't think a few mega theaters in deep with the studios is healthy for the industry, so if Regal and AMC go belly up, maybe that is good. Streaming gets pointed at often, but it doesn't replace the big screen experience. Failure to get butts in seats comes back to the studios failing to reliably put out good movies, and at the same time jacking up prices to the point that going to the movies becomes a major family outing. Paying $60-100 to take the family out to see "meh" get old real quick.

We only have one movie theater, a neat older theater built as a single screen in 1948, but upgraded to 6 screens with all the required modern bells and whistles. Currently owned by Regal, so who knows what will happen to it. I would be thrilled to see independents running older movies come back, maybe Netflix and other could start to offer their movies to independents, some "streaming" made movies would be cool to see on a big screen.

Tech has come a long way as well, real home theaters were once the realm of the wealthy. Today $5000 could buy a home theater system that rivals many small movie theaters of the past. I'm sure some of the little movie theaters I've been to only had an 8-10 foot screen, you can pick up a 75" TV these days for less than $1000 (or about the same as taking the family to a movie once a month for a year).
 
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I haven't been to a theater in well over a year, and the last few times I've gone were only because of friends dragging me out.
Like Bunch says, audiences in theaters drove me away. I much prefer watching at home... and really, for the sort of things I like to watch, theaters weren't really an option anyway. Vegas has 100s of screens showing a handful of movies... seldom anything but the top grossing fare.
If Covid kills off the big noisy blockbusters for a while, gets us smaller and more intimate stories, I won't complain.

All the live music/theater people I know are really suffering though. Not just the performers, but all the tech people who do lighting and sound and whatnot.
 
If this breaks Hollywood (doubtful) I imagine we might see a resurgence of smaller studios from all over the world getting into the movie game like it was the 70's. Massive culture-defining blockbusters designed for mass appeal will give way to a wider variety of niche productions. It's for the best.

This has already happened to television. Back in the day there were a limited amount of shows on a handful of networks; anyone who watched television knew who Hawkeye Pierce was and could recite the theme song to Gilligan's Island. Nowadays television is a veritable Tower of Babel and I say that's good!

Also in the 60s the major studios obsession with prestige blockbusters drove them into near-bankruptcy so they rolled the dice on lower-budget films by young filmmakers like Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, Ritchie, Carpenter, Allen and Polankski, etc. (as well as older mavericks like Altman, Huston, Peckinpah, Aldrich and Penn) which led to one of the richest decades in American film.

I say bring it on.
 
From what I understand, mainly from new entertainment segements, it's been a boom times for animation studios who are still able to produce content for TV and streaming services regardless of social distancing. That said I've not actually seen anything concrete come out from this "boom" yet. But the world can always use more, quality, animated shows.
 
From what I understand, mainly from new entertainment segements, it's been a boom times for animation studios who are still able to produce content for TV and streaming services regardless of social distancing. That said I've not actually seen anything concrete come out from this "boom" yet. But the world can always use more, quality, animated shows.
I was led to believe animation projects can take quite a long time compared to live action and maybe it could be another year until we see the effects?
 
This is what the Studios want. They've been trying to keep ALL of the profits from the movies put out for decades. Streaming has been a Godsend for them. The current situation just exacerbated it, but the theatre experience would have been dead in a decade at best. There's a reason that Cinemas had been pairing up with Fast Food place and jacking up food prices, and that was to try and survive amidst this scummy move that the Studios have been pulling. And worse, the Cinemas HAVE to accept the terms because these very same studios have set the system up against the theatres.
 
This is what the Studios want. They've been trying to keep ALL of the profits from the movies put out for decades. Streaming has been a Godsend for them. The current situation just exacerbated it, but the theatre experience would have been dead in a decade at best. There's a reason that Cinemas had been pairing up with Fast Food place and jacking up food prices, and that was to try and survive amidst this scummy move that the Studios have been pulling. And worse, the Cinemas HAVE to accept the terms because these very same studios have set the system up against the theatres.

I could see this biting the major studios hard. Sure they have the "talent" which can draw people, but on the small screen with modern technology independents will be better able to compete. You can pick up 4K video cameras cheap, and even professional grade gear is affordable to normal people. The days where you needed 100s of thousands to millions of dollars in film and post production equipment to not look like a home movie is over. The one thing that really separated the big boys from independents was access to move screens, and they have all but killed that now.
 
The one thing that really separated the big boys from independents was access to move screens, and they have all but killed that now.
I agree with everything you said but wanted add that big studios don't have the massive marketing advantage they had 20 years ago, either. The manner in which affluent people (globally speaking) get their information is a lot more individualized than back in the day when one-size-fits-all marketing was the way to go.
 
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I could see this biting the major studios hard. Sure they have the "talent" which can draw people, but on the small screen with modern technology independents will be better able to compete. You can pick up 4K video cameras cheap, and even professional grade gear is affordable to normal people. The days where you needed 100s of thousands to millions of dollars in film and post production equipment to not look like a home movie is over. The one thing that really separated the big boys from independents was access to move screens, and they have all but killed that now.
I don't know about that, theatre attendance has been going down steadily as the prices keep going up. I hope you're right, but... I dunno.
 
I was led to believe animation projects can take quite a long time compared to live action and maybe it could be another year until we see the effects?
The figure I've seen is Ghibli taking up to 4 years for a feature-length film, but that's apocryphal. If we look at Miyazaki's output at Ghibli, we get 10 films between 1984 and 2013, which is an average of about 3 years per film, plus some shorts and other things he was involved in.. That's probably a bit of an edge case, though, as most anime is made a lot more quickly and cheaply than Ghibli.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - 1984 (original manga first released in 1982, pre-production started in 1983)
Laputa, Castle in the Sky - 1986
My Nieghbour Totoro - 1988
Kiki's delivery service - 1989
Porco Rosso - 1992
Princess Mononoke - 1997
Spirited Away - 2001
Howl's Moving Castle - 2004
Ponyo - 2008
The Wind Rises - 2013

Between various other directors they produced another dozen or so films, but that gives some idea of what the critical path around one director looks like in animation. It would be interesting to see timelines for some of the American studios like Disney, Hannah-Berbara or Warner Brothers.
 
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I think there's a chance that the big studios will lose out in the long run and theaters will thrive. The thing is that blockbusters have become more and more generic over the years as they've gotten more and more expensive to make. But we're living in the age of streaming and youtube channels and really beautiful fan movies. I think it's possible that theaters will manage to embrace smaller productions and online hype because eventually, when When Harry Met Sally and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bombs maybe people will be lining up to see something new and different from someone with an original idea.
 
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I think there's a chance that the big studios will lose out in the long run and theaters will thrive. The thing is that blockbusters have become more and more generic over the years as they've gotten more and more expensive to make. But we're living in the age of streaming and youtube channels and really beautiful fan movies. I think it's possible that theaters will manage to embrace smaller productions and online hype because eventually, when When Harry Met Sally and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bombs maybe people will be lining up to see something new and different from someone with an original idea.
We've seen a similar phenomenon in other media such as role playing games. Platforms like Lulu or DTRPG have allowed many, many independent publishers to produce content. Sturgeon's law applies just as much as it applied to Hollywood, if not more so, but there is still a lot of good content coming out of small independent studios.

With video, the big studios still have their claws into Youtube, though, as American copyright law is heavily skewed to favour the big players. It also makes Youtube a single point of failure for publishers. Under the current system it's much easier to spam copyright notices than it is to refute them - the former process is largely automated these days. In order to make online streaming an effective platform for a business around content creation in a way that would supplant the major studios, there would have to be significant reform to the system.

Unfortunately the global reach of the internet makes for a winner-takes-all model where one player will be dominant with others picking up crumbs, as we can see with Facebook, Amazon and other big-name dot-coms. There's an interesting discussion of this in a paper called Content is not king, which predicted this phenomenon about 20 years ago.

While online distribution does allow a lot of access for publishers, it is still subject to strong normative forces such as recommendation algorithms and vulnerability to malicious takedown notices, and pays nowhere near as well is it used to. I can't, for example, see it functioning as a medium through which something like Breaking Bad, The Expanse or Game of Thrones, let alone a blockbuster movie, would be published.

On the other hand, a lot of the low-budget content on Youtube is perfectly entertaining as it is, so this may not matter.
 
Eventually people will discover that you can make your own superheroes or do a movie that looks like Star Wars or Warhammer 40000 without breaking any trademarks. The big limitation fan movies currently face is that in making something that ties into someone else's IP you severely limit your own ability to make money or even just release it for free. One day people will be able to make something really cool without being tied to the need to make something with Batman (tm), Joker (tm), Aliens (tm), and Predator (tm) in it.
 
All the live music/theater people I know are really suffering though. Not just the performers, but all the tech people who do lighting and sound and whatnot.

That's also what I'm hearing. From stand up comedians as well. The major labels will be fine. They make a lot of their money from legacy artists and aggregate streaming royalties. It's the people reliant on touring that are screwed. While streaming has gone up that doesn't make enough to live off unless you're on the level of Meatloaf etc.
 
Eventually people will discover that you can make your own superheroes or do a movie that looks like Star Wars or Warhammer 40000 without breaking any trademarks. The big limitation fan movies currently face is that in making something that ties into someone else's IP you severely limit your own ability to make money or even just release it for free. One day people will be able to make something really cool without being tied to the need to make something with Batman (tm), Joker (tm), Aliens (tm), and Predator (tm) in it.
I'd love to see a medium that can support that well - somewhere between the studio blockbuster system and the current state of play that doesn't really support anything but very low budget works. If you could somehow hit a sweet spot that allowed mid-budget works to make a profit I'm sure we would see some great stuff emerging. We've seen a fair bit of good content come through outfits like HBO, which suggests the talent is there to make it.
 
If this breaks Hollywood (doubtful) I imagine we might see a resurgence of smaller studios from all over the world getting into the movie game like it was the 70's. Massive culture-defining blockbusters designed for mass appeal will give way to a wider variety of niche productions. It's for the best. This has already happened to television. Back in the day there were a limited amount of shows on a handful of networks; anyone who watched television knew who Hawkeye Pierce was and could recite the theme song to Gilligan's Island. Nowadays television is a veritable Tower of Babel and I say that's good!
Also in the 60s the major studios obsession with prestige blockbusters drove them into near-bankruptcy so they rolled the dice on lower-budget films by young filmmakers like Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, Ritchie, Carpenter, Allen and Polankski, etc. (as well as older mavericks like Altman, Huston, Peckinpah, Aldrich and Penn) which led to one of the richest decades in American film.

I say bring it on.

I think the problem with this view is that, in Brock's argument, the theaters are dependent on a different model than television. I don't think the theater system today could support niche genres that well or a wider diversity. Television has taken over that role. Most of the appeal for the movies now comes from seeing a very popular event movie. There is an audience craving for that. I don't think it can be replaced as easilly as TV based on the infrastructure of the cinemas.

And to Voros' point, while the creativity can't be denied based on what happened in the 1970s, back then Theaters were still the only place to get those experiences well. A lot of that creativity moved to television, especially in the past two decades.

Without the mass market appeal of the modern blockbuster, I don't believe most theaters will survive, nor do I think the economic model can change for it to be worthwhile.

I’m sad that the studios keep pushing movies back farther and farther. There won’t be any theaters left to show these movies in if they keep it up. I was talking about this with a friend of mine. Yes, they want Black Widow to make lots of money, but part of the experience is anticipation for the release date. You keep pushing it back and nobody’s gonna care when it’s finally released on streaming. They are shooting themselves in the foot.

It's truly a chicken-vs-egg syndrome. They may want to take a chance. I think they were going to, then the first to be released was Tenet and everybody got spooked again. Tenet was first to move based on Christopher Nolan's clout and his love for the Cinema -- he's one of the few directories insisting on Film Stock and using 70 MM projectors instead of digital. But this didn't bring people into the theaters and it backfired. (I wanted Tenet, it was good but took a long time to get into, and it's probably not his best work).

All the live music/theater people I know are really suffering though. Not just the performers, but all the tech people who do lighting and sound and whatnot.

Yeah, that is the other thing I look forward to the most each year, just seeing a few concerts.
 
I'd love to see a medium that can support that well - somewhere between the studio blockbuster system and the current state of play that doesn't really support anything but very low budget works. If you could somehow hit a sweet spot that allowed mid-budget works to make a profit I'm sure we would see some great stuff emerging. We've seen a fair bit of good content come through outfits like HBO, which suggests the talent is there to make it.
I think the theaters would need to form some kind of an alliance to help get smaller productions going and into their hands.
 
I think the problem with this view is that, in Brock's argument, the theaters are dependent on a different model than television. I don't think the theater system today could support niche genres that well or a wider diversity. Television has taken over that role. Most of the appeal for the movies now comes from seeing a very popular event movie. There is an audience craving for that. I don't think it can be replaced as easily as TV based on the infrastructure of the cinemas.
To be honest, I wasn't thinking of movie theaters at all in my post. Movie theaters are like church- I am always a little surprised when someone tells me they go there regularly. Since 2015 I've gone to a movie theater a total of 4 times (I tried to find a theater showing 1918 but no luck). If the big theater chains vanished from the face of the Earth overnight it wouldn't make much of a difference to me.
 
To be honest, I wasn't thinking of movie theaters at all in my post. Movie theaters are like church- I am always a little surprised when someone tells me they go there regularly. Since 2015 I've gone to a movie theater a total of 4 times (I tried to find a theater showing 1918 but no luck). If the big theater chains vanished from the face of the Earth overnight it wouldn't make much of a difference to me.

I love movie theatres, like live music in a club the experience will always appeal to the hardcore faithful (your comparison to a church is dead on). Will that be enough to sustain even the arthouses though?

I have a friend who programs a university cinema and they've been reliant on the older community crowd who still turn out for films in a theatre for the last decade as the students don't come to see films.

But you never know when there could be a shift in the younger 'cool' culture, like with LPs, boardgames and hardcopy books, that could make seeing a film in a theatre something young people want to do again. One just hopes the theatre are still there if that happens.

In terms of the idea floated earlier in this thread that all the creativity is now in TV, I'm not so sure.

I feel like 'peak TV' may have crested a few years ago, the last really impressive TV series I saw was The Terror and Fleabag. I feel like a lot of TV series these days, as one of the Cohen brothers recently noted on podcast, suffer from baggy plotting.

I think some of the streaming services are better as funders and distro channels of more adult-oriented films but long-term I have my doubts about it as well.

Netflix is supporting filmmakers like Scorsese, Soderbergh and the Safdie brothers right now but I feel like that is part of a longer term plan where one builds buzz and profile with prestige projects because it is low risk, builds goodwill and can sometimes produce high rewards but in the long-term they're more interested in their stream of sub-standard Sandler comedies, etc.
 
I feel like 'peak TV' may have crested a few years ago, the last really impressive TV series I saw was The Terror and Fleabag. I feel like a lot of TV series these days, as one of the Cohen brothers recently noted on podcast, suffer from baggy plotting.
If by "baggy plotting" you mean taking an entire season to tell 2 hour's worth of story you are absolutely spot-on. I frequently get recommendations for television shows and can scarcely make it through the first few episodes because there is so much "filler" content.

Netflix is supporting filmmakers like Scorsese, Soderbergh and the Safdie brothers right now but I feel like that is part of a longer term plan where one builds buzz and profile with prestige projects because it is low risk, builds goodwill and can sometimes produce high rewards but in the long-term they're more interested in their stream of sub-standard Sandler comedies, etc.
Hmm, I feel like the long term Netflix strategy is diversifying their approach by trying a little bit of everything and not putting all their eggs in one basket. The content they have been producing covers a lot of bases. I'd love to see a collaboration between, say Wes Anderson or David Lynch and Netflix. Hell if I was Netflix I'd look into sponsoring talented, low cost college and amateur projects as a long term investment. Like someone mentioned before, producing nice looking content doesn't cost nearly as much as it used to.
 
...
Hmm, I feel like the long term Netflix strategy is diversifying their approach by trying a little bit of everything and not putting all their eggs in one basket. The content they have been producing covers a lot of bases. I'd love to see a collaboration between, say Wes Anderson or David Lynch and Netflix. Hell if I was Netflix I'd look into sponsoring talented, low cost college and amateur projects as a long term investment. Like someone mentioned before, producing nice looking content doesn't cost nearly as much as it used to.

That what I would hope as well but knowing the motivations of corporations I fear they may be taking the Weinstein approach where you start off with some edgy and prestige material but then move on to cash-in with middle-brow 'crowd-pleasing' mediocrities and drop all that 'arty shit.'

Ultimately history suggests the best one can hope for is a short (or fingers crossed, medium-length) period where the corp enables creativity rather than strangles it like a kitten in a bathtub.
 
If this breaks Hollywood (doubtful) I imagine we might see a resurgence of smaller studios from all over the world getting into the movie game like it was the 70's. Massive culture-defining blockbusters designed for mass appeal will give way to a wider variety of niche productions. It's for the best.

Well, isn't that what the overturning of the legislation that prevented studios from owning theaters? I mean, they said it had "run its course" in the ruling, and that some provisions would have a sunset period, but yeah, it was pretty obvious that they were setting the stage for this.

 
Well, isn't that what the overturning of the legislation that prevented studios from owning theaters? I mean, they said it had "run its course" in the ruling, and that some provisions would have a sunset period, but yeah, it was pretty obvious that they were setting the stage for this.


Had no idea that had been lifted, that is madness.
 
Yup. Just in August. I wouldn't have known if I didn't work for a financial reporting institution. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

And I have to chuckle at this quote in the article

"I don't think there's a lot of real estate for movie theater operations out there," he adds. "I'm not gonna say we're over-screened but there are a lot of screens out there."

Yeah, there are a lot of screens out there. And they will be ripe for the taking.
 
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

- George Santayana
 
The average cycle for a modern Animation show (26-52 episodes) is about 2 years in development, with a movie being about 18 months. Don't let Netflix's chopping habits fool you.

The New She-Ra show had all 52 episodes (which is two full seasons) done by it's release date. It's why they could have 6-7 months break per 'new' season. It's a similar trick to the Voltron (Which I mostly liked) show's almost three full seasons of 76 episodes, which they chopped up into 8 'seasons'. Netflix does it to make a property more popular than it really is, sadly. Mostly for the investors, of course.
 
I don't know about that, theatre attendance has been going down steadily as the prices keep going up. I hope you're right, but... I dunno.

I don't know if it will help the theater industry, but taking theaters out of the equation eliminates one of the major advantages the big studios have had over independents, access to big screens. With streaming there is no longer competition for screens. The majority will probably still gravitate towards the big studio productions, but there will be equal access for independents giving them a much greater ability to reach people interested in something else, than they have previously had. Assuming you don't see a take over of streaming, which has already begin with Disney. Still it will be hard for them to monopolize streaming, they can control where their films are shown, but it will be difficult to restrict other films from being shown. Restricting access to their films is also self defeating, because at some point people will decide it isn't worth paying extra for their streaming service if they aren't putting out a product worth paying for. This is not all that different from what happened with Cable, in the beginning there were 3 major networks, but these days network TV has a much smaller share of the market.

If by "baggy plotting" you mean taking an entire season to tell 2 hour's worth of story you are absolutely spot-on. I frequently get recommendations for television shows and can scarcely make it through the first few episodes because there is so much "filler" content.

You mean like making the Hobbit into 3 films... I believe the 3rd Hobbit film was the last time I set foot inside a movie theater. Kind of sad as I like the theater experience and love old theaters, but there hasn't been much in recent years to woo me. I would totally pay to see some of the classics on the big screen again, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Them... I would pay full price to see Them on the big screen.

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Cinemas are fucked. We're in this until next summer at least, the movie delays until April were optimistic, and with social distancing regulations the entire structure of cinema seating has to completely change which means less folk per screen, so less food and tickets sold, etc. A few UK chains have shut down until next year, but even then, are they going to have the cash to spin back up again? And it's not so much the chains I feel sorry for, because why would you ever, it's the folk who work there, especially younger folk because it's a fairly low-stakes job where you can learn how to be a good employee and make young folk mistakes without it really actually mattering.

That said, whenever I go to the cinema, it's to see something like Fury Road or a Marvel punch-'em-up (Or the My Little Pony movie, don't judge me), something that actually benefits from the big screen and, most importantly, the big audio; a lot of films are fine to watch on TV because nothing is detracted about the experience that way, and at least then I can have a glass of wine and snacks to go with it.
 
The current movie/theater system is shit, so anything that blows it up is welcome, but...

In all likelihood though, the largest media companies will absorb the weakened theater industry and things will be worse than ever.
 
I don't think it is just big genre and action films, which in the US are far too often flatly and unimaginatively shot and framed, that should be seen in a theatre and benefit from it.

Seeing art films like In the Mood for Love, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Beau Travail, The Favourite, Shoplifters and horror films like The Witch, Descent and Midsommar in a theatre in the last few years is a much more moving and profound experience than watching it at home. My first viewing of many Kurosawa, Fellini and Bergman classics were at the local arthouse and were all the more powerful for it.

Can't remembet who first said it but I agree with the saying 'The greatest special effect in film is a close-up of the human face.'

And a less elevated insight by Corman that 'The cheapest special effect is nudity.'
 
I’d go see more classics for $5 a pop but they can’t sustain that kind of business apparently. I’d dig it to see a movie like Superman on the big screen (didn’t get to see it in 1978) in all its glory.
 
Cinemas are fucked. We're in this until next summer at least, the movie delays until April were optimistic, and with social distancing regulations the entire structure of cinema seating has to completely change which means less folk per screen, so less food and tickets sold, etc. A few UK chains have shut down until next year, but even then, are they going to have the cash to spin back up again? And it's not so much the chains I feel sorry for, because why would you ever, it's the folk who work there, especially younger folk because it's a fairly low-stakes job where you can learn how to be a good employee and make young folk mistakes without it really actually mattering.

That said, whenever I go to the cinema, it's to see something like Fury Road or a Marvel punch-'em-up (Or the My Little Pony movie, don't judge me), something that actually benefits from the big screen and, most importantly, the big audio; a lot of films are fine to watch on TV because nothing is detracted about the experience that way, and at least then I can have a glass of wine and snacks to go with it.
Totally judging.
 
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