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1. Movies Are In Trouble
Much has been made of the nicheness of this year’s Oscar nominees, even, I might add, in this very column.
It’s a very valid critique, and it’s why Disney needed to fish out all those views from laptops and smartphones in order to push their ratings numbers over the finish line for a micro-improvement of just 200K viewers from last year.
But that is not why the movie industry is in trouble.
To begin with, there are just fewer and fewer theaters—an estimated 5,000 screens have shut down since 2020, or 12% of the 2020 total.
Worse still, most of the theaters affected were smaller, independently owned cinemas, of the sort that would show movies like Best Picture winner Anora.
Meaning that even if someone had seen a review of Anora and wanted to see it (RAISES HAND) it was unlikely to be playing anywhere nearby.
But that is not the full reason either.
Because the other reason movie theaters are closing is that people just don’t like them anymore.
And that’s an even bigger problem.
Why It Matters
A fascinating new study by a company called MX8 Labs found that 46% of respondents prefer watching movies at home, while only 15% prefer theaters.
Convenience was the main reason cited (78% of respondents) which at some level could be inevitable in an era where 75-inch or even 85-inch screens are quite common and where the closure of smaller theaters means longer drives to crowded multiplexes. (I took it as telling that “convenience” was a factor for 85% of those with a Bachelor’s degree and 90% of 55-64 year olds.)
I’d further posit that “convenience” is not limited to the amount of time and effort it takes to get one’s self to a theater but also to the ability to watch longer movies like Oppenheimer and Killers Of The Flower Moon in pieces, possibly even over the course of several days.
That said, the theater experience itself was also found to be unpleasant by a sizable majority of respondents, with 70% citing crowds and/or noisy theatergoers. This is a much remarked-upon phenomenon that seems to be part of a vicious cycle with home viewing: people watch at home and get used to talking and consulting their phones. They go to theaters and replicate that behavior, impervious to the effect it is having on their fellow moviegoers.
Take all these factors together and it’s not a good time for the movie industry. The demise of smaller theaters coupled with streaming services cutting back on the number of films they buy (as Brandon Katz recently outlined for us) means the economics of indie films aren’t there anymore.
Nor are the economics for anything other than blockbusters that can be sold internationally, and even those are starting to show signs of wear and tear, as audiences grow weary of yet another superhero or Marvel comic movie.
I’d posit that the theater issue looms larger though. That’s because going to an actual movie theater is what made movies special. There’s something about the giant screen and sitting in the dark and watching with a crowd that elevated the experience to something more than TV.
And so when movies are watched in the living room, often in chunks of an hour or so (e.g. not in the way the filmmaker intended them to be seen) they lose their magic and become just another form of television, a slightly shorter mini-series.
Which is a problem there’s no turning back from.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are the movie industry you’ve got a bunch of Herculean tasks ahead of you. First and foremost you need to figure out how to make theater-going fun again while getting people to become more considerate of their fellow humans. There have been some attempts at the fun part—all those theaters with Barcalounger-style seats and food and beverage service—but that just raises the price point to a place where it’s a special occasion experience not a weekly one.
You also need to find a path to profitability for accessible indie films.
Take A Real Pain, for instance, a film that netted Kieran Culkin the Best Supporting Actor award. There’s nothing that screams “indie film” about it. The stars, Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg are well-known and the storyline is not that out there— it’s just another buddy comedy at heart, albeit one with the Shoah as background. (Hint: A24 has had some success here. Figure out what can you learn from them)
Your final task will be to cut back on the overreliance on sequels and genre movies. Not eliminate them, but just find alternatives, because, as noted, audiences are getting tired of them.
None of this will be easy—in a good movie, the hero’s journey never is.
But if you want to keep playing a significant role in the world’s culture, then you need to strap on your pack and your sword and get out there and start slaying some dragons.