Jerry Seinfeld: "Movie Business Is Over"

[AndyDursin]

It might seem like a reach but the more you dive into his comments, he's right.

Film doesn't have the impact it once did socially or culturally.

When was the last time you even ran into a relative or friend who WENT to a movie?

Instead I've run into more people over the last year in casual conversation who were like "I haven't seen anything in over a year" or "there's nothing out there" or "I haven't gone to a theater since TOP GUN".

These blockbusters are "fan geared" to get a promised audience into the building -- but casual viewers have fled the multiplex. Yes, the way we consume media is totally different -- people don't even watch series at the same rate -- but movies, I think he's totally right.

This past weekend saw a bunch of movies jockeying for #1 -- but the story is nobody was going. The highest grosser was $11 million -- for the WEEKEND.

[Paul MacLean]

"I haven't gone to a theater since TOP GUN".

Well, that's me!

I thought -- naively -- that Top Gun's popularity as a "big screen popcorn experience" might jump-start and restore movie-going, but it didn't really.

A number of months ago I stopped to get something to eat in a neighboring town I hadn't visited in a while, and was saddened to to see their huge multiplex completely shuttered.

I do think prognostications of doom are a bit exaggerated tho -- I don't think the cinema will become completely extinct. Live theater still exists despite predictions that "talkies" would render live performance obsolete. However, the theater certainly isn't what it was before movies came along*. Radio shows still exist, but they aren't what they were before television came along.

TV could have toppled cinema in the 1950s, but the studios saved it by digging-out old widescreen formats (which had actually been invented in the 1920s, but never used), and could offer color and stereo sound. But today, what can a cinema avail that your TV and home sound system cannot? They tried to bring back 3D and experimented with higher frame rates a decade ago, but those didn't help (in fact they ruin the experience for me personally).

Audience screenings will always exist -- but probably as a niche market for cinephiles (in places like Alamo Drafthouse) rather than a venue patronized by regular people.


*I was actually thinking the other day that the advances in LED rear-projection (like those used to make The Mandalorian) could actually give live theater a boost, since moving, photo-realistic backgrounds can now be rendered and integrated live during an actual performance.

[Monterey Jack]

Pretty rich, coming from a guy who sold his upcoming "Origin story" for Pop-Tarts to a streamer.

[AndyDursin]

I do think prognostications of doom are a bit exaggerated tho -- I don't think the cinema will become completely extinct. Live theater still exists despite predictions that "talkies" would render live performance obsolete. However, the theater certainly isn't what it was before movies came along*. Radio shows still exist, but they aren't what they were before television came along.

We've also had several multi-screen complexes shut down in the last couple of years. What's happening, IMO, is the cinema is transitioning to something like local theme parks scattered across the land, playing the same "rides" over and over again. To be specific, what I thought was going to happen during COVID is completely playing itself out. The studios like Disney that want to fund these mega-budget films can single-handedly attempt to keep big chains open, and flood IMAX screens with CAPTAIN AMERICA 5 -- but it's everything that's under that, that's the problem. It's a major struggle and hasn't rebounded.

The audience that would be, "hey let's go to a movie Friday," then walk up and literally see what was playing -- that audience is gone. Completely gone. So you have fanboy-driven IP's which appeal to kids and teens and is built-in. Book your seats in advance, you know when you're going to go, etc. That only works when it's a movie you "have to see," some sequel or prequel or IP you already know.

But the increasingly decaying adult market with no product to support it -- or product that just isn't very good, or cinematic, or demands to be "seen in a cinema" -- that's just gone. Adults are staying home and streaming with loads of options at their disposal.

Movies can't exist solely on the diet of recycled junk Hollywood has produced for the last couple of years...and yet Summer 2024 is more of the same. Endlessly more of the same. Studios will profit from some of it, but none of it is going to have any kind of impact beyond stuffing Disney's stockholders as DEADPOOL will. And then we'll get the "see, super-heroes aren't dead!" crowd pumping their chest, not realizing that audience is not the conventional audience for Marvel movies.

I think Senfield's point is well taken. Culturally, socially, none of these films matter. DEADPOOL will make loads of money but who's going to be talking about it? About the only time you saw the public embrace something post-COVID was the whole BARBENHEIMER hype of last summer, but like MAVERICK, it's turning into a "once a summer pilgrimage to the cinema" phenomena that doesn't translate to other DOA weeks in the schedule -- the kind that are causing smaller chains or independent cinemas to close up shop.

[Paul MacLean]

The audience that would be, "hey let's go to a movie Friday," then walk up and literally see what was playing -- that audience is gone. Completely gone. So you have fanboy-driven IP's which appeal to kids and teens and is built-in. Book your seats in advance, you know when you're going to go, etc. That only works when it's a movie you "have to see," some sequel or prequel or IP you already know.

But the increasingly decaying adult market with no product to support it -- or product that just isn't very good, or cinematic, or demands to be "seen in a cinema" -- that's just gone. Adults are staying home and streaming with loads of options at their disposal.

Yeah. Compare today to spring / summer 1985:

Back to the Future
The Breakfast Club
A View to a Kill
The Puple Rose of Cairo
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
Pale Rider
Cocoon
Prizzi's Honor
Ladyhawk
Rambo: First Blood Part II
The Black Cauldron
Silvarado
The Emerald Forest
The Bride
Goonies
St. Elmo's Fire
Red Sonjia
Rocky IV
Explorers
Lifeforce

Maybe not all of those movies were great, but they were mostly watchable (even if just for laughs, like Lifeforce!), and they were also an eclectic bunch. Two different studios even risked money on expensive westerns (a genre thought dead at the time). Even the sequels were more than just remakes of the previous films.

[AndyDursin]

Preach Paul! And don't forget hits like FRIGHT NIGHT and FLETCH also. In fact here's the top films from that summer...note a few of these were spring releases that played during the summer but you get the drift!

1 Rambo: First Blood Part II $145,393,330 2,074 $150,415,432 May 22 TriStar Pictures
2 Back to the Future $132,664,418 1,550 $211,850,472 Jul 3 Universal Pictures
3 Cocoon $68,685,467 1,163 $76,113,124 Jun 21 Twentieth Century Fox
4 The Goonies $61,389,680 1,705 $61,389,680 Jun 7 Warner Bros.
5 Fletch $50,612,888 1,303 $50,612,888 May 31 Universal Pictures
6 A View to a Kill $50,327,960 1,588 $50,327,960 May 24 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
7 National Lampoon's European Vacation $45,891,591 1,547 $49,364,621 Jul 26 Warner Bros.
8 Pale Rider $41,410,568 1,710 $41,410,568 Jun 28 Warner Bros.
9 Brewster's Millions $40,833,132 1,521 $40,833,132 May 22 Universal Pictures
10 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
1985 Re-release
$40,607,502 1,701 $40,607,502 Jul 19 Universal Pictures

11 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome $36,230,219 1,475 $36,230,219 Jul 12 Warner Bros.
12 St. Elmo's Fire $29,312,201 1,207 $37,803,872 Jun 28 Columbia Pictures
13 Silverado $27,233,723 1,190 $32,192,570 Jul 12 Columbia Pictures
14 Prizzi's Honor $26,657,534 722 $26,657,534 Jun 14 Twentieth Century Fox
15 Beverly Hills Cop $25,941,838 2,006 $234,760,478 Dec 5 Paramount Pictures
16 The Emerald Forest $24,468,550 1,110 $24,468,550 Jul 5 Embassy Pictures
17 Pee-wee's Big Adventure $24,417,782 894 $40,940,662 Aug 9 Warner Bros.
18 Weird Science $23,834,048 1,172 $23,834,048 Aug 2 Universal Pictures
19 Fright Night $21,842,548 1,545 $24,922,237 Aug 2 Columbia Pictures
20 The Black Cauldron $21,288,692 1,276 $21,288,692 Jul 26 Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

21 Code of Silence $20,345,361 1,810 $20,345,361 May 3 Orion Pictures
22 Summer Rental $19,569,818 1,595 $24,689,703 Aug 9 Paramount Pictures
23 The Gods Must Be Crazy $15,398,133 147 $30,031,783 Apr 6 Twentieth Century Fox
24 Mask $14,546,693 1,024 $48,230,162 Mar 8 Universal Pictures
25 Follow That Bird $13,961,370 1,129 $13,961,370 Aug 2 Warner Bros.
26 Volunteers $13,484,894 1,560 $19,875,740 Aug 16 TriStar Pictures
27 Teen Wolf $13,231,923 1,425 $33,086,611 Aug 23 Atlantic Releasing Corporation
28 Perfect $12,918,858 1,344 $12,918,858 Jun 7 Columbia Pictures

29 Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment $12,801,795 1,613 $55,600,000 Mar 29 Warner Bros.
30 Desperately Seeking Susan $12,637,307 1,108 $27,398,584 Mar 29 Orion Pictures
31 Witness $12,161,174 1,169 $68,706,993 Feb 8 Paramount Pictures
32 Year of the Dragon $12,085,410 982 $18,707,466 Aug 16 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
33 Lifeforce $11,603,545 1,526 $11,603,545 Jun 21 TriStar Pictures
34 The Return of the Living Dead $11,594,364 1,506 $14,237,880 Aug 16 Orion Pictures

35 Return to Oz $11,137,801 1,238 $11,137,801 Jun 21 Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
36 Gotcha! $10,806,919 1,218 $10,806,919 May 3 Universal Pictures
37 Explorers $9,873,044 1,750 $9,873,044 Jul 12 Paramount Pictures
38 Real Genius $9,067,684 990 $12,952,019 Aug 9 TriStar Pictures
39 The Man with One Red Shoe $8,645,411 1,049 $8,645,411 Jul 19 Twentieth Century Fox
40 Secret Admirer $8,622,757 1,300 $8,622,757 Jun 14 Orion Pictures
41 D.A.R.Y.L. $7,840,873 1,100 $7,840,873 Jun 14 Paramount Pictures
42 Just One of the Guys $7,476,561 1,215 $11,528,900 Apr 26 Columbia Pictures
43 Ladyhawke $7,178,178 1,056 $18,432,000 Apr 12 Warner Bros.
44 Red Sonja $6,948,633 1,091 $6,948,633 Jul 5 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Alas we're never going back to those days, it's never going to happen. Studios can make too much money playing it safe and recycling crap. They're even more "corporate" in their programming than they were back then -- I mean the studios may have been corporate owned in 1985 but they still had human beings mostly running them with their own individual tastes.

Either way it's a different game today. The adult/"riskier" projects aren't being configured as films anymore for the MOST part, they're streaming and it makes more sense for them to try and hit the nail on the head with those as a series -- that can keep going -- than make a solitary movie.

Absolutely we're seeing, and have seen, a shift in film. The Academy Awards have never been less culturally significant -- and the fact they've expanded the field to include junk like BARBIE, which never in a zillion years would have even qualified 20, 30, 40 years ago, tells you where the cinema is at. Big ticket "amusement park cinema" is going to be 80% of it.