Good article by Owen Gleiberman, tuned to the surprise (and welcome!) success of the enjoyable romcom Anyone But You...
https://variety.com/2024/film/columns/i ... 235896638/
Has streaming become a form of Stockholm Syndrome...?
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Monterey Jack
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AndyDursin
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Re: Has streaming become a form of Stockholm Syndrome...?
He writes this a week after one of the worst movie going weekends in a decade? Good for this movie i guess but in the larger perspective it's nothing to celebrate for the industry.
Right now it's a barren marketplace where if you are the only film in a certain genre and can play even respectably you can make money right now. I didn't even know what this movie was but it's like Migration or Tbe Beekeeper. This is the "rom com" for people still looking for one in the way those are respectively a kids cartoon and an action movie. They've all checked a box and have chugged along for weeks or even months in the case of Migration to get where they have but none of them are huge grosses. The per screen average isn't anything spectacular.
It's all just okay and won't be enough to keep a few theaters in business unless more content gets pumped in. Whether there's a marketplace to support that is the real question. Movie going has become a casual thing. They can get people out in tbe summer for Top Gun and the whole Barbenheimer thing but look at how much stuff has been meh. Loads of Christmas releases did jack and died even with heavily marketed hype like the Color Purple musical.
Feast or famine, it's a tough market a few minor successes like this can't offset. They need one of these every month to hit not one every quarter or longer.
Right now it's a barren marketplace where if you are the only film in a certain genre and can play even respectably you can make money right now. I didn't even know what this movie was but it's like Migration or Tbe Beekeeper. This is the "rom com" for people still looking for one in the way those are respectively a kids cartoon and an action movie. They've all checked a box and have chugged along for weeks or even months in the case of Migration to get where they have but none of them are huge grosses. The per screen average isn't anything spectacular.
It's all just okay and won't be enough to keep a few theaters in business unless more content gets pumped in. Whether there's a marketplace to support that is the real question. Movie going has become a casual thing. They can get people out in tbe summer for Top Gun and the whole Barbenheimer thing but look at how much stuff has been meh. Loads of Christmas releases did jack and died even with heavily marketed hype like the Color Purple musical.
Feast or famine, it's a tough market a few minor successes like this can't offset. They need one of these every month to hit not one every quarter or longer.
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Monterey Jack
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Re: Has streaming become a form of Stockholm Syndrome...?
This is WHY studios need to push back against selling their movies to the highest-bidding streamer, especially for the kinds of mid-budget action flicks, romcoms, family movies and dramas that used to be a studio's bread & butter in-between the (then) occasional mega-budgeted event movies. It's why movies like Anyone But You and The Beekeeper have been doing unexpectedly well...they scratch the itch for underserved audiences who miss a basic, meat & potatoes action movie (one that doesn't have to connect to a half-dozen other movies) or pleasant romantic comedy with beautiful people in a beautiful location falling for each other.AndyDursin wrote: ↑Mon Feb 05, 2024 4:46 am Feast or famine, it's a tough market a few minor successes like this can't offset. They need one of these every month to hit not one every quarter or longer.
Studios have been chasing these billion-dollar grosses for so long they've forgotten that it's MORE profitable to spend, say, $50 million and make $400 million worldwide than it is to spend $300 million (not including marketing...!) to get to a billion. And, if last year's Franchisepocalyse was any indication, that's a model that's no longer financially feasible. It used to be that even the dumbest superhero movie would be a guaranteed $800 million hit (especially within the MCU), but audiences have simply become totally sick of the genre as a whole, and they want to move onto something else. Will studios realize this, or continue to stick their heads in the sand and keep doubling down on a bad investment?