This year's Memorial Day long weekend is breaking weekends and will go down as the biggest in movie history.
Now some folks are dancing in the streets of Hollywood singing "Happy days are here again," when it comes to the movie business.
However, those doing their little happy dance
are only seeing the surface of what could very well turn out to be an isolated incident.
You see, despite the sunshine of the Memorial Day Weekend the overall movie market is under a cloud.
1. Audience attendance is trending downward with a decreasing percentage of the population going to the movies with any regularity.
2. DVD sales and rentals are down, and video streaming isn't taking up the slack as many expected.
3. It's also starting to sink in with the so-called "A-List" that their ability to sell movie tickets is no where near what they're getting paid for appearing in movies, so they're selling their nearly omnipresent mugs to anyone, for everything, from advertisements to personal appearances at parties for the children of oil rich dictators.
Now there are many reasons for this overall slump, some of these points I've discussed before, but it's summer, the season for reruns and repeats, so there.
1. Going to a movie in the theater is an expensive pain in the ass. The days of walking down to the Bijou on Main Street and dropping a dime on a double feature (with shorts & newsreel) are long gone. Now you have to get everyone in the car, drive to the theater, find and pay for parking, wait in line for a ticket, pay a hell of a lot for a ticket, even more if it's in 3D, wait in line for popcorn, then find a seat where your feet won't stick too badly to the floor. If you are taking kids, then all those hassles are exponentially increased. It's just cheaper and less painful to stay at home and watch something on television.
The fact that this holiday weekend and that the biggest winners are sequels shows that ticket buyers are becoming more cautious about their movie choices, going to what can be considered fairly reliable or appealing franchises, or filmmakers.
2. DVD sales/rental as well as streaming video revenue is down, way down. This is essentially all about quality. Name a list of films from the last 5 years that you can watch repeatedly and still enjoy? There aren't many.
A lot of films offer big visual spectacles that can attract audiences to see them on the big screen, but it's a different situation on the home-screen. The average TV screen is nowhere near as big, and the even the nicest home theater systems aren't the earth-shaking monstrosities found in theaters. On this smaller scale the big spectacles are often found wanting, and usually what they are wanting is a decent story. Thus you don't get the repeat home viewings that spur sales, rentals, or streaming video fees.
This is not the case on television, which is currently chugging through a golden age with many shows possessing quality in story, direction, and acting that would have been unthinkable as recently as a decade ago. Competition between network and cable channels alongside the major studios failure to produce the content they need in both quantity and quality, have created a perfect storm of conditions for quality television. So why go out, or rent, when there is so much good stuff available for free?
3. There are two types of stars in Hollywood right now. There are Media Appealers, people whose fame is based more on their ability to generate publicity and attract the attention of people in the media industry, and then there are the Audience Appealers, who set their sights on winning over the great unwashed.
One of the main problem with Hollywood is that they have been paying at least the same, and a lot of times way more to Media Appealers, than to Audience Appealers. You regularly see stories about "major stars" being paid in the tens of millions of dollars upfront, with plump back-end deals, while never having a significant commercial hit on their curriculum vitae. The audiences talk about them because they're omnipresent in the media, their faces gracing everything from magazine covers to advertisements. The studios see that as "name recognition" and assume that name recognition will mean that this time the punters will actually pay money to see them in the theater.
It rarely ever works, and the success of relatively smaller films like the original Hangover show that big stars are not necessary for a movie to be a big hit. It's a notion that's seeping into the mainstream blockbuster, especially since Batman Begins with the only moderately known Christian Bale, and Iron Man, with the then "washed up" Robert Downey Jr. in the title roles both did gangbusters at the box office.
Couple this with a reality TV culture where people build multimillion dollar empires on the basis of being a rich man's kid in a sex tape and the whole idea of paying to see someone who is famous simply because they are famous just doesn't cut it anymore.
So while this record breaking long weekend is wonderful, it is not a guarantee of things to come. At least not without something really drastic happening.
Now some folks are dancing in the streets of Hollywood singing "Happy days are here again," when it comes to the movie business.
However, those doing their little happy dance
are only seeing the surface of what could very well turn out to be an isolated incident.You see, despite the sunshine of the Memorial Day Weekend the overall movie market is under a cloud.
1. Audience attendance is trending downward with a decreasing percentage of the population going to the movies with any regularity.
2. DVD sales and rentals are down, and video streaming isn't taking up the slack as many expected.
3. It's also starting to sink in with the so-called "A-List" that their ability to sell movie tickets is no where near what they're getting paid for appearing in movies, so they're selling their nearly omnipresent mugs to anyone, for everything, from advertisements to personal appearances at parties for the children of oil rich dictators.
Now there are many reasons for this overall slump, some of these points I've discussed before, but it's summer, the season for reruns and repeats, so there.
1. Going to a movie in the theater is an expensive pain in the ass. The days of walking down to the Bijou on Main Street and dropping a dime on a double feature (with shorts & newsreel) are long gone. Now you have to get everyone in the car, drive to the theater, find and pay for parking, wait in line for a ticket, pay a hell of a lot for a ticket, even more if it's in 3D, wait in line for popcorn, then find a seat where your feet won't stick too badly to the floor. If you are taking kids, then all those hassles are exponentially increased. It's just cheaper and less painful to stay at home and watch something on television.
The fact that this holiday weekend and that the biggest winners are sequels shows that ticket buyers are becoming more cautious about their movie choices, going to what can be considered fairly reliable or appealing franchises, or filmmakers.
2. DVD sales/rental as well as streaming video revenue is down, way down. This is essentially all about quality. Name a list of films from the last 5 years that you can watch repeatedly and still enjoy? There aren't many.
A lot of films offer big visual spectacles that can attract audiences to see them on the big screen, but it's a different situation on the home-screen. The average TV screen is nowhere near as big, and the even the nicest home theater systems aren't the earth-shaking monstrosities found in theaters. On this smaller scale the big spectacles are often found wanting, and usually what they are wanting is a decent story. Thus you don't get the repeat home viewings that spur sales, rentals, or streaming video fees.
This is not the case on television, which is currently chugging through a golden age with many shows possessing quality in story, direction, and acting that would have been unthinkable as recently as a decade ago. Competition between network and cable channels alongside the major studios failure to produce the content they need in both quantity and quality, have created a perfect storm of conditions for quality television. So why go out, or rent, when there is so much good stuff available for free?
3. There are two types of stars in Hollywood right now. There are Media Appealers, people whose fame is based more on their ability to generate publicity and attract the attention of people in the media industry, and then there are the Audience Appealers, who set their sights on winning over the great unwashed.
One of the main problem with Hollywood is that they have been paying at least the same, and a lot of times way more to Media Appealers, than to Audience Appealers. You regularly see stories about "major stars" being paid in the tens of millions of dollars upfront, with plump back-end deals, while never having a significant commercial hit on their curriculum vitae. The audiences talk about them because they're omnipresent in the media, their faces gracing everything from magazine covers to advertisements. The studios see that as "name recognition" and assume that name recognition will mean that this time the punters will actually pay money to see them in the theater.
It rarely ever works, and the success of relatively smaller films like the original Hangover show that big stars are not necessary for a movie to be a big hit. It's a notion that's seeping into the mainstream blockbuster, especially since Batman Begins with the only moderately known Christian Bale, and Iron Man, with the then "washed up" Robert Downey Jr. in the title roles both did gangbusters at the box office.
Couple this with a reality TV culture where people build multimillion dollar empires on the basis of being a rich man's kid in a sex tape and the whole idea of paying to see someone who is famous simply because they are famous just doesn't cut it anymore.
So while this record breaking long weekend is wonderful, it is not a guarantee of things to come. At least not without something really drastic happening.
If you look at it the only real STARS we have are the products of the Disney Popstar machine, Miley, Demi and Selena. They have their fan base but have not really shown that they can fill a movie theatre.
ReplyDeleteI also think when it comes to entertainment in those tough economy the 18-35 male demo is finding that investing in a xbox and playing Call of Duty/Battlefield/Medal of Honor/Hal is just a better investment. I see more upcoming games that impress me than movies these days.
2. DVD sales/rental as well as streaming video revenue is down, way down. This is essentially all about quality. Name a list of films from the last 5 years that you can watch repeatedly and still enjoy? There aren't many.
ReplyDeleteVery true. Most of my netflix queue are old movies that I never had the chance to see or only saw once long ago.
This is not the case on television, which is currently chugging through a golden age with many shows possessing quality in story, direction, and acting that would have been unthinkable as recently as a decade ago.
The older I get, the more true I believe the phrase "art from adversity". In this case, movies don't have the adversity they used to have which really pushed them into greatness. Now the challenges and adversity are on TV and that's why it's turning out better.
Or something. I'm still working on this thought.