Can Hollywood “Survive Until 25”? How to Save the Film Industry (or Fail to Try)
After a rocky start to the summer, the Hollywood film industry is in trouble – here’s an optimistic map to turn it around…
According to The Hollywood Reporter, there’s a new phrase catching on in tinsel town.
with Scapegoat And Furiosa At the start of what looks to be a disappointing summer season, movie theater executives and owners alike seem to have given up on a pretty miserable year for their accounts departments. The phrase “just survive until 25” has become something of a slogan, and the hope is that the franchise giants can Jurassic city, Superman: Legacy The return of the MCU will herald a return to the glory days of multiple releases worth billions of dollars a year.
But what if 2025 isn’t the savior the box office blockbuster needs? What if 2024’s lackluster performance isn’t a temporary slump, but a sign of things to come?
After all, it seems that many of the problems the industry currently faces are far bigger than any box office boom can solve on its own. Covid-19 has put many members of the public out of the habit of going to the movies on a regular basis; Theatrical exclusivity, once the key to big screen success in the home video era, was reduced to less than 17 days; Creators looking to create bold, adult content have completed their migration to the TV industry, now realizing it’s forgotten to make any money; On the other hand, the film industry has gained a reputation for churning out sequels and superheroes at the expense of everything else – neither of which are now reliably profitable.
Bloody hell, that’s a dark paragraph. I didn’t even mention TikTok. But don’t worry, because I have all the solutions that no one asked me to. This is my five-step plan to save the film industry – Welcome, David Zaslav.
Restoring theatrical exclusivity
Unlike everything else on this list, this step is actually incredibly easy. When the average person can wait up to 17 days to watch all but the biggest movies without leaving their house, why should they spend money on a babysitter, gasoline, and a trunk-sized Diet Coke?
Disney seems to be one of the few major studios to realize this. After sending a series of new Pixar films straight to streaming during the pandemic, its first post-Covid original project, racist, quietly became the 10th highest-grossing film of the year once it refused to leave theaters or come to streaming for a few months. It’s really not rocket science.
Stop trying to make a billion dollars
Look, I appreciate that this point may not sit well with Hollywood’s billionaire class. But I think there has to be some acceptance that 2019’s massive box office run — which saw nine films gross more than $1 billion — may not return anytime soon. The superhero boom seems to be well past its peak, and there’s no regular movie-watching norm to replicate it even if a reliable blockbuster trend takes its place. In an increasingly discriminating popular culture, achieving true four-dimensional success may no longer be a realistic goal.
More plausible is the idea that Hollywood can thrive through smaller, more directly targeted films. A year like 2024, when a top-grossing film makes something in the region of $700 million, doesn’t look so bad if it can be backed up with plenty of $100 million-$200 million hits. Which brings me to another, more unpopular point…
Producing more medium budget films
Yes, that sounds a lot like wishful thinking. But when Hollywood executives seemed unable to predict hits even a few years ago, spending an entire studio’s budget on a handful of splashy IPs seems, to me, downright naive. In an environment where a $200 million budget is as likely to hit the mainstream as a $90 million budget, why would you spend $200 million at all?
More than just throwing art on the wall and hoping it sticks, this may have the dual benefit of getting people back into the habit of going to the movies by increasing the number of films shown. There are only so many times one can go back for repeat viewings Garfield movieafter all.
Turn off the complementary tap
Do you think the last point was overly optimistic? Again, this is more about habit reinforcement than anything else. Like it or not, the film industry has earned a reputation for producing sequels, superheroes, and more. Once this type of public opinion emerges, it is difficult to change. The more people get fed up with what’s on offer and turn the offer off completely, the harder it is to get them to invest again.
the answer? No more sequels. Just for a while, I promise. Take A24 as an example – a studio with a reputation for telling original and interesting stories, which has created a cult following among the group most likely to go to the movies: 18-30 year olds. If the industry as a whole regains its reputation for delivering good, crowd-pleasing, interesting stuff, there’s no reason why movies can’t regain some much-needed wow factor.
to summarise…
Of course, I appreciate that all of this is unlikely to happen, if only because none of it is likely to increase profits in a single quarter. For many years, ownership of a media company or movie studio has been an easy way to print money, and it will take some serious shocks to shake the industry out of that mindset.
However, Hollywood has been through the wringer before and come out the other side. A similar abundance of bloated, expensive, and unpopular entertainment in the 1960s gave rise to the New Hollywood movement—widely considered the city’s artistic golden age. Could another change in 50 years give us the same thing?
