Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread • Page 249

Horrible news. It’s all I watch lately.

 

Time to rewatch and then maybe steal my dad’s DVDs if I don’t make it through before it goes.

 

Is there a thread for HGTV shows?

 

There’s a legit chance that three Best Picture nominees (Marriage Story, The Irishman, The Two Popes) are Netflix movies this year.

When do the theaters cave and include them in their BP marathons?

 

I’m just glad Netflix finally has some good original movies. I’m still cringing at the thought of Bright.

 

Streaming services buying up old theaters seems bad

 

I see the negative sides for sure but I still call it a net positive.

 

Vertical integration is always bad. How long until there are Amazon Prime theaters, Disney+ theaters, and so on?

The flip side of this is that theaters sort of forced their hand by blackballing Netflix movies from theaters. There is a lot of blame to go around.

 

I know we were just talking about this days ago, but I didn’t expect an announcement about it happening so quickly!

 

Kinda surprised Disney doesn’t have a theater chain actually

 

it's been illegal for 70 years but it looks like that won't be the case anymore
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. - Wikipedia.

 

Wild

 

Yeah it’s very bad

 

Slashfilm had a good breakdown of the whole thing last week

With the Removal of a Historic Court Ruling, the Movie Landscape as We Know It Might Change Forever

 

Idk how it’s bad to have one theater, especially in the context of they “saved” an iconic theater that was closed and thus would have been lost, but maybe I’m just not understanding the larger implications of it?

 

worried about the precedent it sets , if they own one theater nothing to stop them from owning more
but saving the one historic theater is a nice gesture

 

Read the article I posted

 

The linked article has a pretty good breakdown for what is positive and (more likely) negative about the change.

 

Lmaooo oops can you tell I replied before finishing the thread

 

Nvm I did see that post but I was dumb and didn’t think it was about the same thing bc it says court ruling and I got confused

 

Yeah better than them closing in the end

 

Giving Netflix credit for "saving" theaters that are closing partly because of streaming services like Netflix is missing the bigger implications of a vertically integrated film pipeline.

 

Movie theaters were closing long before Netflix. You can also criticize a vertically integrated movie pipeline while at the same time being happy that it at least helps saving some actual brick and mortar establishments, which are a bonus to communities.

 

Box office grosses were climbing before Netflix and other streaming services started to eat away at their profits. The U.S. box office more than doubled between 1999 and 2009, but 2009 to 2018 growth (2019 isn't over yet) went from 10.5 million to 11.8 million. When you factor in inflation and a rising population, they are making less money. That is because of streaming services. The recession was blamed at first, but even as the economy has recovered theaters haven't been able to recover.

During this same time, way more movies were released (578 to 921) while a handful of blockbusters break records, which means that unless a film is an event (superheroes or lightsabers) people decide to watch what is already available on streaming and wait for it to come to that service, if they even remember it.

Netflix isn't doing it to save communities. They decided that they want one hundred percent of the gross rather than what they would split with theaters. Every dollar spent at a Netflix theater reduces the likelihood those people spend it at a normal theater, which means it becomes less profitable for an aspiring filmmaker or small distributor to release in traditional theaters. At the same time, Disney is making insane demands on theaters for the right to show their films, requiring longer release windows and a bigger percentage of the gross, forcing out more small films. What used to be a creative new way to release films becomes just another studio giant that controls not only production but the entire distribution process.

This stuff is moving so fast that we lose sight of how much has changed. It was such a crazy story when you heard that a major filmmaker was making a television show with a famous actor and it was going to be on Netflix. Just a year or two later you started to see movies starring Adam Sandler and Will Smith. We are taking it for granted that they aren't going to do what all corporations do when their monopolies become closer to reality.

What happens when an actor badmouths a Netflix film on Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert? We saw how everyone tripped over themselves to run to Disney's defense when Martin Scorsese offered the most mild of criticism of Marvel films. Now you are in a situation where Netflix (and Disney and others) will finance the production of the film, distribute the film to their theaters, and control the streaming rights. It is a terrible arms race that is going to crowd out a lot of independent work.