Steven Spielberg and George Lucas describe dire developments at the unveiling of USC’s School Of Cinematic Arts (SCA) Complex (photo via Zimbio)
No need for me to editorialize. Whether I agree or disagree, these ominous remarks deserve more than an offhand reaction. I will say it’s interesting to see the two men often credited with formulating the modern blockbuster template for the high concept franchise mentality with Jaws, Close Encounters, Star Wars and Indiana Jones are now joining the clarion call of resistance tinged with a fair measure of despair.
(THR) Steven Spielberg on Wednesday predicted an “implosion” in the film industry is inevitable, whereby a half dozen or so $250 million movies flop at the box office and alter the industry forever. What comes next — or even before then — will be price variances at movie theaters, where “you’re gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.” He also said that Lincoln came “this close” to being an HBO movie instead of a theatrical release.
George Lucas agreed that massive changes are afoot, including film exhibition morphing somewhat into a Broadway play model, whereby fewer movies are released, they stay in theaters for a year and ticket prices are much higher. His prediction prompted Spielberg to recall that his 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial stayed in theaters for a year and four months.
The two legendary filmmakers, along with CNBC anchor Julia Boorstin and Microsoft president of interactive entertainment business Don Mattrick, were speaking at the University of Southern California as part of the festivities surrounding the official opening of the Interactive Media Building, three stories high and part of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Lucas and Spielberg told USC students that they are learning about the industry at an extraordinary time of upheaval, where even proven talents find it difficult to get movies into theaters. Some ideas from young filmmakers “are too fringe-y for the movies,” Spielberg said. “That’s the big danger, and there’s eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.”
Lucas lamented the high cost of marketing movies and the urge to make them for the masses while ignoring niche audiences. He called cable television “much more adventurous” than film nowadays.
“I think eventually the Lincolns will go away and they’re going to be on television,” Lucas said. “As mine almost was,” Spielberg interjected. “This close — ask HBO — this close.”
“We’re talking Lincoln and Red Tails — we barely got them into theaters. You’re talking about Steven Spielberg and George Lucas can’t get their movie into a theater,” Lucas said. “I got more people into Lincoln than you got into Red Tails,” Spielberg joked.
Spielberg added that he had to co-own his own studio in order to get Lincoln into theaters.
“The pathway to get into theaters is really getting smaller and smaller,” Lucas said.
Mattrick and Spielberg also praised Netflix, prompting Boorstin to ask Spielberg if he planned to make original content for the Internet streamer. “I have nothing to announce,” said the director.
For the longest time, I have hated the way that movies are marketed now that the “multiplex” controls everything. It’s all about getting as much money as you can quickly. I would like to see the weekend box office top 10 shifted from “total box office” to “per screen average” this way all movies are weighted the same way. Sure, “Man of Steel” is going to make millions of dollars opening weekend (but that may drop off in the second and third weekends) because it opened on 3000 screens. But what about “The Bling Ring” that only opened on a handful of screens? If those theaters were packed then the average dollar per screen would be higher. I would love to see “event films” drop from playing on thousands of screens to hundreds. No film since “Titanic” has had “legs” at the box office. You want your film to stay in theaters longer? Limit the number of people that can see it! Extend the video release date to 6 months or even a year. Block on demand and cable showings for up to a year or even longer! Everyone has “Veruca Salt” syndrome and want it all now. Microwave popcorn takes too long! If films could develop legs and less films were made in a year, quality would go up and it’s very possible that ticket prices would go back down. Not that corporate greed, product placement and merchandising don’t have anything to do with it but it’s just my wish list/theory.
The franchise slum Hollywood mafia
now delivering predictive programming
for their own, next, level of ‘CON’–solidation.
Surely BOTH stood, and stand, at the helm
of the franchise slum reduction of ALLLL
culture.
BOTH served up massive, on cue, ‘on board’
predictive programming and promotion for
EUGENICS and Globalism.
BOTH also skilfully ‘perception managed’
massive Globalist–RED CHINA handover
and vast POST American debasement.
NO TEARS for this Hollywood.
My friends and I have always discussed this outcome where there will be a year where the blockbuster falls on its ass. Spielberg just validated what many of us have thought for years. But you know what fuck it when you’re all about the buck expect to reep the consequences. Greed kills.
In some ways they’ve done it to themselves – these two directors, along with Abrams and Nolan and the like. They’ve made the super expensive blockbuster movies almost the norm, they’ve contributed mightily to the changed expectations of movie goers, and now they foresee a price they did not expect, but it’s part and parcel of their methodology, to be frank.
Would you include James Cameron in that group too?
It is true, intentionally or unintentionally, however we want to read it. These two filmmakers more than anyone else contributed to the changed expectations you mention (Abrams and Nolan aren’t in their league). Spielberg’s Jaws and Lucas’ Star Wars changed everything. Anyone who studies film knows this, how Jaws was the first summer blockbuster, it altered distribution, shifted the focus on getting everyone to the theater rather than a more gradual approach of opening a film only in NYC and LA first before moving to smaller markets. The numbers were through the roof. Unfortunately, over time, that led to more derivative efforts (sometimes by Spielberg and Lucas themselves) focused on high profits rather than high art.
James Cameron is kind of a weird case. As a writer-director, he’s kind of a commercial auteur. I’d probably loop Spielberg and Lucas here, but not Abrams or Nolan. I’m in the camp who believes Titanic is a great film, which was commercialized on a mass scale. I don’t think though for a second Cameron is as important as Spielberg and Lucas in terms of the history of cinema; he followed their lead and in some ways upped the anti, making a film Titanic that appealed to all demographics and was unparalleled in its global reach.
Absolutely. Also, these guys are talking as if an “implosion” in the industry would be a bad thing. Every year, a bunch of loud, banal, pointless, expensive dreck comes out of the major studios, and maybe Hollywood needs a good implosion to end this passionless triumph of craft and chrome over creativity that has made so much of modern cinema about the intellectual equivalent of a fireworks display.
I actually was convinced Avatar would be that film. I thought Cameron had it coming with his overconfidence and needed an ego check. The media was pulling the Titanic preordained failure thing in the months before the release. And then it’s performance shocked me, since unlike Titanic, it wasn’t the complete package and was more genre fare, skewing more male.
Here’s an interesting question:
Is there really that much of a difference between the mega uber blockbuster movies and the cookie-cutter prestige films someone like Harvey Weinstein produces every year?? Though both have specific aims, the former to achieve box office heights and the latter to win awards thus driving box office, both types of films are highly engineered and crafted and speak to a lack of vision in most of Hollywood cinema today.
I agree – the aggressive calculation behind Transformers is the same as that of Beasts of the Southern Wild. Yes, I know it was made very independently but it adhered almost biologically to every ‘indie’ cliche, both cinematographically, plot-wise, characters, etc. It’s the same as a hyperproduced pop album vs the fake folk ‘rough sound’ of the Moldy Peaches. And both annoy me!
Beasts might be a little extreme of a comparison, since it was very character driven and not as plot driven. But I think you understand what I mean, and you have some good points regarding that film’s cinematography, how there is even an indie ‘cliche’ now. Maybe that explains how very few first-time directors are able to build lasting careers, because they try to be artistic and don’t keep in mind they need to build an audience or they won’t get the money in the first place to make another film. It is similar to the music industry (good point): you have the pop dance hits that get radio time and the kitsch niche indie bands that think they have artistic cred—and both will never make it long term since they’re not made to endure.
It’s something to think about, how even the majority of Hollywood’s prestige movies are just as rote and derivative as summer blockbusters.
Can you list a few of those “Indie cliches” that you claim it so fervently adhered to? I’ll bet the word “Malick” will come up, right?
While you’re at it, explain how the movie would have been better if it didn’t use “Indie cliches”.
*stretches arm out in front of Kevin*
Don’t bother, man. He’s not worth it.
Malick without the *point* of Malick is cheap. Terence Malick shoots films that look at the world the way the human eye does, and he creates fluid, authentic and genuine visions. Beasts has all the subtlety of an instagram photo – sure it can look beautiful but it says nothing. I don’t even want to get into the weakness of a plot that hides behind psuedo-simplicity, and also turns intense black poverty (and having a few white people in the Bathtub does not at all make it a depiction of multi-racial poverty) into a whimsical phony world that hides behind its self-declared ‘magical realism’. As KT says, it’s actually not made to endure – and that’s the true problem with it.
Already happening – Angels in America and Carlos were made for TV.
The Oscars will be around for awhile. The industry won’t resist offering up that piñata.
People have been saying this for decades and Hollywood is still doing fine. Old men past their prime get whiny when some exec turns down their pitch and lash out in these self-righteous editorials about the impending collapse of the world. Have a nap Spielberg.
My only real concern with that is this:
What will happen to the Oscars, and the “Best” movies that are released in theaters?? Will they all be released on HBO, and no longer be eligible???
That would REALLY SUCK!!
I wonder if the newest technologies in film making are dictating the types of movies being made, or is it strictly the audience? These 250 million dollar mega movies are becoming a bit restrictive. So much is being poured into them as theatres become less intimate and more extravaganza based. Smaller films, I would think, will have a harder and harder time getting into mainstream cinemas because exhibitors want the big payoffs to cover their rising costs, and studios will feel that audiences are demanding nothing more than 3-D blockbusters because that’s the technology that is being promoted. Perhaps this is what Spielberg is alluding to. As the population ages (the boomers, the largest group, are going to the movies far less regularly because these superhero extravaganzas don’t appeal to them as much as films like Argo and Lincoln, which, in the near future, will most likely end up being HBO-ready instead. I think Spielberg has an extremely valid point.
Smaller films, I would think, will have a harder and harder time getting into mainstream cinemas because exhibitors want the big payoffs to cover their rising costs
Take a look at the little theater where I saw Mud a couple of weeks ago. Less than 50 seats — flat on the floor, no frills, like an old-style revival-house. This screen is part of a local 16-screen multiplex. It felt like a private screening in a really strange residential “media room” — I sort of loved it.
If theaters need to exhibit movies this way, it’s fine by me. In a few years, digital distribution will make it as cheap and easy and pushing the button on a remote control. No print cost. No projectionist.
On the other hand, in 10 or 12 years, we could all have screens in our apartments that cover an entire wall. Coming soon.
Multimedia and today’s convergence culture has changed traditional conceptions of each medium and the ways projects within each medium are made and received. Embrace the change or lament it, but the change has begun and it will only continue in directions we have yet to see.
DVD’s will be obsolete in ten years. Online streaming and VOD will be the new mode of exhibition and maybe even distribution. Theaters will only play the blockbusters and tent-pole productions guaranteed to make money. The quality will still exist, but it will not be defined by the medium. There may even be cases where theater sections are divided between “texting” and “no texting.”
This sucks for the industry because people going into it will have a harder time making a profit, and it might suck for quality if people aren’t given the money to make projects. But it may also be good for viewers who have more accessibility to a wide array of works. Who knows how it will go, but both the audience and the producers will have to compromise quality, money, and accessibility on some level.
If what you say about DVDs is true (extremely doubtful), then Blu Ray will also be obsolete within ten years.
Oh goodie, all of the films I go see are going to be $1.25!
HA! I hear ya.
I mean come on how long are people going to accept the “crouching Tiger” fighting in a film like Hansel and Gretel? I just watched the preview for it on HBO and just shook my head. If this is the way of the future then someone better start really questioning the intelligence level of all of us. I can’t wait for the day when some reporter doing a spoof walks up to a teenager and asks them who Abraham Lincoln was and they say a Vampire slayer.
One of the problems is the prostituting of actors like Renner, who started out making small quality movies and moved into the “action” super hero flick. He’s better than that. Let some low-level non-acting actor do those roles.
I think we are all forgetting an important variable here. There is not THAT much discrepancy between people that enjoy big, action packed blockbusters from Michael Bay and those who enjoy the more “Oscar Bait-y” films. Remember John Nash in A Beautiful Mind? His original idea was that the best result does not come from everyone in the group doing what is best for himself. It is when everyone in the group is doing what is best for himself AND the group. That is why filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorsese are popular and successful; their films impress and entertain people across the board. They make money and entertain while also winning awards. Other filmmakers whose content reflects a more avant garde style may choose to take their material to cable or netflix etc. But it does not mean one way of marketing and distributing pictures is the correct way. I, for one, will spend $17 seeing Transformers 12 in IMAX 3D someday, but also am an avid film buff, neurotically reciting past Oscar winners and stats. The variable here is plain and simple: avid movie lovers with no category or genre bias…and I think there are more of them out there than we think. In the last decade, we have seen such a mix of Best Picture winners including fantasy blockbuster LOTR: The Return of the King, small, gritty and violent turns by the Coens and Scorsese, a silent film and a film with an almost entirely unknown and Indian cast. If anything I would say that MORE people are watching both kinds of movies and both kinds are being equally hailed and hated. Filmmakers are broadening their horizons a bit to attract a different demographic but it is working! They are doing what is best for themselves AND the group. I hope one day a Chris Nolan blockbuster wins Best Picture, but that does not mean only the moneymakers should win from now on. Do I think there will be more and more flops at the movies? Yes. Does it hurt the art and legacy of cinema? Only in the eyes of the close minded.
could not agree more that the current model will implode, but the Broadway model is strange given the number of theaters….. 10 to 15 thousand?
What I don’t get is the crazy budgets….. the US film industry is crazy bloated. will we see cheap, high quality works from places like China flood the international market?
Hard to believe Bong Joon-ho made Snowpiercer for $37 million. That’s a 1980 sci-fi budget. And it still looks vast, lavish, polished.
Cloud Atlas cost only $100 million (for 6 timelines including the far past and 2 futuristic futures) and looked really great.
John Carter
Battleship
Jack the Giant Slayer
After Earth
It would seem it’s already happening. However, these guys are failing to consider the worldwide state of the film industry, where flops like those are making boatloads of cash and helping to keep Hollywood alive even when it stumbles.
We could be adding The Lone Ranger to your list soon, Paddy.
Yet still at this point I have read that the box office 2013 is 7% higher than 2012. I admire Spielberg and Lucas … but I don’t buy this negative doomsday stuff. Lincoln was a great movie and luckily it made it into the theaters and did well …
How much did Fast and Furious … 6 cost? It’s one of this year’s highest earning films!
Iron Man 3 was costly but money well spent – probably the biggest film of 2013.
There have been flops and there have been box office surprises … it will continue.
You’re wrong, Doddi. It’s 7% lower than last year’s take at the same stage (Jan-May).
7% wow! What abysmal figures.
Now, now, don’t be like that Ryan.
You mean we will be.
‘“… where “you’re gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.” He also said that Lincoln came “this close” to being an HBO movie instead of a theatrical release.”’
I enjoyed mainstream flicks in theater from time to time. But speaking for myself in case it rang true, to pay multiple times a price of a quality film a la Lincoln for a strategically produced pop-corn flick would be to me […] the end of […] going to cinema.
(By the way, +Charlie being Iron Man is one thing, but also […] Holmes rather than JLaw [Watson (!?)], isn’t it ironic?) (+Not pulling a N**asha; I know who Dern and Nolte are.)
To be honest…Lincoln should’ve been on HBO.
This is why you’re not Spielberg. You and your attitude just threw away 300 million dollars. You threw away 2 Oscars too.
Incorrect, I suck at knowing what should’ve been on at the pictures.
Money and Oscars are great, but from a purely artistic perspective it was an elegant film that was not especially cinematic and could’ve been more engaging (not to say that it wasnt engaging, but it had a somewhat monumental feel to it that didnt really fit in the cinemas for my tastes) if it was given a nice long untouched HBO quality television miniseries where it had more room to breath and could be digested in a more comfortable environment.
No, I agree. I think ‘The Queen’ also belonged on HBO, in fact I used to call it an HBO Original Movie that wound up on the big screen.
Yai! Less of a cast! Less financial means! Less of everything!!!
People, we should be PRAISING the fact that films like The Master, Cloud Atlas and Lincoln are still being made. To say “they should have just gone to HBO” is giving up on film as a medium. Praise these great films, get them the Oscars they so clearly deserve, and keep this amazing artform alive!
CLOUD ATLAS was my favorite movie last year, but from what I understand from book readers it might have been better as a miniseries. And GAME OF THRONES > CLOUD ATLAS.
I’m not buying the doomsday stuff, really. The film industry isn’t like the housing bubble. Sure, one huge flop can sink a studio (just ask UA), but other studios get to capitalize and steal that market share away. It is troubling that the studios are making such large bets on a small handful of projects, but these are pretty safe bets, honestly. They’ve been focus grouped and analyzed to creative death. I don’t see it as blind gambling. Its more like card counting or insider trading.
If it turned out that every studios’ big tentpole movie crashed and burned simultaneously one summer, then yeah, that might alter the paradigm. But what summer is that gonna happen? The one that will feature Avengers 2 and Star Wars Ep. 7? I think not. There’s still gold in them hills, people.
The issue of it being harder for smaller, more niche ideas pushing through and getting released by a studio is a different issue entirely, one that has been a problem for many, many years. As is the notion that the studios don’t want to make mid-level budgeted adult fare unless its Oscar bait, and they only have room for 2, maybe 3 of those a year on their slate. That’s definitely troubling, and I don’t see it getting better any time soon.
As a consumer, I am most excited about what TV is offering. I started buying box sets (Sopranos, Entourage, et al) and watch them on DVD. They are insightful and moving. I just don’t find that kind of “connection” to movies these days, and that’s sad. I enjoy going OUT to a movie and sitting with others and watching their reaction. But more and more I’m at home with the box sets.
If I could afford Netflix, I would probably do that. $5-$7 a movie tix is a good purchase — IF the movie is good.
I also like that movies can be streamed on line. It’s less of a cost and therefore you don’t feel so bad if the movie doesn’t live up to its hype.
Piss on 80% of the movies that earn a billion dollars. Piss on them.
A movie doesn’t need to earn a billion dollars in order for every single person associated with it to become richer.
Some people seem to think the filmmakers who made Lincoln suffered a financial blow for making it.
50 millionaires who made Lincoln collected more millions to add to the stack of millions they already had.
It all comes down to subject matter and they know it. In their old age they both decided to do movies about the past and people aren’t as interested in that, as say a movie about blue people on another planet. Maybe if they head back to space, they’ll both do better. lol
Big BO successes like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan are about the past… but they were released 15 yrs ago, maybe audiences have already changed since then. there are still plenty of films taking place in the past like The Great Gatsby, les Miserables or sherlock holmes that do pretty well, and fantasy movies set in the past (Pirates of the caribean, oz the great and powerful,…) that can rake in the big bucks.
seriously, I strongly believe you can still interest (young) people in “movies about the past” if you do it right, but if you film a tedious history lesson like spielberg did in lincoln then your audience is going to be limited to the (much) older crowd.
What is your proposal? To make Lincoln a CGI-heavy movie with Daniel Day-Lewis turning into a cat?
no, that is definitely not what i have in mind, though i liked the vampire hunter one more than the spielberg one. history is full of exciting stories and characters that could make awesome movies, so i’m disputing antoinette’s claim that audiences (esp. younger crowds) are not interested in history whatsoever, and arguing that it’s all abt storytelling, do you try to tell a compelling story or do you try to film a history lesson? as far as lincoln is concerned, even though spielberg’s movie bored me to death, it was still a critical and financial success so i guess there is also room for such “serious” historical films.
Sorry Christophe if Spielberg and Kushner wanted to make a talky, almost play-like film that was reflective on the great issues the US faced at the time, with no battle sequences just politicians talking their way out of that mess instead of “Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”, the very premise of which is preposterous.
The first thing that needs to be said is that although Red Tails didn’t do well at the box office some of that can be attributed to the screen play. The film itself is not a bad film and would have attracted a much broader audience had it encompassed a mucher more in depth view of how those young black pilots managed to become pilots. It should also be noted that Lincoln made money. And if you go even further The Life of Pi is also a throw back to a genre that isn’t laced with “adverse” or “edgy” insanity. Look at the international box office for Pi. Pi was thoughtful and intelligent. Not everyone just goes to the movies to be assaulted by visual effects. The Dark Knight Rises and I know many will disagree, but it suceeded in part because of The Dark Knight. I think that both Speilburg and Coppola may very well be onto something because I don’t see how the film business can really sustain itself with the skyrocketing prices of some of these films. Look at Oz The Great and Powerful or even John Carter. Get a few of those in a single year and that’s going to make everyone reassess their positioning of film.
As someone who just graduated from a well-regarded art school in the U.S., I must say I wish more filmmakers in addition to Spielberg would lend their voices to colleges across the country. Though I didn’t study in my school’s film department (photography here yo) save for two film history courses, almost all of the many film students I spoke to during the past few years displayed meek enthusiasm not only for the art of filmmaking, but also viewing classic films. Most of them haven’t even heard of Film Forum!
I believe this all stems from my generation’s main sources of inspiration, namely the internet, television, iphones, and the multiplexes. However, I honestly think there is genuine, nascent talent a brew in these students, but they need to be looking for inspiration in richer places.
@Christian, I find that hard to believe that film students don’t know “classic” movies. One of the many classes they have to take is “history of film” and I have seen some courses (English/Art) feature ONE major classic movie like Citizen Kane that they study for a full semester. So something is wrong with the school you and the others are going to. A really good “film” teacher will command that their students watch the classics.
Or did I read you wrong?
Filmmakers who want to make great serious films will increasingly go to places like HBO which is not risk averse. We are already seeing that with Soderbergh. The gap between windows like theatre, DVD, pay per view will shrink.
It is stunning to hear that ‘Lincoln’ nearly went to cable. Maybe a miniseries should be made that explores the characters in greater depth.
Agreed, a lot of hacks like Soderbergh will go to HBO. They’re perfect for the generic drivel that HBO/Stars/television in general is known for.
lol dummy
‘including film exhibition morphing somewhat into a Broadway play model, whereby fewer movies are released, they stay in theaters for a year and ticket prices are much higher’
i don’t see this happening the novice has spoken.people want more choices not less.isn’t that a reason some praise netflix. oh forget it…
What comes next — or even before then — will be price variances at movie theaters, where “you’re gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.”
you pretty much already have this with all the imax mania…
the bit about six $250 million films failing. and how many of those will be a sequel/remake/based on a novel/ comic book etc ??
bur as someone says in the article you put up.said something about television being much more adventurous than film nowadays.ah…
i guess $250 million thing would make the pathway to get into theaters smaller and smaller. ha ha.got to factor in. 😉
really i’m ready for the implosion.post implosion can’t be worse for me film wise than things are now.and if so i’d like to see how 😉
sorry ryan but what’s going on in this article. arrgh…
spielberg can talk about Some ideas from young filmmakers “are too fringe-y for the movies,”
and then the dangers of mega buck failing.where are the fringe-y stuff from young film makers and $200 million budgets ???
if the implosion happens maybe they can blame ignoring the niche audience. ha ha ha…
maybe you just had to be there…
*ducking*