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No More
Movies
The End of Big Productions
By Daniel Muniz
George Lucas, the outrageously successful creator of the Star Wars
and Indiana Jones franchises, insists that the era for big
production movies are almost over. In fact, his movie company
Lucasfilm is getting out of making movies altogether and is now
moving into television and possibly Internet ventures.
Lucas cites the insanity of spending 100 million dollars to produce
a film and another 100 million dollars just to promote it. He
explains to Daily Variety:
“Spending $100 million on
production costs and another $100 million on P&A makes no sense.”
“For that same $200 million I can make 50-60 two-hour movies. That's
120 hours as opposed to two hours. In the future market, that's
where it's going to land, because it's going to be all pay-per-view
and downloadable.”
“You've got to really have a brand. You've got to have a site that
has enough material on it to attract people.”
And he is
someone who should know because he has done it himself with his own
money and he has done very well at it. But the Star Wars creator
developed a captivating franchise that thrilled audiences for
decades but Lucas also knows that he is simply the exception because
there are plenty of expensive flops that ended with staggering
losses. And he also knows that all the promoting in the world
doesn’t make a movie any better.
In fact in today’s environment, making a film has become a huge risk
because of the enormous costs involved.
Perhaps the new direction for cinematography is inevitable because
of the math. That is, for $200 million 60 movies can be produced
with the possibility of many of them becoming a blockbuster instead
of just making one expensive movie and then not being able to break
even.
Maybe it won’t be long before a low budget but high quality movie
runs circles around the big production companies. The day may soon
come in which independent filmmakers may not need gargantuan budgets
or the backing of big studios to competitively compete directly with
Hollywood.
Perhaps the handwriting is already on the wall because the hardware
to produce high quality productions is now so much cheaper and more
sophisticated and that could be open the door to a new frenzy of
competition.
But overall, the past several decades has seen the collapse of the
theater industry.
Except for teenagers and young adults, the general public is no
longer interested in going to the movies anymore. In fact, a mere
nine percent of the population goes to the theaters.
On the home front, wide screen high definition television sets with
CD quality surround sound makes home theaters pretty impressive. And
as the cost of this new technology continues to plummet, more people
will be installing better and cheaper equipment in their own living
rooms thus it is very possible that the home theater will totally
dominate the movie market instead of the theater chain.
That is not to say that the public is totally disinterested with
going to the movies because there is still a tremendous demand for
non-traditional films like the Passion of the Christ and the Star
Wars franchise. Those were the kinds of films that got the people
who hadn’t gone to the movies in years back inside a theater.
However, Hollywood doesn’t see it that way, which is why the Passion
and the Star Wars prequels were self-financed.
Hollywood still has a myopic view of what they think the public has
an appetite to see on the silver screen and they have paid a very
steep price for their arrogance but they still do not intend to
adapt to the market. As a result, the movie industry will continue
to decline.
But the Internet and low cost hardware and software may very well
revolutionize the entire movie industry.
Online distribution may indeed be the wave of the future for people
accessing movies. Although such a concept was considered outlandish
a decade ago, the enormous popularity of the web, especially amongst
the youth, now makes that scenario a real possibility in the
not-to-distant future.
The music industry is already experiencing this phenomenon with
people paying money to download songs instead of going to a record
store and buying a CD.
And as Internet bandwidth continues to widen to allow more and
faster traffic, perhaps someday in the near future it will be a snap
for someone to find a movie online and buy it and then quickly
download it.
Inevitably, accessing movies through the Internet is only a matter
of time since technology is constantly improving. And since it is
already a snap to purchase and download about any song over the net
then perhaps someday it will be just as easy to obtain about any
available movie.
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