Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Future of the Film Industry

On June 12, 2013 Steven Spielberg and George Lucas spoke about the future of the movie business at the USC School of Cinematic Art. The conclusion: everything is about to change.

Spielberg said, and I quote:

"There's going to to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen mega budget movies are going to crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm"

The paradigm Spielberg is referring is relating to distribution. In the Internet/Netflix/Videogames era, people don't have time enough to go to the movies the way they used to so the weekly premiere system is about to collapse.

According to Spielberg and Lucas in the future only a few movies will be premiere on the movie theaters under a scheme similar to Broadway, a long period of exhibition (maybe a year) and much more expensive tickets. The rest of the movies will go directly to our TVs through a VOD system.

Just a month after the Spielberg's prophecies, The New York Times made a note entitled "Weekend Box Office Reflects a Season of Big-Budget Stumbles" in which count no three or four but half-dozen mega budget movies crashing into the ground.

R.I.P.D., Turbo, Pacific Rim, White House Down, The Lone Ranger and After Earth were the chosen ones. All these movies have budgets over $130 million and all of them failed on the box-office side. The biggest fail was maybe The Long Ranger, with a budget over the $215 million (over $300 million if include the marketing), the movie made only $29,210,849 during its opening weekend according to box office mojo. So we're not sure about what is going to happen in the future but so far Spielberg and Lucas seem to have a crystal ball. If you don't believe me, go and watch Minority Report.

Here you can see part of the Spielberg and Lucas interview:


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