Barry Diller Headed 2 Hollywood Studios. He Now Says The Movie Business Is Dead
Barry Diller made his name in the film industry as the chairman and CEO of two Hollywood studios, Paramount Pictures and what was then 20th Century Fox. Now, he is declaring the industry dead.
"The movie business is over," Diller said in an exclusive interview with NPR on the sidelines of the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, a media and technology conference in Idaho. "The movie business as before is finished and will never come back."
Yes, that has to do with a substantial decline in ticket sales and the closure of movie theaters during the coronavirus pandemic. But Diller, the chairman and senior executive of IAC, a company that owns Internet properties, said, "It is much more than that."
He makes it sound like Hollywood and big production companies was the be all end all. He puts quite a bit of blame on streaming.
Personally I’d place more of the blame on the people in the industry. Hearing out of touch pompous pricks lecture you about and or blame you for everything under the sun is quite tiresome.
Perhaps with the demise of the big production companies we might see more competition get off the ground. There’s more then a few indie studios who’ve consistently been able to put out amazing work with decent acting, from people who notably aren’t Hollywood stars, online that blows a lot of Hollywood’s crap out of the water. Quite a bit of it of it is also done on a shoestring budget compared to the blank checks some Hollywood Blockbusters have.
A lot of it is actually interesting content on Youtube. Military Arms Channel, Garand Thumb, Primitive Technology, Growling Sidewinder, Hot Thai Kitchen.....The list goes on. I don't watch TV anymore and The last entertaining movie I saw was Dead Pool.
He could not be more right.
I'll miss it. But it's sucked for the last 20 yrs. ?
John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, Peter Lorre, Carey Grant, ...
Mae West, Myrna Loy, Ann Margret, Raquel, Natalie, ...
There are some exceptions, LOTR, for one. Love Yellowstone.
Why pay money so they can tell me I'm racist, or not gay enough.
Yeah whatever. The last time movies died the 70's happened. Dirty Harry. Star Wars. The Godfather. Apocalypse Now. One Flew Over the Coockoos Nest. Propaganda will always live on.
<nervously looks at AMC stonk>
The deadest thing in commercial real estate is a movie theater.
Best friend was a set builder on a crew for 25 years, working on every 'Mission Impossible' production and 40+ major films.
It is over. He has not worked in almost 2 years.
Films are art, but the 90 minute to two hour structure is obsolete. You no longer have to cram a story into that narrow window.
You can achieve much more character development in a series or mini-series than in a one-shot movie, and with the advancing technology, huge studio budgets are no longer necessary for decent visual effects.
I'd gladly take more Mandalorian over a Star Wars movie, and something like the Chernobyl miniseries is more memorable to me than any Tom Cruise action monstrosity ever was.
Yes, people are now binge watching series on Netflix. So much of Netflix is now produce by Netflix and most predictably promote what I call the "Agenda". When I first got on Netflix 1n 1999 they were completely different. Obscure foreign films, classics, independents, documentaries. Over the past ten years I would have a hard time finding anything to watch. I ditched them with "Cuties". Movies same thing THE AGENDA!!!
After Cuties and the Obamas investing in them, I said "no more."
Excellent points.
Chernobyl was incredible.
I get your point, but there will always be a place for a perfectly chiselled haiku among the epic poems.
It's one of the reasons I so prefer Frost to Ginsberg.
As someone who is very interested in this topic and has researched it quite a bit in the past I will say this is due to a variety of factors including but not limited to:
Death of story: pursuit of propaganda — Humans can’t help but try to interject their take on life into art... unfortunately for Hollywood they didn’t know where to draw the line. For the last 20 years, movies have become a series of mashed together “teachable moments” instead of just a purely good story being told. And people are SICK of being preached to, especially when the values they are exposed to don’t necessarily align with their own. It’s almost as if Project Mockingbird has been running the show 🤔
Fake, Fake, Fake — while the quality of CGI and effects really took us all by storm, eventually knowing that everything is filmed in front of a green screen forces the magic out of the movie. I think people are tired of the constant use of CGI in nearly every movie and as a way to avoid expensive traveling, set design, and world building. And many times the quality isn’t what it should be, and if you happen to be a discerning viewer, you spend more time wondering who they hired to produce SciFi channel level graphics than enjoying the show.
Expense and Enjoyment — People can sit at home and enjoy movies with their favorite food, alcohol, and without putting pants on. Trips to the movie theater have become cost-prohibitive for many (pre-pandemic shutdown).
Excessively Collaborative Writing Teams — Ever wonder what the hell you just watched at the end of a movie that seemed to have no flow, no continuity, and no storyline? This goes hand in hand with point 1, but expands on the idea of loss of story. Around the time Jurassic Park came out in the late nineties and DVDs were gaining popularity, the industry was forever changed. Hollywood became increasingly interested in pleasing global audiences (think: China) and less concerned with the US a domestic audience. Also every movie written today is not the story told by some genius screenwriter in a basement typing away—it may start that way but quickly becomes convoluted as every script has a “pass” done by additional writers who specialize in action, drama, comedy, and wokeism. A movie about a cowboy and a horse becomes a movie about a divorceè on a farm with a lesbian daughter who breeds and rescues horses.
Fall of Celebrities — the bloom is off the rose for many when it comes to celebrities. Once thought to be glamorous and beautiful, we now see celebs as grifting, whiny, pandering, nasty people with ungrateful hearts and questionable morals. For those of us in the WWG1WGA movement — it’s even worse than that as we see the evils of Hollywood and the abuse and terror that its elites have wreaked over the years. IYKYK... and now I can barely stomach most movies and I skip over many because of the evil, washed up celebs spouting their propaganda makes me not care to even spend 5 minutes watching their “art”.
YES YES YES
Guy at work just bought two normal tickets for Black Widow and it was something like 33 dollars.
That’s one good thing that happened from this Covid hoax
Fucken yay! Marvel Universe for grown kiddies -DIE ALREADY!!
Who watches that GCI heavy, video game with no physics model, animated by a chimp looking shite?
What a sucking chest wound it has been for people with mature tastes for 15 years or so.
Not according to all my $AMC and $POPCRN stocks, it isn’t
I'm surprised this asshat didn't blame "Qanon" for it.