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."
Films are art, but the 90 minute to two hour structure is obsolete.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.