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."
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.