A film professor I had explained the difference television and movies this way. Movies are about an emotional experience, usually experienced collectively. Television is inviting someone into your home to spend time with them. Obviously there is some overlap here but the point remains. We're going somewhere with a movie and TV involves an invitation of some kind.
When an audience rejects a movie it's usually because the experience doesn't live up to what was promised. Television fails because this person you've invited into your home has betrayed your trust by showing you something you didn't want to see. I believe these are the two issues that plague this kind of storytelling at the core.
There is a promise made when someone chooses to experience something based on what the enticement is. Everyone has different limits to what they tolerate from their entertainment. For example, Is this level of violence or sex appropriate for me or who I am watching this with? This introspection before the decision to experience the entertainment takes out the moral question of the work's existence. The late Roger Ebert once said something like "A movie is not what it is about, but how it is about.".
Solving the issue of trust between this promise of the entertainment experience the next step involves something much harder on the logistical level. How do we pay for all this?
I have to stipulate that changing the Hollywood business model of deficit financing probably can't be changed. If you pull on this thread you start getting into fixing things like the American tax system which is beyond the scope of this piece. So, if we keep the current financing model how do we work within that system to get the audience to pay for it and keep it going?
You have to change how the theatrical experience works. This is an old problem that goes back as long as I have been alive and it also involves issues of trust. For the price of a ticket I expect to see the best quality projection of light and sound and the audience being reasonably respectful when watching the movie. The theatre can control the technology. They can't control the audience. I will give you two solutions that might help with this experience.
The first is to bring back ushers. The good theatres have people check on how the experience is going once the film proper starts and occasionally as it is going. Ushers may have to double as security and I will acknowledge this would be difficult. Too many audiences treat a theatre like it is their living room.
The second solution involves the ads and trailers before a film. Depending on where you go it ranges from 20-40 minutes. You are not going to be able to get rid of the ads. Move both to after the film. They were called trailers for a reason. They followed the entertainment. For those that are waiting to see what is next they can chat about what they've seen and get excited about what could come next. Theatres are meant to be a communal experience. Let it be one.
Finally, let's address the cost of going out to a theatre. We all know it is high and untangling this knot would have to involve reworking at minimum how long a movie can remain in the theatre as well as the percentage of ticket sales that go to the theatre versus the studio that distributed the film. That too is beyond the scope of this piece. But we can address production costs of the films themselves.
We'll always have quirky indie pictures and blockbusters. What we need more of is the mid budget types. Say 30-40 million max. Genre pictures tend to do best here. But even those end up with inflated budgets. One recent example, unseen by me, very well received was Ryan Coogler's Sinners. The trailer was fantastic. But it's budget is crippled by two wild decisions. One is to shoot some of the film in Imax and the other is to use the same actor to play both brothers. Imax film is very expensive and the use of one actor for two roles increases your special effects budget. Therefore a film that could have been shot for about 30 million costs 100 million. This gamble paid off but it could have paid off even more.
I am an optimist and I believe Hollywood will survive merger and acquisition heaven. Hollywood will always produce content but the line between film and TV is looking more and more blurry and this bothers me. I also believe theatres will survive but they may not be the experience I grew up with. If the movie theatre experience ends up looking more like live theatre, ala Broadway, I wouldn't be surprised.
When I experience any kind of story, regardless of medium I enter into a promise with the creators. I trust that they are going to show me something new. They may even surprise me. And this is what keeps me optimistic about the future of entertainment.
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