Steven Spielberg on Wednesday predicted an "implosion" in the film industry is inevitable, whereby a half dozen or so $250 million movies flop at the box office and alter the industry forever. What comes next -- or even before then -- will be price variances at movie theaters, where "you're gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you're probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln."Now what do I think? I think this is silly. Will there be changes in the experience at the movies? There may be.
I think that movie studios, for the most part, realize what movies are going to make them money. Occasionally, you'll have a movie that will lose money. This happens as it might happen in any business. Studios have a pretty good feel for the direction of the movie industry though. Warner Brothers recently dropped a Dumb & Dumber sequel. This was right after a Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson movie completely flopped at the theaters. It's a smart move based on solid data. It's been almost 20 years since the first Dumb & Dumber debuted. There was a poorly done, poorly received prequel. The only thing that this movie had going for it was seeing the two main actors back together again. The Internship was hoping for the same thing. It wasn't a sequel to anything, but it was trying to reunite two actors that people loved seeing together. Warner Brothers probably saw how this movie performed and decided that a reunion is no reason to produce a movie.
The studios have a pretty good feel for the pulse of their audience. Who doesn't have a good feel for the pulse of their audience? Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I know. This is probably blasphemous for a movie fan to say. But, it's true. Were the Star Wars prequels even half as good as the originals? How was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Steven Spielberg is still making good movies, but I don't think they are enjoyed by the general movie-going audience.
There won't be varying prices at theaters. That's ridiculous. People have a hard enough time with the fact that they can get certain discounts or not get certain discounts. If you vary the price, you confuse your audience. Will actors and directors start seeing less money? Will we stop seeing as many big-time movie stars that carry a movie? Yes. Big-time movie stars don't carry a movie like they used to. Look at Will Smith's After Earth. It's performed dreadfully. Meanwhile you have movies that cost very little, like The Purge, and make it to the top of the box office.
More so than ever before, the movie-going audience is deciding the direction of the movie world. We are provided more options with home theaters, Netflix, and other entertainment options. This keeps the cost relatively fixed. I do have this to say though: if you want to continue seeing a certain type of a movie, go see it in the theater. This is how we shape the future of movies.
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