"PUT A CHICK IN IT AND MAKE HER GAY!!!!"
Posted on 11/05/2023 6:19:18 AM PST by raccoonradio
Movie ticket sales dropped to $58.3 million this weekend, according to Deadline, as “Five Nights At Freddy’s,” “Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” — which all debuted last month — struggled to keep sales afloat in what would have been the release weekend for the Zendaya andTimothee Chalamet-led “Dune: Part Two,” which was delayed to 2024 amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
The $58.3 million sales is the third lowest of 2023’s weekend box office numbers, Deadline reported, noting Denis Villenueve’s “Dune: Part Two” could have supplied the box office with at least $50 million had it not been delayed to March 2024.
Horror flick and video game adaptation “Five Nights at Freddy’s” led the weekend’s movies with $5.4 million on Friday, and $17.8 million for the weekend, breaking past $100 million in total sales while simultaneously streaming on Peacock.
“Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” ranked behind “Five Nights at Freddy’s” with $3.6 million Friday and $11.9 million on the weekend, according to Deadline.
Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which has received praise from critics and mixed reviews from audiences, brought in $1.9 million on Friday and now has a total of $51.7 million in total ticket sales — a far cry from its $200 million budget.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The local theater closed its’ doors last month. (local to me was 25 miles away)
The movie industry has always had its problems — and the history and sociology of that is interesting — but it was in a reasonably good place prior to the advent of streaming. Movies succeeded or failed based first and foremost on ticket sales, which ultimately put viewers in control. A robust secondary market developed when VHS tapes, and later DVDs, appeared; this created a very long shelf life during which films could still recoup their costs, and that in turn expanded the limits on what the studios were willing to greenlight. Apart from a handful of blockbusters, licensing for broadcast was a distant third. And niche films could linger for years on the arthouse circuit, which was ok for films that were probably pretty low budget to begin with. This created openings for writers and directors with projects that depended on good writing, good stories and great acting— and that could be made inexpensively, because they didn’t need costly special effects.
Then came streaming. The core problem is that the big tech companies own the distribution systems, and the big tech companies dwarf the legacy movie studios in size. We are used to thinking of the big studios as titans. That’s true, as long as we recognize that they were big fish in a little pond. That all changed when big tech moved in. Amazon, Apple, AT&T and Comcast can buy the whole movie industry with chump change — and for the most part, they have. They bought the legacy studios largely in order to control their libraries of older films and shows in an effort to build market share in the pixel streaming business. But ultimately, big tech doesn’t care what the content is, and it shows.
The movie industry used to be run by people who, despite their many sins, at least lived, ate and breathed movies. Today the big studios are run as loss leaders for global conglomerates looking for an edge in the pixel ecosystem.
So now the reigning problems:
1. Streaming overexpanded. All the streamers are losing money. Consolidation is universally expected — after which the streamers, having used predatory pricing models to crush independent filmmakers and the theaters — will jack up prices. In the meantime, they are relentlessly squeezing every other part of the value chain in an effort to reduce their losses, and this has set off a race to the bottom on quality.
AT&T finally got tired of subsidizing a money losing streaming operation, and it dumped WarnerMedia via the spinoff and merger with Discovery, the king of trash tv. That’s a sad end for Warner Bros. and HBO, which used to be crown jewels back in the little pond. A lot of people expect Warner Bros. Discovery to be broken up and sold. It is deeply indebted and bleeding money. I only hope that happens before the current leadership runs it entirely into the ground.
On the plus side, maybe Warner Bros. Discovery will hold onto CNN long enough to give it the full Discovery treatment. CNN can become “Naked and Afraid of News,” Wolfie would be offered a severance package if he refuses to strip down, and infobabes would perform in the buff and would be hired with that in mind. The “journalists” would probably object that this is beneath their dignity, but they would be reminded that an adjoining division of their company routinely requires this of 20-something actors, both male and female, and it’s all about ratings so don’t take it personally. No one would be forced to do anything — that would be abusive — but hey, that’s the job, and if you don’t want it, we can find young hotties to read off a teleprompter who will.
(2) The big tech conglomerates are global companies with global platforms. That creates a steady background pressure to seek generic content for generic, lowest-common denominator viewers. And since the biggest markets of the future are in Asia ... well, they will jump through hoops to please the God King Emperor Xi.
(3) The bigger the company, the more susceptible it is to political pressure from above, financial strongarming from the venture capital crowd (which is also subject to political manipulation and corruption), and activist pressure from the woke mafia. We’ve learned that corporate America lives in terror of twitter mobs. The bigger and more concentrated the industry, the greater the problem becomes. We’re all familiar with Obama’s tech summits in the White House, when the tech CEOs gathered around a conference table to discuss their “responsibility” to “curate” the news. And we’re all familiar with the incorporation of the movie and tv industry into the incestuous democrat revolving door system on hiring and the informal, 24/7 networks of communication between the companies and their political minders. These are now the same people who control most of what happens in the movie and tv industries today. Entertainment media has become part of the Borg.
By comparison, the old movie industry used to be remarkably decentralized. Yes, the big legacy studios looked dominant, but barriers to entry were relatively low. Independent filmmakers could do their thing, and smaller studios had room to grow. Tenure at the top was uncertain and often short lived.
What should be done? First and foremost, the current streaming model needs to die. It is financially unsustainable, so something is going to change. We should be working for it to change in the right way. Not very long ago, the internet was universally heralded as something that would allow unprecedented decentralization in many domains. It has turned out to be an incredibly powerful force for consolidation, enforce conformity, and control. Somehow we need to enforce decentralization.
Maybe robust anti-trust action? In the movie business, maybe a strict separation of production and distribution? Maybe an end to subscription stovepiping, in which every movie and tv show would be universally available as PVOD across all platforms — possibly after a reasonably short period of exclusivity akin to the old theatrical window? If Apple makes a good movie — and there are a couple over there that I want to watch/rewatch — I shouldn’t need a subscription; I should be able to “buy a ticket” and rent or buy it PVOD or via a physical copy.
I’m open to suggestions. What we’re doing now ain’t working, except for the would-be commissars. The goal should be a diverse ecosystem with low barriers to entry and reasonable access to distribution for independent voices. But the streaming junta will have to be broken first.
Anti-Trust, what’s that?
When’s the last time we’ve broken up anything?
TCM is a great resource, but it is now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. And TCM was recently caught censoring classic movies -- with no notification to viewers.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
The Borg does what the Borg does.
We need to kill the Borg.
It’s a remake of a first-time release, and to be fair, Lynch’s Dune was difficult to follow if you didn’t already know the story. It had some great visuals, since they “borrowed” a lot of Giger’s ideas from Jodorowski’s failed attempt at the story. And Villeneuve seems to have done a good job so far of taking advantage of advances in cinematography to better bring the universe of Dune to life.
Some of the characters are a little weak (Liet should be a man, because he’s supposed to secretly be a Fremen Sietch leader, as well as Chani’s father, Momoa as Idaho is basically just being Momoa, and Lady Jessica is poorly cast), but the characters that are strong more than compensate.
Isaac I think did a better job as Duke Leto than Prochnow did, and Josh Brolin does an excellent job as the “ugly lump of a man” that Gurney Halleck is supposed to be.
When’s the next movie by Tom Cruise coming out?
Dune and Dune 2 are/were for the immature, who always fall for style over substance.
I saw “The Holdovers” this weekend. It was good.
If I were going to pick a single target with which to start, I'd pick public schools. Voucher 'em. Let parents sort it out.
Move on to health insurance. Then Social Security, which still needs to be reconstituted on a fully funded, individually owned basis.
In the broad scheme of things, movies and tv are small potatoes. But we all recognize that the commissars want to control the news, suppress dissenting views, deplatform heretics, and manipulate search engines to ensure only left wing perspectives are presented. That's the domain of big tech. And big tech now owns most of the legacy studios and what is left of linear tv. The left is driving for complete information control. We need a structural solution. My humble thought is that a solution that works for news and opinion would probably open the field back up for independent movie studios as well. The goal is a pixel distribution system that is diversified enough to resist monopolistic control, which very quickly becomes political control.
For a second there I thought you said, When is Tom Cruise Coming Out?
"PUT A CHICK IN IT AND MAKE HER GAY!!!!"
“And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.” - Arthur Jensen (Network)
Thanks, I did not know this. No more “Song of the South”?
I don’t know how deep the edits go. But it rocked the boat quite a bit when TCM was caught violating its trust.
Saw preview for that, looked
promising! Paul Giamatti.
I ordered ticket for Flower Moon online—$2 senior discount that got cancelled
out with Convenience Fee.
Sign on theatre—Capacity 80.
The comfy chair seats.
Thought it might sell out.
7:30 pm Sat showing: more than a
few empty seats
Yah, giving them any money is poison.
Have you seen the marketing ploy used to promote “Marvels”? That turd is going to open at miserable levels. And, with actors not available to scam the audience; they are running on their site, the movie site, eight hours of house cats walking around while some faceless actress fondles the merchandise for the camera.
Eight hours.
A quarter billion dollars (not counting marketing or the 50% cut to the cinemas) on another turd, and they do hours of cats walking about.
Interesting post—I confess I have been shocked by the centralization/elite control over huge swaths of the Internet.
I did not see that coming.
Censorship should be treated as a crime against humanity and the censors should be put on trial.
Then independent media will be able to flourish.
Excessive centralization is the root of many problems, simply because power WILL eventually be abused.
Right now the streamers are all losing money. (Netflix is the possible exception.) AT&T just dumped WarnerMedia, which was spun off to merge with Discovery. Disney is bleeding on all fronts. A lot of people who follow the industry much more closely than I do expect Disney and WarnerBros. Discovery to either be swalled whole or broken up and sold off piecemeal?
To whom? Well ... of the current big players in entertainment media arena, Apple, Amazon and Comcast (NBCUniversal, Universal Pictures, the Peacock streaming service, and a dozen smaller brands) have by far the deepest pockets. They can lose billions of dollars a year on streaming and shrug it off. They want to be dominant players in whatever rises from the ashes after all the small players are crushed.
NOBODY in the traditional film industry per se is big enough, by orders of magnitude, to compete in this game. As things stand now, if they survive as nominally independent companies, it will be as “partners” of the bigs — i.e., as captive vendors, like a small manufacturing company with 75 percent of its sales being widgets for WalMart. They will be treated like WalMart vendors, who are relentlessly squeezed tighter every year by a company that really wants to outsource everything abroad to the cheapest source available. And, by the way, “partners” will be expected to toe the line on the bigs’ DEI, CRT, and gender wars agenda.
The biggies themselves are being leaned on by democrat politicos, who hold the regulatory reins, and by the venture capitalists, shadowy Middle Eastern moneymen, and the Chinese. At this point, the tech CEOs don’t seem to mind, probably because they consider themselves full partners with democrat-woke axis of evil. The Borg wants control to be seamless and invisible, but when Blackrock execs start talking publicly about using their leverage to force cultural agendas into movies, we’ve got a problem.
Who else might step in and change the game. Well ... YouTube now has bigger viewership, measured by minutes of content consumed, than any of the streaming networks. YouTube is owned by Google. Google and YouTube are both expanding their footprint as distributors. But Google is not a counterweight to the Borg; it is Borg through and through.
Big tech dwarfs everyone else in the cultural media game by orders of magnitude. I’ve grown solicitous of the independent filmmakers, who continue to do what they have always done. Give me a writer-director team of one, who writes a script and, if it’s good enough, hustles up some actors who want to do quality work. Some of these movies are still made on a shoestring, on a very tight timetable and under spartan conditions. Some of them are very good, and everyone involved is proud of their work in a way that the spandex clowns will never be. But they still have to find distribution, and the Borg is crushing the theaters.
We need to kill the Borg.
It was my first time back at the movies since CoVID and I wanted to stop the movie many times to go to the bathroom or get a snack or rewind a section I didn’t quite understand. I’ve become too used to streaming and movie theaters just don’t work for me anymore, lol.
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