Over at NerdCaliber, I occasionally posted “Make It So” – where I’d proposed things I wanted to see or have done. I realize I can also do that here because we MuseHackers have a lot of ideas about what needs to be published, developed, programmed, cooked, etc. Hell, in a lot of cases we want you to take these ideas and run with them because we’re too damn busy, not qualified, or now and then just lazy (hey, as noted we get busy).
So when we had one of our usual get-togethers, the subject of movies came up. It’s a big subject with us since we’re, well, geeks, most of us write, most of us work in technology, and we’ve been watching the movie industry implode on itself. Now I can’t say we don’t take a little bit of glee in watching the film industry get its comeuppance for a lot of risk-phobic stupidity, but that implosion is going to screw a lot of people and miss a lot of opportunities. A film industry collapse is going to take out the good with the bad and the panic that sets in many mean good ideas don’t get missed.
When we began talking, what came up quickly is this: the movie industry as it exists now is simply not viable. You can’t have giant insane tentpoles with all their risks and pandering without hollowing out the system. Worse, people are kind of sick of it and are catching on, to judge by recent poorly performing films. There’s films people don’t want and peple are kind of sick of it and don’t want to pay a lot of money to be underwhelmed and eat crappy theater food.
Then we realized that you ned to rethink how movies work. The old models are gone, the current models are heading for collapse, television and streaming is changing everything, and the pizza still sucks.