←back to thread

The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

(www.newyorker.com)
231 points frogulis | 1 comments | 15 Jul 25 03:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.222s | source
Show context
somenameforme ◴[15 Jul 25 04:23 UTC] No.44567805[source]▶
Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size.

And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them!

Even for individual movies. For all the men-in-spandex movies, the best selling movie (by tickets sold) in modern times is Titanic, 27 years ago.

[1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/

replies(25): >>44567864 #>>44567968 #>>44568136 #>>44568154 #>>44570905 #>>44570997 #>>44571105 #>>44571251 #>>44571355 #>>44571403 #>>44571486 #>>44571608 #>>44571759 #>>44571905 #>>44572267 #>>44572485 #>>44572904 #>>44573167 #>>44573177 #>>44573253 #>>44573502 #>>44573585 #>>44574449 #>>44576708 #>>44580563 #
1. onlyrealcuzzo ◴[15 Jul 25 17:14 UTC] No.44573502[source]▶
Movie studios could care less if a billion people watch a movie or if 1 person sees it.

They care how much profit they make and what the growth in their profit margin is, as that sets their multiple on their stock price.

If it's a better strategy selling movie tickets to mostly single adult men at high prices than to families at lower prices, guess who movie studios are going to make movies for?

Movies studios reached their TAM in the West a while ago. The only way to make more money is charging more per ticket in real terms, which means a reduction in TAM