RockyMountain

I'm thinking a few years from now there are going to be about half as many movie theaters around as there are now.

All studios are definitely going to have to rethink how much they are spending on these Blockbusters these days. Just because people are movie fans doesn't necessarily mean they are movie theater fans. The days of movies being able to get close to or surpass a billion dollars on a regular basis definitely seem to be over. People still enjoy their movies but with all the monthly fees they are paying for streaming services these days they don't seem to be as willing to give even more money to the theaters. Blockbusters are probably going to need to be made with a 100-150 million budget instead of a 200-250 million budget if these studios want to continue to see significant returns on their movies.

THe thing though is that when people subscribe to something they have a bad habit of not cancelling it even if they don't use it much. There are definitely a portion of people who will subscribe to the streaming site because a new movie is on there. Something they likely wouldn't have done if the movie wasn't on there initially. If that person went to see the movie in the theater they would likely pay to see it once or twice and not bother with the streaming site because they already saw the movie. By subscribing to the streaming site though many of them will just keep their subscription going month after month to the point to where the studio will receive far more from them than if they only went to see it in the theaters once or twice.

In the long run though advertising their streaming service and gaining new subscribers is more financially viable for them then releasing it in theaters. A movie released in theaters has a very quick end to how much it will make yet people who subscribe to a streaming site because of that movie the studio will see the benefits from it for a much longer period of time. People who are big fans of the theaters don't like it but it does make a lot of financial sense to use new movies to advertise their streaming sites.

A portion of them probably would have however there is no basis to your argument that it would have completely changed the box office results. And it also is a little silly to argue against people watching it on HBO Max who are paying for a subscription because all they are doing is paying for it in a different way. Like someone else said if people really wanted to go to the theaters to see the movies they would have gone to the theaters. Lots of people though are looking for ways to cut the theaters out of the equation and there is nothing wrong with that. It's just changing times and we simply have more ways now to pay for content then watching it at a theater. Don't hate on people who are spending money in a way that you don't want them to spend their money.

Trying to say that the box office numbers we are seeing are completely due to streaming or pirating is a very faulty narrative when you are basing it mainly off of what you and your close friends think (and I assume that many of these close friends you are referring to are big theater buffs also who are a little bitter about what is transpiring).

Exactly where is your proof that the people who pirated these films would have gone to buy a ticket at the theater. In many cases pirates are pirates for a reason because they don't want to pay for things.

Feel sorry for a movie like Dune. They will continue to make comic book movies even if a current iteration of one flops but if a movie like Dune flops it might be twenty or thirty years before another Dune movie is made (if it ever is). In anycase they have to figure something out because there simply isn't a market for these overly expensive movies currently. The argument that it is completely becaue of piracy is flawed because there is no proof at all that people who are pirating it would be going to the theater anyway (infact a lot of them probably wouldn't and they would simply just wait until it did come out on home release to pirate it). There is really nothing they can do about the current batch of expensive movies as they have been delaying them long enough already. However for the next several years they probably need to consider turning their expensive projects into tv shows and release things in theaters that the market can support.

The same audience that lead Titanic to make as much as it did. 13 year old girls. You think Marvel or Star Wars fans are intense. They pale in comparison to young girls looking at romance stories with cute guys in it.

Football stadiums are planning on being at near full capacity again this season so the variant isn't going to get any better anytime soon. They are really going to have to cut some deals over the next couple years with the 200m dollar films they have on the horizon because there is no way the theaters can support those films in the upcoming future. Will also be interesting to see what they do with the expensive films slated for 2023/2024 that havn't started filming yet. Will they make those films slightly less expensive than they would have been otherwise? Because as of now there is no way to know if the theater industry will ever recover enough to support a 200m dollar film that needs to make close to a billion dollars to get into the green.

Subscribing to Disney plus and paying a 30 dollar pay wall to watch one movie actually makes a lot of sense for individual families as it is actually cheaper for a family to do that then it is to go to the theater to watch it. And I am sure that a portion of the people that watched it through Disney plus did so for that exact reason. And lots of people tend to have a habit of keeping a subscription even if they don't really use it much. They keep it around just in case they want to watch something and it is there for them at a click of a button. I guarantee you a lot of people subscribed to the site strictly for Mandalorian and didn't really use it for much else than that (until perhaps the Marvel shows started coming on) but they kept their subscription that entire time just so it would be there for them if they wanted and they wouldn't have to go through the hassle of signing up again. $8 dollars a month is pretty affordable for people that have a consistent income. Studios are trying to find a way to eliminate the middle man as well as making it more convenient for people to watch their products as people's viewing habits are changing and fewer and fewer people are going to the theaters with each passing year. As a poster said a couple pages back all these studios wouldn't be craving the streaming money if it was a bad business decision. No it isn't the best move for theaters but for the people who are making the films it is a way for them to keep a larger portion of the money as well as keeping up with people's changing viewing habits as a more significant portion of them are wanting to watch things at home now instead of going to the theater.

Have you just been ignoring all these acknowledgements we have heard over the past couple years that streaming is where the priority is going to now be? That the main focus is now going to be in studios trying to build up their streaming platforms. It makes complete sense for them to put one of their main movies directly onto streaming because it helps advertise their streaming site (you know the thing that they are mainly focused on now). I'm sure they know that a portion of the audience will try to find ways around paying for it (as they try to find ways around paying for anything these days) but when you are trying to build up your platform advertising it with a new movie from a popular IP is the smart thing to do. THese studios aren't thinking about how any particular one movie will do. They are thinking five to ten years down the road and in what they are hoping to build. And as far as the Disney plus subscriber numbers go of course it was going to slow down a bit once the pandemic started easing up. Even with that though Disney plus still got about twice as many new subscribers then any other streaming platform during the last quarter. Any argument that the streaming numbers are slowing down holds little to no merit because they are trying to compare it to the numbers it got during the year when everyone was sitting at home. Yes you are eventually going to have to accept that the era of the billion dollar movie is likely over. Studios are far more concerned now with building up their streaming platforms then they are in movies making a billion dollars at the theater.

You are trying to say it is moronic and makes no sense when they have made a streaming service that has gotten as many subscribers in a year and a half as Netflix got in a decade and will likely be the biggest streaming service in the world five to ten years from now. And you are trying to say that earning 60m in a weekend off of a pay wall was moronic? Yes you are going to have to get used to the fact that theaters are no longer the priority for studios. They are now earning every single month from their streaming site about what a major blockbuster would earn them. I think Disney knows perfectly well how to handle this and they are likely very pleased with the results. People that are infatuated with movie theaters though are just going to have to accept the fact that they aren't the go to crowd any longer.

People watching it on Disney plus is exactly what Disney wants though. Even if a portion of them are watching it for free (and I think you are exaggerating a bit just how many of them are watching it for free) it still means their eyes are on their streaming service. A streaming service that we all know is a far bigger priority for them than the movie theaters are. I'm sure a certain portion of them paid for a new subscription to watch it on Disney plus and if some watched it for free on disney plus a portion of that group also paid for a new subscription. People are just going to have to come around to this being the new normal. THe days of movies getting 150-200m OW domestic and legging their way from repeat viewing to a billion dollars is likely over for the most part. Probably even more than opening weekends where streaming will affect theaters is that people won't be as inclined to go pay for a full ticket again of a movie they have already seen when they will just have to wait a few weeks to watch it on their streaming site as many times as they want for the price of a regular monthly subscription. And that again is exactly what Disney wants to happen because it puts eyes on their streaming site.

I'm beginning to think that Tess is going to get cut from this version of the story as we have gotten announcements all the way down to 'Bill' but we still don't have anything regarding Tess and she was the one who sent Joel and Ellie on their way in the game. They could easily though incorporate Tess's character into Marlene for the show. Infact that might be what the plan was. Tess's role in the game was really to be a second character to help out with fights until the player got used to gameplay.