Great piece. I worked for Warner Bros for several years in the early 2000s. At the time they were struggling with the transition from DVDs to electronic sell through (Apple was the only means of digital distribution at the time). The whole studio was built on a franchise tent-pole film strategy supported by popular source material and/or big name actors. The economics of this "4 quadrant" approach, as they used to call it, just don't work anymore. Nobody cares to go to a theater and ancillary revenue streams have vanished.
In 10 years I think AI will ultimately enable hyper-personalized content for smaller-and smaller groups of people. Sports will be the last place for large scale shared experiences.
The vision of hyper-personalized content tailored for viewers in real-time is an interesting one. I hear people talk about it, but unsure what it would be like in reality. It requires special hardware or a totally new platform where viewers could "load in" in their preferences.
Amazing piece. Thank you. As somebody who has worked in the industry for a decade, I was trying to explain this to somebody the other day. Hollywood and television had a fantastic business model that worked well for everybody involved. Netflix disrupted that and then all the studios tried to replicate it and they failed pretty miserably. What’s left is not a good model for either hollywood or the consumer.
There’s also a cultural component as well. To me, Hollywood is always late culturally speaking. It’s probably because films take years to produce so they get released in a different environment from the one in which their conceived. There’s also a culture of conformity and fear, which creates a black list phenomenon.
Overall, it’s hard to imagine a future for Hollywood.
Yes and yes. I'd add that Hollywood is not just culturally late, it's also creativity by committee. This has a 'cafeteria food effect'. You're not going to serve something to a billion people until you know it's popular and have removed the popular allergens & spicy ingredients. As audiences fracture into smaller and more specific groups, one thing I look forward to is films made by less people with stronger sensibilities and choices behind them. Thanks for the insightful comment, Pat.
That was a fantastic read. I think I'm... oh god, do I feel inspired? That always leaves me with a horrible comedown. All the same, superbly written and argued piece.
Good, I hope it bleeds into 2d animation and video-game production, as someone who has studied both and is a novelist and writer hereon Substack, I gotta say I'm sick of the gatekeeping by the humongous corpos. Screw 'em and their crappy stories and movies.
Mike, Mike,Mike, what an emotive, enlightening, and superbly written and article. I considered, I learned, I agreed, I marvelled, was astounded, made notes and appreciated the thoughts and knowledge transfer in a a novel and entertaining peice about a novel peice about entertainment. One of the best articles I have read in a LONG time. Thank you........Hit Subscribe
I haven't watched a Hollywood-made movie made in the past forty years, regardless of the medium of transmission. I find the content of the trailers I've watched and the partial films I've sat through to be uniform, execrable and boring, the direction routine and ham-fisted, the acting unpersuasive and unsophisticated, the language impoverished and very often profane. Junk food.
I’m not sure most people realize that most movies/TV shows are sadly, not even shot in Hollywood: they’re shot in New Mexico, Georgia, Slovakia, England, Vancouver, etc. And while there are salient points here, Hollywood is a highly adaptable Leviathan, so much of these AI tool chests will be absorbed right back into the Hollywood ecosystem and it will still be a game of who’s got the loudest microphone and maybe more importantly, the drive and the staying power to stay at it. Lots of people now flocking to these tools will discover they can’t make the barest of living making this free, easily spewed content which thrives almost on inherent disposability and they’ll migrate into other ways of making revenue like e-commerce or crypto or 3-D print making, etc. Much of this YouTube/social media driven content out there is created by influencers and there’s lots of data showing we are at peak influencer inundation and burnout, with many of the biggest names transitioning out. I also think people’s desire for communal experiences still endures even through these transition periods—peak movie theater attendance was the year 1947, and audiences are still going.
That's a possibility. I suspect that yes Hollywood will absorb many AI tools, but not be able to significantly lower their costs. And Hollywood alternatives will make similar quality films at fractions of the price by the sake of being upstarts.
Mike you're really fucking smart and you're a great writer this was interesting and witty and concise and clear etc etc various positive words but yeah this totally has big substack energy lol.
Honestly it reminds me of how NBA basketball analysis and commentary on TV is a fraction of how good all the stuff on YouTube and even substack is now, someone of which is produced by retired and active players. Like go watch a few Jxmy Highroller or Thinking Basketball videos and JJ Redick interviews.
Thanks Bryan. I used to write religiously. It's been a while since I've flexed the muscle. We'll get to watch me get into shape together. When will you publish your writing?
I think you nailed it. I love going to the movies, but I find myself going less and less because, honestly, big budget movies have gotten more and more boring. Formulaic, white washed, unauthentic and refusing to take any real risks. I have friends who believe that it is because big studio executives want to put their grubby hands on everything, believing they know better, thus ruining potentially innovative projects. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think it is plausible - and if not, whatever it is, you can see the poor results...
Is there anything to be learned from what has already happened in music?
While technology has enabled lots of people to create new music, and barriers to distribution have come down, I’m not convinced that the best ideas have risen to the surface. Perhaps it’s simply too much work to find the great new stuff as there are a sea of creators all rushing to the same sound, in the same few genres, most (not all) of it mediocre. Unchecked, this can lead to consumer disengagement.
This (distribution, curation, & consumption) is the biggest question mark to me. I don't know how it will turn out. I have some guesses I'll write about in the future.
It's not that there aren't intelligent and thoughtful media makers out there, for there are many. It's that Hollywood is too proud, stubborn, miserly and skittish to want to do business with them.
Yup, pretty much. The Internet's lesson to me has been there are way more talented people than I could imagine. But admitting the plurality of talent would threaten Hollywood's model as Master Gatekeeper of Talent.
Too narcissistic. They can’t use the phrase “we just give people what they want to watch” anymore because it’s obvious people are leaving their forced menu.
It's very important for studios to reserve their status as "cultural tastemakers" even though, as you point out, people increasingly dislike their taste. This dissonance will have some very absurd expressions the next couple years, I predict.
Niko Pueringer put it well, “The type of equipment you have won’t really matter. Ideas are gonna matter a lot more."
I agree, if I understand correctly. Ideas are always first. Everyone wants to express their ideas, so all the production, scenes and special effects matter less than the ideas, the words, the dialogue, the awareness.
Dec 11, 2023·edited Dec 11, 2023Liked by Mike Gioia
Was gonna comment on that same quote by Niko because it applies well beyond Hollywood. We're at the dawn of the Idea Age, having fully commoditized information and now the ability to act upon it.
Hollywood as an industry (and the city it occupies) has felt increasingly in decline. They've beguiled us with production over substance for the past two decades. They've taken our attention for granted, even scorning us at this point. From just looking at major studios' pipelines, they seem yet unaware of barbarians at the gate. It might start with basement filmmakers, but I can see it swinging back toward bundled scale as the parts find each other to make greater sums.
Honestly, we don't even need much innovation beyond the lowering of costs that democratizes talent. The blueprints exist but Hollywood somehow lost them. Just return to effective storytelling that our unchanged human nature will always respond to. It's why Casablanca outlasts any superhero.
I totally agree. The talent, ambition, and specialty knowledge are out there in abundance. Just lower the cost and further normalize alternative viewing platforms. It'll happen naturally. Thanks, Jonny.
Mostly good news. Ultra-democratization of production will require more and better filters and human critics to direct the inundated viewers to the best-of-the-best of the few minutes or hours per day that they have to actually watch anything. Not sure how that will work. It will be AI driven for the bulk work, but require human intervention and taste at the last stage before publishing, most likely. And then, how to monetize that service, which will be critical. Interesting times.
Curation is a big, open-ended question. I already feel overwhelmed by media. Currently, I opt for community curation over algorithmic curation (substacks, subreddits, etc.)
Something like that. But with the tsunami of content, you would need to automate the first layer of review. That would require institutional infrastructure of some kind.
Thanks, David. It's a very messy and fragmented media landscape right now. There will be more media creation than ever, and more people involved in it, but it will look very different. I don't know how exactly, yet.
Great piece. I worked for Warner Bros for several years in the early 2000s. At the time they were struggling with the transition from DVDs to electronic sell through (Apple was the only means of digital distribution at the time). The whole studio was built on a franchise tent-pole film strategy supported by popular source material and/or big name actors. The economics of this "4 quadrant" approach, as they used to call it, just don't work anymore. Nobody cares to go to a theater and ancillary revenue streams have vanished.
In 10 years I think AI will ultimately enable hyper-personalized content for smaller-and smaller groups of people. Sports will be the last place for large scale shared experiences.
The vision of hyper-personalized content tailored for viewers in real-time is an interesting one. I hear people talk about it, but unsure what it would be like in reality. It requires special hardware or a totally new platform where viewers could "load in" in their preferences.
Isn't this basically a video game and a VR headset? Westworld in VR?
Brain interfaces that inputs what you think! it will come sooner than you think .
Amazing piece. Thank you. As somebody who has worked in the industry for a decade, I was trying to explain this to somebody the other day. Hollywood and television had a fantastic business model that worked well for everybody involved. Netflix disrupted that and then all the studios tried to replicate it and they failed pretty miserably. What’s left is not a good model for either hollywood or the consumer.
There’s also a cultural component as well. To me, Hollywood is always late culturally speaking. It’s probably because films take years to produce so they get released in a different environment from the one in which their conceived. There’s also a culture of conformity and fear, which creates a black list phenomenon.
Overall, it’s hard to imagine a future for Hollywood.
Yes and yes. I'd add that Hollywood is not just culturally late, it's also creativity by committee. This has a 'cafeteria food effect'. You're not going to serve something to a billion people until you know it's popular and have removed the popular allergens & spicy ingredients. As audiences fracture into smaller and more specific groups, one thing I look forward to is films made by less people with stronger sensibilities and choices behind them. Thanks for the insightful comment, Pat.
Such a good analogy! Maybe AI will democratize the medium so we can have more of what you describe.
That was a fantastic read. I think I'm... oh god, do I feel inspired? That always leaves me with a horrible comedown. All the same, superbly written and argued piece.
Good, I hope it bleeds into 2d animation and video-game production, as someone who has studied both and is a novelist and writer hereon Substack, I gotta say I'm sick of the gatekeeping by the humongous corpos. Screw 'em and their crappy stories and movies.
This is so concise and interesting to analyze. Great writing also!
Mike, Mike,Mike, what an emotive, enlightening, and superbly written and article. I considered, I learned, I agreed, I marvelled, was astounded, made notes and appreciated the thoughts and knowledge transfer in a a novel and entertaining peice about a novel peice about entertainment. One of the best articles I have read in a LONG time. Thank you........Hit Subscribe
... Definitely 🙏🏻
Thank you, Gordon. Entertaining knowledge transfer is the description my writing vies for.
Very well analyzed. Endorse
I haven't watched a Hollywood-made movie made in the past forty years, regardless of the medium of transmission. I find the content of the trailers I've watched and the partial films I've sat through to be uniform, execrable and boring, the direction routine and ham-fisted, the acting unpersuasive and unsophisticated, the language impoverished and very often profane. Junk food.
I’m not sure most people realize that most movies/TV shows are sadly, not even shot in Hollywood: they’re shot in New Mexico, Georgia, Slovakia, England, Vancouver, etc. And while there are salient points here, Hollywood is a highly adaptable Leviathan, so much of these AI tool chests will be absorbed right back into the Hollywood ecosystem and it will still be a game of who’s got the loudest microphone and maybe more importantly, the drive and the staying power to stay at it. Lots of people now flocking to these tools will discover they can’t make the barest of living making this free, easily spewed content which thrives almost on inherent disposability and they’ll migrate into other ways of making revenue like e-commerce or crypto or 3-D print making, etc. Much of this YouTube/social media driven content out there is created by influencers and there’s lots of data showing we are at peak influencer inundation and burnout, with many of the biggest names transitioning out. I also think people’s desire for communal experiences still endures even through these transition periods—peak movie theater attendance was the year 1947, and audiences are still going.
That's a possibility. I suspect that yes Hollywood will absorb many AI tools, but not be able to significantly lower their costs. And Hollywood alternatives will make similar quality films at fractions of the price by the sake of being upstarts.
Hollywood has too many embedded cost obligations to radically lower production costs, *even if* they adopt AI technologies.
Mike you're really fucking smart and you're a great writer this was interesting and witty and concise and clear etc etc various positive words but yeah this totally has big substack energy lol.
Honestly it reminds me of how NBA basketball analysis and commentary on TV is a fraction of how good all the stuff on YouTube and even substack is now, someone of which is produced by retired and active players. Like go watch a few Jxmy Highroller or Thinking Basketball videos and JJ Redick interviews.
Thanks Bryan. I used to write religiously. It's been a while since I've flexed the muscle. We'll get to watch me get into shape together. When will you publish your writing?
Jimmy Highroller & Thinking Basketball are phenomenal. Haven't watched JJ Redick's interviews, but I'll check them out.
I think you nailed it. I love going to the movies, but I find myself going less and less because, honestly, big budget movies have gotten more and more boring. Formulaic, white washed, unauthentic and refusing to take any real risks. I have friends who believe that it is because big studio executives want to put their grubby hands on everything, believing they know better, thus ruining potentially innovative projects. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think it is plausible - and if not, whatever it is, you can see the poor results...
Is there anything to be learned from what has already happened in music?
While technology has enabled lots of people to create new music, and barriers to distribution have come down, I’m not convinced that the best ideas have risen to the surface. Perhaps it’s simply too much work to find the great new stuff as there are a sea of creators all rushing to the same sound, in the same few genres, most (not all) of it mediocre. Unchecked, this can lead to consumer disengagement.
Why will things turn out differently with video?
This (distribution, curation, & consumption) is the biggest question mark to me. I don't know how it will turn out. I have some guesses I'll write about in the future.
It's not that there aren't intelligent and thoughtful media makers out there, for there are many. It's that Hollywood is too proud, stubborn, miserly and skittish to want to do business with them.
Yup, pretty much. The Internet's lesson to me has been there are way more talented people than I could imagine. But admitting the plurality of talent would threaten Hollywood's model as Master Gatekeeper of Talent.
Too narcissistic. They can’t use the phrase “we just give people what they want to watch” anymore because it’s obvious people are leaving their forced menu.
It's very important for studios to reserve their status as "cultural tastemakers" even though, as you point out, people increasingly dislike their taste. This dissonance will have some very absurd expressions the next couple years, I predict.
Niko Pueringer put it well, “The type of equipment you have won’t really matter. Ideas are gonna matter a lot more."
I agree, if I understand correctly. Ideas are always first. Everyone wants to express their ideas, so all the production, scenes and special effects matter less than the ideas, the words, the dialogue, the awareness.
Was gonna comment on that same quote by Niko because it applies well beyond Hollywood. We're at the dawn of the Idea Age, having fully commoditized information and now the ability to act upon it.
Hollywood as an industry (and the city it occupies) has felt increasingly in decline. They've beguiled us with production over substance for the past two decades. They've taken our attention for granted, even scorning us at this point. From just looking at major studios' pipelines, they seem yet unaware of barbarians at the gate. It might start with basement filmmakers, but I can see it swinging back toward bundled scale as the parts find each other to make greater sums.
Honestly, we don't even need much innovation beyond the lowering of costs that democratizes talent. The blueprints exist but Hollywood somehow lost them. Just return to effective storytelling that our unchanged human nature will always respond to. It's why Casablanca outlasts any superhero.
Great piece, Mike.
I totally agree. The talent, ambition, and specialty knowledge are out there in abundance. Just lower the cost and further normalize alternative viewing platforms. It'll happen naturally. Thanks, Jonny.
Mostly good news. Ultra-democratization of production will require more and better filters and human critics to direct the inundated viewers to the best-of-the-best of the few minutes or hours per day that they have to actually watch anything. Not sure how that will work. It will be AI driven for the bulk work, but require human intervention and taste at the last stage before publishing, most likely. And then, how to monetize that service, which will be critical. Interesting times.
Curation is a big, open-ended question. I already feel overwhelmed by media. Currently, I opt for community curation over algorithmic curation (substacks, subreddits, etc.)
Film critics subscription channel? XD
Something like that. But with the tsunami of content, you would need to automate the first layer of review. That would require institutional infrastructure of some kind.
One of the best summations of video entertainment's evolutionary hairpin turn that's killing those of us in the industry right now.
Thanks, David. It's a very messy and fragmented media landscape right now. There will be more media creation than ever, and more people involved in it, but it will look very different. I don't know how exactly, yet.