Hollywood Is Cranking Out Original Movies. Audiences Aren’t Showing Up.

This is one of the main reasons that I started the trailers community. There absolutely are unique, original films being released all the time, they just rarely get noticed. I hope that surfacing their trailers right along side the big boys will help get them in front of curious audiences.
- Thank you for your work on that community!
- That’s pretty cool.
- Our instances are not federated because ideas are scary and people shouldn't have free will. /s
  
  The lemmygrad account I'm replying to is not going to see this comment: I'm permabanned from lemmygrad for fielding ideas that are scary to them. Like it being a bad thing that Russia invaded Ukraine.

are they marketing them thoug?, because the only things i hear about are disney remake bullshit and mcu slop
- marketing to asia, asia loves hollywood movies, especialy action ones. thats why they are making slop.
- Mickey 17 was well advertised imo with big names attached. Still bombed.
  
  I'm still confused by what happened with this film. I knew it was coming out, but I didn't get around to seeing it opening weekend, then by Wednesday of the next week the headlines stated that it was leaving theaters and heading to streaming.
  I would have seen it in theaters, but once the streaming was announced I didn't mind waiting another week or two.
  I just saw it and enjoyed it.
  I feel like it didn't have any time to build momentum, just kicked almost straight to streaming.
  
  I liked the movie, but it had no chance. The budget was way too big. It should never have been given such a big budget.
  I want more mid-budget original movies that actually have a chance of financial success.
  
  Things are kinda invisible if they don't trend on social media. Hence, meaning no offense to OP, they have not show up in OP's feeds.
  
  This is a shame too, because it was for all intents and purposes a good movie. And I say that as someone who did not like Pattinson as an actor (thanks Twilight).
  
  I didn’t hear about that one almost at all and I go to the theater every week.
  I only knew about it because I like the director and go out of my way to look up interesting movies.

Maybe they need to tell theaters to calm the fuck down with their pricing and ads. Do one or the other. If I'm paying $15+/ticket to see a show, then don't lie to me about the showtime and include half an hour of commercials.
- I used to like trailers. But just as I was starting to feel like the trailers were getting too long, the new thing became to splice the trailers with ads. So you think you're watching trailers and then suddenly there's a Ford commercial. So now they're too long AND they're less entertaining and relevant.
  
  My local cinema now plays older movies too. I got shocked by walking in a few minutes late to the opening of LOTR: The Fellowship of The Ring because it started at the listed showtime! So I'll support them by going to their older movie showings now. It's nice to not get ramrodded with ads and movie spoilers.
  
  Movie trailers playing before a movie made sense to me. You like movies? Here's some that are coming up, in case you're interested.
  It was a movie trailer that made me go all-in on adblockers. One of the Mission Impossible movies, I forget which one, I lost count after the third. This trailer had that annoying "Ready or not, here I come" "song" in the background. And it played ahead of every single Youtube video I watched for a week.
  I will never watch a Mission Impossible movie ever again, old or new. I will never watch another Tom Cruise movie ever again. Old or new. I might avoid the spy/action/thriller genre entirely for the rest of my life. I won't go see James Bond ever again because of Mission Impossible's marketing. There's a strong and growing possibility I'll never walk into a movie theater ever again. And I aggressively block ads now.
  They went from letting me know what movies were going to be released soon to trying to beat my personality out.
  I used to be a movie buff. I grew up in a house with a lot of VHS tapes, movies were important to my social life in my teens and early twenties, I went to work for a couple years basically living at the airport and sleeping at home, and when I came up for air it was all a cancerous mass, a tumor of its former self.
  I would rather watch RedLetterMedia make fun of 40 year old movies than go watch a new one.
- Awhile back, I started tracking the time between the listed showtime and the actual start time of the movie. I logged them all and I would post it on Twitter. Then, Elon bought Twitter and I sort of abandoned the project (and Twitter).
  At AMC (where I see most movies because it’s near me and they have a monthly pass), pre-roll/previews are 15-30 minutes long. The bigger and newer a movie is, the longer it is. Most tend to be around 20-25 minutes.
  I started showing up 21 minutes late to most of them but I would usually be right on time for the start of the film.
- It's at least $100 bucks to take the family. More if the kids want popcorn.
- Yeah this feels like another thing that's downstream from low wages.
  Movies are a luxury. If most people are struggling to get by in debt, they're less likely to splurge.
  
  Basically everything that made being middle class fun has turned into another race to the bottom in terms of quality and enjoyment because of capitalism.

Back when I was a kid, if you didn't see it in the cinema you'd have to wait 6 months to a year for the VHS to come out and then you'd watch it on a tiny poor quality TV. Cinema was amazing.
Now I have big enough TV and surround sound and I can watch whatever is released a few months later in the comfort of my own home for practically free. The huge amount of content now means unless I really really want to see it in cinema there's just no point. Most movies aren't worth it.
- When I was a kid you saw it on the big screen or you waited several years for a truncated version to hit one of the three networks. Saw Star Wars in 1977 at 6-yo, didn't hit broadcast TV until 1984.

Tbh, I don't even hear about any movies anymore unless something happens, like Snow White bombing. I run an ad blocker, so most of what I get is just word of mouth.
Hollywood needs to step up their game
- I see the same with adblock. I don't watch TV, see no ads in youtube. How could they up their game and reach me?

The bigger my TV gets, the less likely I’m going to the cinema. But I do actually prefer original films and I pay to rent them digitally once they release. The FOMO is not as strong anymore, I can wait. Letterboxd will remind me when it’s time.

They keep dancing around the obvious. No one wants to go to theaters anymore for various reasons; too expensive, people on their phones, people talking, head lice, and oh, too expensive.

Have they tried putting a tariff on them to motivate the public?

Movie theaters are really expensive, so I'm not paying attention to what Hollywood is making right now.

Heh, looking at the article and the cesspool of WSJ comments:
The elephant in the room (that the website dances around) is algorithmic attention. If people are glued to feeds on phones/at home, that's less time to chat about (and go to) movies that don't have the critical mass to pop into your feed. That sucks, as there's nothing movie studios can do about our toxic information environment.
Going by the comments... Seems modern movie goers have a thin skin. Even the slightest hint of something woke is apparently unwatchable? But themes and conflicts that make you uncomfortable are what makes fiction interesting. This may cut both ways too (with, for instance, military-themed movies turning off more leftist moviegoers? I feel that way to some extent).
Wanting to watch at home is a major contributing factor, but I think its overstated compared to the above two. Like, our local Movie Tavern isn't super luxurious, I have crazy technical family with OLED/surround setups, but going out is still a fun social excursion. Most peoples' home setups... aren't great.
Maybe this is more personal to me, but I am way more into TV series than movies these days. There's just so much more time to worldbuild and assemble characters, and more room to run and play once established. But I would totally pay for a restaurant booth to, say, watch some TV episode I can pick with buds.
- This is a good list, and to add:
  Consumer sentiment in general is terrible. A large part of the population are stressed and exhausted, and that's not a "let's go see something fun" mindset for many, it's "let's get through the day and watch comfort content."
  This is a time of the year in general where studios bury releases they don't have confidence in.
  Because of that, while many have reasonable Rotten Tomatoes scores, when you do that year after year, audiences start to stop paying attention around this time.
  
  A large part of the population are stressed and exhausted, and that’s not a “let’s go see something fun” mindset for many, it’s “let’s get through the day and watch comfort content.”
  I've witnessed this, too! I even know family that relaxed their long-form TV watching due to work stress, and generally hit the YouTube algorithim and other quick comfort food in its place.
- military-themed movies turning off more leftist moviegoers? I feel that way to some extent
  I suppose that depends on how war is depicted in the film. War is hell, but sometimes it's necessary. I don't love the idea of war, but Slaughterhouse Five lives on as one of my favorite books about war. Understanding war and its impacts are important, even if we don't like a world in which we have to resort to war.
  Sure, a lot of American film makes war movies all "RAH RAH RAH USA USA USA," but that doesn't mean all films about war have to be that way, especially films about war made in other nations, who perhaps don't have their military so deeply ingrained in the film industry.
  Hell, Three Kings is still an underrated war film which has an undercurrent of themes regarding capitalism and consumerism and how it relates to war.
  Seems modern movie goers have a thin skin
  Yeah, these MAGA babies can't handle anything at all that challenges their worldview. Even things that are supposed to challenge their worldview, like The Boys, instead re-enforces the same views because they simply have no media literacy.
  
  Sure, a lot of American film makes war movies all “RAH RAH RAH USA USA USA,”
  Here are the 3 "original" movies in my local theatre, to get more of what I mean:
  Levon Cade left behind a decorated military career in the black ops to live a simple life working construction. But when his boss’s daughter, who is like family to him, is taken by human traffickers, his search to bring her home uncovers a world of corruption far greater than he ever could have imagined.
  harlie Heller (Malek) is a brilliant, but deeply introverted decoder for the CIA working out of a basement office at headquarters in Langley whose life is turned upside down when his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack. When his supervisors refuse to take action, he takes matters into his own hands, embarking on a dangerous trek across the globe to track down those responsible, his intelligence serving as the ultimate weapon for eluding his pursuers and achieving his revenge...
  Written and directed by Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland (Civil War, 28 Days Later), Warfare embeds audiences with a platoon of American Navy SEALs in the home of an Iraqi family, overwatching the movement of US forces through insurgent territory. A visceral, boots-on-the-ground story of modern warfare, told like never before: in real time and based on the memory of the people who lived it.
  The last one (Warfare) kinda stands out, but see the pattern? "Ex black ops protag" is super popular, and I posit that, on average, it's a turn-off for leftists.
  
  military-themed movies turning off more leftist moviegoers? I feel that way to some extent
  Maybe but not because I’m liberal, because we’re shit. The fact that “The Covenant” exists is FUCKING INFURIATING to me. I signed up to put my ass on the line, knowing any flight out of CONUS had a return ticket. We not only told the terps we’d take them to the American dream but made them put their lives on the line…then flew away and made a fucking movie about how it’s too bad they’re all stuck in the suck.
  
  All quiet on the western front was a pretty good war film
- But themes and conflicts that make you uncomfortable are what makes fiction interesting
  Most moviegoers want to shut their brains off and escape and be entertained for 90-120 minutes. Not be challenged or be uncomfortable.
  I own thousands of movies on 4K and Blu-ray. I've had a surround sound setup since the mid-2000s. I have complete collections of many directors' entire filmographies. Even in my case, the ratio of entertained to challenged that I want most nights is about 90% to 10%.
  
  Eh… I think most viewers like compelling characters when they find them, even in comfort entertainment. And putting them in interesting situations is part of what makes them compelling.
  I guess this is why influencers (using that term very broadly) are so popular. That format cuts out all the plot and fluff and goes straight to characters.
- You nailed it and the minecraft movie proved them right. I'm predicting now that movies will be engineered to be memeable for TikTok videoing stupid dances in the theaters not to watch the movie you paid for but to make a 6 second video for the feeds.
  
  Bingo.
  Ugh, that's exactly what's going to happen, isn't?
  Also, I hate how people ponder why stuff like this is happening and miss the elephant in the room. Guess engagement optimization isn't a trending topic...
  
  Minecraft is only technically an original movie. Video game "franchise" popular with kids is usual "formula slop" leveraging past pop culture.
- I'm the opposite with TV. Most seasons are too long and just get filled with pointless interpersonal drama that feels far too contrived. I think mini series length is usually better.
  I also personally feel that as series go on past the first, maybe second season, the story has been told and now they are just having to fill it with slop because the studios want anything making money to continue indefinitely even if there isn't a good story needing to be told anymore.

Another thought, when 80% of cinema movies are based on franchises you don't care about, you kinda stop following cinema schedules. Movies that are not expected to do well are also given less time in cinemas and worse time slots. I did watch Mickey17 because I knew about it beforehand but usually by the time I learn about a movie I actually want to watch it's already on its way out of the cinema.

I can’t afford the ticket and concessions, let alone the gas to drive there. $200 for one night’s entertainment or 4 days of food for a family of four and a dog?
- Your dog is lying, they don't need the finest steak every meal time.
  Those prices sound utterly insane. I spend less than that on food in a month and going to the cinema is under £10. I usually don't buy any of their food and bring my own water.
  
  Yea, but let's say you have a spouse and kids. You probably aren't going to the theater by yourself. Now you're buying 60+ in tickets, and probably 40+ in popcorn/soda if you have kids there.
  That being said, you could go on a discounted day and tell the family no snacks/soda. Then you're looking at 40ish bucks for a family of 4.

I frankly think it's too late.
I think they've successfully rewired the American demographic to only want Iron Man 8 and the Minecraft-Star Wars crossover. I talk to people in my family and they just cannot show any interest in films outside these major franchises. I think even something like Oppenheimer was only popular because Nolan did it and they know him from Batman. It's like their brains are broken to the possibility of anything else or a new story.
But also theaters suck now, people show no consideration for others in the audience.

I don't mind going out to a theater on occasion, but honestly I usually prefer to watch films at home. I can start them whenever I feel, pause if needed, have plenty of food/drinks, and can invite a friend or two over if they're interested.

It drives me nuts when people complain there are no original movies. If you care enough to complain, you should care enough to be informed about what movies are out

The Ballad of Wallace Island is really funny. Y'all should go see it.

China's announced reduction in big studio releases can place a positive influence on original/independent films.

Have they Tried making even WORSE Original Movies and then Blaming Audiences again? I THINK that's How they can get Butts in Seats!

So they are just making original movies bcs their franchises are failing and only want an original hit to start a new franchise.
- You're right they should just give up and stick with marvel #37

https://archive.ph/4CNwr
- Thanks, added.

ok