Now A Season For Re-invention

The holiday season is over. Christmas has come and gone. When it comes to celebrations like Christmas I am very much a traditionalist. In our home we do not take down our decorations and tree down until after the feast of the Epiphany. The Epiphany celebrated the coming of the 3 Wise Men. When I look at the clouds forming on the horizon of the business of exhibition, I cannot help but wish we had wise men shaping the actions of the studios. But unfortunately, we do not.

As a business we have been tossed around by a group of vendors who cannot seem to get their act together. The initial streaming wars were an unholy mess. The arrogance of the studios’ regarding streaming was enhanced by a little thing called a global pandemic. For some reason the studios decided to encumber themselves with a series of financial commitments based on economics that were briefly engorged by a population firmly under siege.

The studios by their nature do not readily admit failure, their economic handlers the boyars of Wall Street who make oodles of money promoting their failures encourage the studios to time and time again revisit the trough. The financial capriciousness is staggering and as someone who has learned the hard way the imperativeness to be fiscally prudent, I am appalled.

The studios are again about to take part in a bizarre dance, they are entertaining merging or refinancing to consolidate or to reinvent their idea of streaming. They are hell bent on forcing a direct relationship with the consumer. It is what they want, it is their reason for being right now. Now one thing they always ignore is that the consumer really has little or no interest in having a relationship with the studios. For the most part consumers find the studios self-important , manipulative and are losing sight of the quality of their product. They have scrambled their brands through acquisitions that have devastated any name associating which might have provoked any consumer loyalty.

To say 2023 was a rough year for the movies would be at the very least an understatement. The ill-conceived strikes would send the studios into a panic. This action by the guilds provided the impetus to rethink business structures and to try to make sure the studios were never placed in this situation again. As theater owners there was no choice but to wait by the sidelines and watch in horror as another calamity hit the business of exhibition.

The strikes began talk of a great rebuilding in the halls of the media behemoths The newly combined Warner Brothers and Discovery put forward a new streaming in the form of MAX. Paramount + and Showtime were launched and the concept of streaming bundles began to be put forward.? When not talking about mergers companies like Apple and Paramount were supposedly in talks to bundle their streaming services. Studies have recently shown that 70% of consumers are now getting their streaming services in some kind of bundle. For your friends in the Gen Z world, the studios are now beginning to release titles on social media platforms, for example MEAN GIRLS was streamed on Tik Tok. The need for the studios to engage social media for their releases has never before been more apparent.

To get some sort of win in streaming seems to be a rising mantra for the studios. The overspending and the unrealistic outlook on streaming coupled with the strikes has sent the studios reeling. On the surface they are attempting to put forward a brave face, but in the light of multi billion-dollar deficits beneath the fa?ade of competency lies the utter realization that the studios are in fact strangers in a strange land, an ever evolving landscape where no one has a grasp of what is going to happen.

?In response to this, most businesses would say it is time to get smaller in order to ride out this shifting economy. To look back on what has worked in the past and to re-establish the movie going economy. That’s most businesses. With the studios there are executives who still remember the heady days of the pandemic when ‘TROLLS” gave a hint of what is possible if the consumer has no choice but to rely on your streaming service.

For me there is deep frustration of seeing years of pent-up demand that is not being acted upon. Angel Studios has risen up and taken a solid market share because of their relationship with potential audience members.? Their recent success has provided testimony to the fact that the studios are fumbling with social media and seeking easy answers for their problems.

Within Hollywood there are rumblings of a growing concern, that easy money has made Hollywood fat and lazy and no longer willing to do the work. It’s not that there is not significant revenue to be made from the theatrical market, but the fact is that if we can use stock prices to offset the decline of ticket sales and cash flow by putting out a nice story for the Wall Street analysts the studios can often ignore doing the work.

Unfortunately no matter what pot of gold at the end of the rainbow might exist, for most of us folks in order to succeed you have to first do the work. A huge problem within our society as a whole is that many feel entitled to income, revenue, and a prestigious job without doing the work. The same thinking has infected the studios and that thinking is also poisoning the business of exhibition.

It is time to redefine, reshape, and reinvent this business. It is time to embrace ideas like Angel Studios, embrace smaller studios and take back the business of exhibition. It's going to be a ton of work but I strongly feel it is both necessary and in the end could be lucrative.