A Shifting of Dynamics

There has been good news at the box office. It is becoming obvious that there is a dormancy within the movie going audience of today. They are discerning, picky, and have a fair bit of media savvy. If they catch wind that some movie may not be up to snuff or are unimpressed by the marketing efforts (usually lackadaisical) of the studios, they stay away in droves. If there is some movie that shines and that provides a sense of appeal, it shows up in a tsunami of moviegoing. The studios seem to be baffled about the nature and depth of cinematic comprehension of the audience and have consistently underestimated them.

?Theaters are starting to realize that the studios, in their current iteration, truly are not equipped to handle the diverse media landscape effectively. You see signs of theaters experimenting with alternative veins of programming and starting to take delicate steps. The studios are in a ball of confusion that has them going head to head with Wall Street regarding what they see as a lack of results and a failure to execute.

?Because of its theatrical performance as of late, Disney with Inside Out 2 coupled with Deadpool and Wolverine, has had a couple of really nice quarters. Now streaming is just doing, at best, okay, but at least it has ceased to bleed red ink in the streaming end of things.? Bad news is that theme park revenue is down 6 percent.

?One of the interesting things is that traditional cash cows like Fox Corp. have posted a pretty solid revenue loss. Revenue declined so much in 2024 that it now matches revenue achieved in 2022. This can be attributed to other right-wing skewed outlets coupled with a general malaise of linear television.

?Then there is Warner Brothers. Bank of America told it to get its act together quickly. Streaming reported a mediocre rise in its streaming products, which is odd because the services themselves are world-class and, I personally feel, very well-curated. They saw a 5% drop in revenue in all sectors and are facing a $9 billion chargeback on their balance sheets. Not very good.

?Lionsgate reported first-quarter revenue of $834.7 million and a loss of $59.4 million.

?The Paramount movie division revealed that it had a 39% drop in theatrical revenue. Its number-one movie in 2023 was Transformers; Rise of the Beasts, which grossed $433 million globally. 2022 saw 1.4 billion dollars’ worth of revenue from releasing the much anticipated Top Gun: Maverick. Last week Paramount closed? Paramount Television Studios, a business unit focused on? the business of making TV series. They are taking steps to control the bleeding.

In the wake of a probable? Skydance merger, Paramount Global, took a $6 billion hit against its linear television assets, yet another sign of weakness in the traditional TV industry.? Its streaming offerings are poor and content is primarily driven by its linear television offerings. In this new world of media, Paramount was not ready and focused on acquisition, not growth. It’s going to be more than interesting where the Ellison influence, which has a deep tradition of cutting edge technology, takes this wounded animal. I suspect a lot of focus is how to use AI to create new revenue streams and to buttress the ones that are faltering.

Universal climbed to the top of the mountain in 2022 on the strength of movies like Oppenheimer, M3gan, and Super Mario Brothers. As part of the Comcast ecosystem, Universal has the ability to internally support the numbers needed to crack a smile on Wall Street's hard face.

?This is a mixed bag. In the end, the market has changed, and studios have not reacted well to it. Frankly, my opinion is that they are too big to react. There is no market nimbleness. When the studios were smaller, they could talk about risks, create market innovation, and shape audiences. I do not think they can still do that under the current structure. They have become bloated on the money of Wall Street, seduced by the false promises of an Asian market and have become desensitized to its traditional markets.

Would-be analysts always advance the opinion that moviegoing is dying. Firmly, it is not dying; it is changing, and some of the key players are about to be replaced.

?The time has come for theaters to firmly grasp the concept that the studios no longer have the capabilities that they used to. They have become way too big and stratified in their thinking. In order to meet the many market demands in this brave new world of technology, they have to become much more limber, which means they will have to become smaller. We do not need fewer studios, we need more. Getting to a size where corporately they have become cumbersome has become a foolish exercise, one that is about to stop and be replaced with a cycle of splitting the current studios into manageable pieces.

For me movies and moviegoing will endure and in some ways prosper if the studios can get out the way. At its best, movies are a deeply empathetic mirror of the human experience and condition. When it is executed well, movies are an honest witness to our lives and experience. From new arrivals to a new land who hungers to understand the new land they have just entered, to “Mrs. Miniver” exploring the impact of war on an unassuming British housewife to, “American Graffiti” celebrating what it was to be young and American prior to VietNam and the Kennedy celebration. Movies do not really happen on the silver screen, but great ones weave themselves into our cultural and spiritual traditions and unfold within our own souls. In the end, movies and moviegoing are about us, and that's why I love them.