I can see the movies going the way of the Videogames.
Movies are getting more and more expensive to produce, so the risk of losing that investment runs very high in the eyes of the producers. What do they do? They come up with Sequels and rehashes because they don't want to deviate, fearing that the movie will bomb.
What happens to the movie industry as a whole? Methinks it shrinks, because only the hardcore movie fans will want to see another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, or INSERT SEQUEL here. Not everyone who saw Pirates 3 will see Pirates 4, and newcomers will be discouraged from seeing Pirates 4 because they will feel that they have missed out if they didn't see Pirates 1 - 3. Combine that with rising actors costs and production values and you take a hit on the bottom line.
I think Nintendo saw the same thing happen with the videogame industry. How many WWII FPSes can you make before they start getting stale? Again, with rising costs of game development and the audience staying the same, the developer takes a hit on the bottom line.
So what's my take on the movie industry? I want them to be like Nintendo and create a disruption in the market. In this case with movies: BRING BACK THE B MOVIES!
Why you may ask? Well the actors are usually no-names and the investment in special effects and production values are relatively low. The low cost of development will mean two things:
1) Lots of cheap, crappy movies. Though I argue that there are just as many expensive, crappy movies out there as well.
2) Since the investment is low, so is the risk, so a producer will not mind so much when backing a non-conventional screenplay.
This will bring fresh storylines to the movie industry and will also bring new actors into the limelight.
Also, producers need not to worry about heavy marketing-- if a movie is good enough, then it will succeed on its own merit-- movies like SuperBad or Juno were made very cheaply with relatively no-name stars and both ended up making lots of money through either word-of-mouth advertising or through internet forums.
What's your opinion?
