"The problem is the studios all went chasing this same audience to the exclusion of everyone else and didn't greenlight even projects for other audiences and those other audiences have just stopped going to the theater."

Dude.. the whole point of this conversation is that they have not really been making these movies catering to us. I mean, they have been using the "Star Wars" and "Marvel" names, but they sure as hell have not been making these movies for us. So it is quite ironic that you talk about "exclusion" when it is actually men the ones who have felt excluded from these franchises.

I mean, they obviously have been trying to attract a totally different audience to these franchises and somehow they just assumed that their original audience was just going to stick around. I guess their train of thought was "Oh, don't worry. These nerd fanboys will watch anything with the tittle Star Wars or Marvel on it. Heck, they will even watch it just to hate on it!"

"For theaters to remain viable other audiences need to be catered to, just making Marvel and Star Wars movies the way the same tired audience wants them is not the answer. Like you make those IP less female leaning and so what? You're just doing what you were doing 10 years ago then. That's not a viable path forward either."

My brother is Christ.. Those other audiences are being catered to. Just this year Lilo & Stich made more than one billion. Last year they had Moana 2 and Inside Out 2, and the year before they had Elementals and The Little Mermaid.

So yes, doing things "the way the same tired audience wants them" is 100% the right way to do things for Star Wars and Marvel. Trying to blend different audiences together is almost impossible to do, as there is VERY LITTLE crossover between the people who enjoy Moana, Frozen, and Barbie, and the people who enjoy Star Wars and Marvel. That is how always has been, and I really doubt that that is ever gonna change. 

Don't hold your breath there. I just watched the trailer for "Star Wars Visions" Season 3, and they showed only one male Jedi there; and this is coming from Season 2, where they had only one male Jedi in all 10 episodes.

There's 37 (!) MCU movies now. There's been what .... 12 Star Wars movies? 

We're supposed to believe that the 38th MCU movie and the 13th Star Wars movie with just more penis and less vagina is going to some how be the answer to the problems of declining movie attendance?

I doubt it. That audience has been way overserved to the exclusion of basically everyone else and that's the big problem. 

These studios need to take some chances on original ideas and ideas aimed at different demographics, not the same shit done over  and over and over again. Even if it's done well, it's choking the life out of the business and alienating huge parts of the audience who are just tired of it. 

They've seen Avengers Endgame and they don't need to see 10 more superhero movies even if they're well done. Do something else. Greenlight movies from directors with new voices and new ideas and new genre types. But the studios don't want to take chances on that. 

Also maybe the fans of these IP need to understand that there's a time and place for certain things to peak and once that's happened it's never coming back. It's never going to be 1977 or 1985 or 1993 again, you're never going to be a child again, you can't go home and a movie can't deliver that for you. It's OK if kids today don't want to like Star Wars, the property is 50 fucking years old, when I was a kid Wizard of Oz wasn't like the thing to see and that's OK. Things in pop culture have their time and place and when that time is over ... it's over. Same thing with Marvel, it has nothing new or interesting to say or nothing fresh to add to what it's already done. It's just the same thing over and over again from that point (good guy beats bad guy), how many times can you expect a normal person to be enthralled by that? I like the Rocky movies, but I'd understand if by Rocky X or XI some people are like "nah I'm good, I don't need any more of this". That's entirely normal. 

If the future of the movie business is just "moar Star Wars and Marvel" as the primary driver of the movie business, then the movie business is cooked. 100%. The business needs a new Titanic type of film phenomenon to break out more than a good Star Wars or MCU film. And preferably something that makes a huge movie star out of it the way Titanic did to Leonardo DiCaprio. 

That's the other problem with Star Wars and superhero movies ... they're not really a great launching pad for breakout movie stars because the character is always bigger than the actor in most cases. Original movies that become blockbusters have a much great chance of catapulting a star to superstardom and then said actor can drive box office  for other movies but it seems like Hollywood studios just forgot this entire concept. Really and I say this as someone who did collect comic books and has been a big Star Wars fan ... comic book movies and Star Wars movies are the worst thing to have happened to the movie business. 

It destroyed the regular model of studios taking chances on and making a wide variety of films aimed at different audiences and instead turned the business into a franchise-hellscape with empty calorie movies that have nothing to say and only exist just to indulge fanboy wish fulfilment. It's completely destroyed the traditional Hollywood model that was working just fine from the 1930s-2008 or so. The movie business would be far better off if the comic book movie boom specifically the MCU and DCU craze of 2008-2019 never happened IMO. It would be better off if Star Wars just stayed dead after 2005 (really 1983 since the prequels were shit too). Yeah you would lose some hit movies, but the end result IMO would be a more balanced movie ecosystem today where other ideas would have been allowed to take root and been to the long term betterment of the business. 

"I doubt it. That audience has been way overserved to the exclusion of basically everyone else and that's the big problem." 

Okay... WE are "the audience", and WE keep telling you exactly why we have stopped watching these movies; but hey, I guess we're just a small loud minority, right? I mean, I'm sure that's what Disney thought as well.

"These studios need to take some chances on original ideas and ideas aimed at different demographics, not the same shit done over  and over and over again. Even if it's done well, it's choking the life out of the business and alienating huge parts of the audience who are just tired of it. 

It destroyed the regular model of studios taking chances on and making a wide variety of films aimed at different audiences and instead turned the business into a franchise-hellscape with empty calorie movies that have nothing to say and only exist just to indulge fanboy wish fulfilment. It's completely destroyed the traditional Hollywood model that was working just fine from the 1930s-2008 or so. The movie business would be far better off if the comic book movie boom specifically the MCU and DCU craze of 2008-2019 never happened IMO. It would be better off if Star Wars just stayed dead after 2005 (really 1983 since the prequels were shit too). Yeah you would lose some hit movies, but the end result IMO would be a more balanced movie ecosystem today where other ideas would have been allowed to take root and been to the long term betterment of the business."

But.. they HAVE been doing that. They have never stopped doing that.. I mean, more than 100 movies are released every single year, and I dont think there's ever been a year where we have had more than 10 SW-Marvel movies; so every single year you must get at least 90 movies that are not "franchise-hellscape with empty calorie movies that have nothing to say and only exist just to indulge fanboy wish fulfilment". For someone who talks that much about the movie business, I'm surprised that you have failed to notice all of those other movies out there.

They release other movies but the focus is very strictly on finding these same kind of franchise movies aimed at largely the same audience over and over again (young men). 

And what's happened? Other demographics have just stopped going to movie theaters period. There are no new movie stars. There's no new real break out huge movie directors in the same way as a the past. There's no new Spielberg or Cameron or Coppola or Scorcese. I guess Chris Nolan stands out as one guy who's built his own brand, but that's few and far between.

The Star Wars + MCU-ization of the movie industry is the worst thing to happen to the business,  the business would be far better off if those movies never existed. 

You would probably have new kinds of movie stars and new genre types breaking out because studios would have no choice but to try new things and not abandon other types of audiences. 

And I say that as someone who likes comic books and Star Wars just fine, but business wise they have been terrible for the overall long term health of the movie business. The last thing theaters need honestly is more comic book movies and Star Wars movies, the best thing that could happen is if those studios were frankly banned from making any of those types of films for the next 10 years and forced to really have to dig deep and focus on new, original content and frankly less spectacle more emotional connection with an audience. 

Haven't been to the theater in years. I find mini series superior at story telling compared to movies. And I can stream from my couch. TLoU was a better story, at least season 1 (haven't watched 2 yet) then what Hollywood is doing.

I agree with the point about variety, in the big-budget department anyway. The Indie scene is thriving, creatively speaking, but not raking in the cash.

However, I would argue that "making movies for nerds" is not what studios have engaged in. Superheroes, fantasy, sci-fi, all these things were pretty undesirable and uninteresting for the average consumer. Through its writing, casting, and immense focus on spectacle, above-mentioned genres and works have undergone huge changes to appeal to mainstream audiences ("Whedon-ification" of dialogue is a common term now, for instance). I think that that's the real issue; you reach a point of "peak-spectacle" and if your only tool is upping the noise with each iteration, things grow stale. Not to mention the sheer breadth of it; so many productions vying for the same eyes on them.

The recent decade or so has, unquestionably, seen a shift towards trying to appeal to "modern audiences" - this is a very heavy and present talking point on stages, PR-tours, in interviews, and in the project descriptions themselves (no, seriously, this is literally the spoken mantra, impossible to miss). What we're seeing is interesting though, from a demographics perspective at least. Not only have the major studios managed to alienate swaths of would-be viewers; they have failed to sway the very demographics they themselves claimed to be fishing for. This, to me, suggests that the main issue is the above-mentioned mainstreaming of concepts and productions, in that there's a tipping point where the base material, coupled with poor aim and writing, simply lacks the gravity to maintain any audience. One parallel I'm seeing is the dilution of more complex genres and IPs within the gaming industry, things like RTS games, which are niche things sales-wise, dumbing down mechanics to appeal to a "broader audience". In so doing, they lose their original fans because it has become too basic, while still failing to replace that audience with fresh blood, since the core concept is still too geeky or unappealing. RPGs have gone much the same way, with more focus on action, and they're having similar issues with maintaining audience interest and engagement. 

So, for me, however reasonable much of your post is, I just can't see the issue being "making movies for nerds", at least not fully (as per my point above). Lack of variety is a huge issue in and on itself, and it's showing across the entire entertainment industry (publishing, tv, video games, music, the issue persists).

TLDR; the issue, as I see it, is that the "nerd" is having to give way for mainstream audiences when it comes to big-budget productions, leading to dilution and, ultimately, a product that stops appealing to the nerd, while also still failing to entice the "broader audience". Movies and TV-shows end up in a PR-wasteland with poor connection and lousy figures to show for it.

And a very specific kind of young man, the comic book nerd types. I know many young men who find Star Wars and comic book movies insufferable, me included (though I am maybe not so young anymore, but I was in 2015, and already hated this stuff back then). I got so fed up with Disney long ago, I don't think I have even seen any of the movies they put out since 2018 or so.

Yeah very true, it's basically the type of man who goes to comic book conventions. They've essentially turned their entire business model upside down to cater mostly to that one demographic. 

The best thing that could honestly happen to Hollywood is if comic book and Star Wars movies were banned for the next decade. 

Then a lot of these studios with big money to spend would be forced to try other genres, take chances on younger filmmakers with new ideas, and those types of movies are more likely to also create a new wave of movie stars. 

Comic book movies booming and the resurgence of Star Wars honestly was a the worst thing to happen to the movie business. 

George Lucas: "Remember: Star Wars is primarily for 12-year-old boys.  It's for everyone, of course, but the biggest inspirations & themes tap into that specific audience most of all."

Kathleen Kennedy: "That's great and all, but The Force is Female now." (<-whatever the fuck that means)