Business prospects, of course, remained grim. Throughout the sixties, amid enormous social and generational changes, studios, many still under the control of their longtime executives, struggled to keep up with the times, and Hollywood continued to face a decline in attendance, from thirty million average weekly attendance in 1960 to eighteen million in 1970. A wave of acquisitions began, attracting buyers not previously associated with the media. Auto parts maker Gulf & Western bought Paramount, and Warner Bros. was acquired by Kinney National, best known as a parking lot chain. Once again, the result was surprisingly positive, and the seventies are now considered another golden age of Hollywood. The industry, having turned in desperation to a new cohort of directors, has revived both artistically (as in the case of Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich, Elaine May And Clint EastwoodFrancis Ford Coppola and Terrence Malick) and commercially (as with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas). These directors, who grew up amid cultural shifts that left studios out of touch, made films that appealed to a new generation of audiences. Suddenly cinema became, as in the beginning, the art of the youth, and this art developed.
The movie business faced a similar crisis in the early 21st century when it encountered the popularity of so-called prestige television such as HBO's The Sopranos. Movie audiences have shrunk, especially among mid-budget dramas, the films that are closest in kind to established cable programs. Many veteran filmmakers found themselves in a difficult position, and critics and directors were again wringing their hands. However, independent producers came to the rescue. They saved some of the most illustrious careers, including that of Scorsese, whose frustration with the studios drove him to the point where he told me“I realized that I couldn’t continue making films,” and Wes Andersonwhich was freed up for even wilder inspirations. The crisis also inspired another new generation of filmmakers working entirely outside the ultra-low-budget industry, whose completely uninhibited work marked yet another rebirth of the art form. They include Greta Gerwigbrothers Josh and Benny Safdiepair Ronald And Mary Bronsteinand a group of actors such as Adam Driver– who joined.
Who were some of the independent producers writing checks? Streaming companies. Spike Leein his twenties, resorted to making self-financed and crowdfunded films and did not have an independent producerbut then Amazon opened up its film production line with “Chi-Lear(2015). This set Lee on a path he has since blazed with other streaming companies: “Yes 5 bloodswas made with the help of Netflix and his latest film “Highest 2 LowestAs for Scorsese, only Netflix was willing to take on a whopping sum—reportedly up to two hundred and twenty-five million dollars—to produce a technologically complex and ambitious gangster film.Irishman“, one of his greatest works. And it was Apple that provided the majority of the approximately two hundred million dollars for production.”Killers of the Flower Moon” Four short films by Wes Anderson Adaptations by Roald Dahl Since 2023, some of his boldest and most concentrated innovative films have been produced by Netflix, which also released two of them. Richard Linklater best recent films”New wave” And “Apollo 10 1/2: Space Age Childhood” Meanwhile, Amazon was behind one of this year's best and most unusual films, Nia DaCosta'sHedda” The point is that crises provide solutions for players outside the crosswinds—be they streaming services or small production companies that don't face the same financial pressures as the big studios, independent filmmakers and micro-institutions that reward them.
Of course, the studios' traditional ability to produce and release great films remains strong, as with Warner Bros.' slate of productions. this year and three Jordan Peele masterpieces.”Get out“, “Us,” And “Nope“, all from Universal. And streaming services are no panacea, not least because films like Hedda remain rare exceptions. These services are businesses as much as studios and theaters, and because their business model doesn't depend on paying customers for individual films, standout films serve as advertising, a way to demonstrate respectful goodwill towards the art of cinema, while streamers cut into the main source of revenue for theatrical releases. Distributors companies and movie theaters are generating a thought experiment. Suppose Netflix already owned Warner Bros. when the studio produced “The Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” and gave them only short and limited theatrical runs rather than wide releases: would the eventual place of these films in film history be diminished?
The film is recognized as the best of all time 2022 Sight and Sound poll, film by Chantal Akerman “Zhanna Dilman, 23 years old, Quai Commerce, 1080 Brussels(1975) was not released here until 1983 at the New York Film Forum, and had a reported domestic box office figure for the year of $19,858. To be sure, despite numerous repertoire screenings since then, significantly more audiences watched it at home, whether physically or via streaming, than in theaters.
The empirical difference between watching a film in a theater and on a screen at home varies for each film and in unpredictable ways. Having spent most of my early childhood watching on television, and my teenage and early adulthood in movie theaters, as well as most of my artistically formative viewing, I am an agnostic. I love the scale, focus, and continuity of cinema—subjection to the director's command—but I also love the intimacy of home viewing, the one-on-one interaction, the power of obsession, and the deep exploration of film as a book of images. Basically, I'm happy to see films that expand the art of cinema wherever they are available. There are great films that wouldn't exist if they weren't considered commercial offerings for theatrical release, and there are others that wouldn't exist if they didn't have value on streaming services; and still others, released in very few theaters, owe their staying power to home video.
