A Letter To
Dear Movie Studios,

I thought I would reach out to you and see if I could maybe give you some perspective on what you are doing to the 100 years plus business of Motion Picture exhibition. Listen, I get it you are here to make a buck, but for the last decade I kind of feel that you are going off the rails and doing much damage to the tradition of movie-going and frankly to yourselves. In short, I think you are killing movie-going, the cinematic form known as the feature film, and also I think you are doing yourself great harm. Often in life a short term fix, creates a long term problem.

My intent of writing this letter to you is to ask you to take a step back and take a serious look at what you are doing. You have become addicted to the financial Oxycontin that is Wall Street and you are trying to be something you are not. The problem with hitching your wagon to Wall Street is that Wall Street creates promotes economic bubbles, period of over-inflated economic excitement, and right now you are riding the streaming bubble. This bubble will burst and you then find yourself out in the cold, looking in on that falsehood which is promoted by easy money and false self-importance.

First of all, when it comes to telling stories, you are the tops, but for the past 7 years or so you have forgotten whom you are telling these stories too. I loved the mid-’70s to mid 80’s when the Germans told their own stories with movies from Hertzog, Fassbinder, Petersen, and Winders; France with Truffaut, Besson, Chabrol, and Varda; the Italians with Fellini, Bertolucci, Bava, and Wertmuller….and it was great when Australia showed up with Weir, Miller, Beresford, and Armstrong. Now a lot of this was due to an upstart by the name of Roger Corman, he had the vision to import the movies of Bergman and Fellini and he had a firm grasp on the curiosity of the audience.. At one time movies could be a cheap ticket to another part of this wonderful world of ours. You stopped all of this because you were greedy and wanted to only make movies that had merchandising attached. In the process, you have almost drained the art from the movies, at one time this was art now it is just a merchandising opportunity.

Now you give us bland superficial stories that have little relevance to most of the audience. Sure, they love the quips of Robert Downey Jr. running around in a faux metal suit. You decided that you would abandon your storytelling tradition for technology. Here is the rub, people really like watching other people, real people. There is communication in the human face that you will never be able to replicate; we may not realize what we are looking at but we sure as heck feel it. The greatest special effect of any good movie is the face of the people on the screen. If we know something is animated it does not have the same impact.

You have been spiraling out of control for the past little while, and I just wish you would stop.

You have been playing games with theaters for some time now. Nasty, manipulative games. At trade shows, you have been proclaiming yourself as partners in exhibition but at the same time working hard diminishing the part of the business that is known as theatrical exhibition. Yes, it is harder to distribute movies into the theaters, and as well it is so much easier just to plop a movie onto Amazon. Guess what though, movie studios, it is the hard that makes the theatrical exhibition so damn good. You have to think about how you are going to get people off their couches and into a darkened theater, You have to motivate folks to put down the remote and chicken drumstick and go to the movies.

Here is the rub and the dark side of streaming, it turns movies from events into straight commodities. No one gets excited about commodities. When was the last time you engaged in a conversation regarding pork bellies? So, you start rapidly eroding 120 years of cinematic tradition and you look up and discover that you have cheapened the value of the movie-going experience. Here is the cruel twist of fate that you do not realize when you make movies a commodity you make your streaming service a utility, not a purveyor of storytelling and magic….a utility. You cease to be special and your marketing to advance your revenue begins to fall on deaf ears, you know why…because you have ceased to be special. It’s about the communal experience stupid.

Not only are you doing deep damage to the theaters as well as the moviegoing experience but you are rapidly getting rid of the form known as the feature-length motion picture.

You, the studios have fallen into your own trap. You know like all things promoted on Wall Street, streaming is a bubble, and all bubbles burst. When the streaming bubble does burst you will look up and say how do I rebuild excitement about my product. You will see foolishly that what you are producing has little or no value. Let me give you an example. I worked on a made for Syfy Channel movie in 2009, the licensing fee paid by that channel was $1.5 million. Today the same movie made in 2020 could expect to receive $60,000. I know a group of folks who made a movie for $500,000, a fairly good movie with some names in it. Netflix offered them $150,000 for all English Language rights. You cannot strangle both production and exhibition and expect to come out whole on the other side.

You cannot have streaming services like Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, HBOMAX, Disney+, Mubi, Pluto, Tubi, and about 150 more and expect all of these to properly sustain themselves. As a result of the need to constantly re-invest in content, services like Netflix often make less than 10% profit and competition is stiffening. Remember when HBO first started, it was all movies, now it is some movies and a large number of series like Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos. I am going to say it again, it is that important, when you move your focus from theaters to streaming you are also eroding the idea of the feature-length movie. Why not leave movies for the theater and then you can make all the series you want. Streaming is not movies, it’s the next iteration of television.

Here is the real sticking point for me, the point that really shines a light on your lack of corporate citizenship or character. Some studios and they are in the minority have not all taken the sociopathic position that they demand that they own it all. This is not a good approach, it is unhealthy for our economy and frankly should be challenged in the courts. The rise of COVID has shown the true nature of the studio. While in the past the studios would have said during a crisis., “we are in this together, the theaters gave us life, sustained us and in reality invented us….during these hard times, we will walk alongside you,” but not now. The studios have seen the struggles of the theaters, saw the deep peril that the theaters are in, and in the equivalent of having your wife being diagnosed with terminal cancer, the studios have walked out of the hospital room, then drained the bank account and never to be seen again. Shame on you.

The studios should have stuck by the theaters and said forcefully, “for a hundred years, you were our foundation, you allowed us to do what we do, you allowed us to make a living….now we will share your suffering.” You did not do this, you took away the assets they need to survive and are purposefully starving them. Instead, you have decided to serve the Dark Sith Lord of Wall Street and their quarterly earning publications.

We stand on a precipice, and you are pushing us over. This is the ultimate in short term thinking, once you cease to have theaters, you cease to have movies that are really special. Streaming does not produce events nor does it make something that theaters have produced for over a century, deep communal magic.

This business which has provided spectacle, diversion and an introduction to a new world is being systematically destroyed by your cavalier machinations. It has to stop for both our sakes.

Please I am begging you, stop and take a thoughtful look around you and alter your course. If you cannot see what you are doing is wrong, then please get some therapy. At one time I used to really admire your advancement of storytelling art and your celebration of the human condition but that seems to be no more.

I hope you take this letter in the spirit it was written, in the hope, you will stop this path of destruction you seem to be on.

Thanks for hopefully listening

Bill