Movie theaters are cooked

And Squid Game creators teases spinoff idea

Movie theaters are so cooked

Even the people running them have set an expiration date. There’s no denying that moviegoing has gotten worse over the years. Prices for tickets and concessions keep going up, while theater upkeep, projection quality, and audience etiquette decreases.

There are still film fans devoted to moviegoing, but a lot of people would now prefer to stay home and watch on their big screens, and movie theater executives can see the writing on the wall

In a new survey of 246 film execs conducted by Stephen Follows, 55% of exhibition executives said the “traditional cinema experience” has less than 20 years left as a viable business model. Which 60% of sales and distribution execs also agreed with.

The one glimmer of hope here regards the wording of “traditional cinema experience,” which seems to indicate that theaters could stick around, but might be a bit different. Perhaps with a focus on large premium formats or other experiential elements.

But Variety also noted that “nearly 90% of exhibition executives stated that their revenue has not recovered to pre-COVID levels.” So what will fix the problem?

77% believe that releasing movies online and in theaters on the same day have a negative impact on the theatrical business. So 81% of the theater executive want movies to stay in theaters for at least six weeks before they get released on demand and streaming at home.

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Elio just set a really unfortunate record for Pixar

And that sucks for movie fans. Were you aware that Disney’s Pixar Studios released a new movie in theaters last weekend? It’s called Elio and it's about a lonely boy who gets abducted by aliens.

Personally I thought it was pretty good, and people who have seen it seem to agree. 84% of the 138 reviews assessed by RottenTomatoes are positive, and audiences gave it a 91% plus an A Cinemascore. But it seems this movie was fatally under marketed.

As Elio just earned Pixar's worst opening weekend of all time. The movie made just $21 million dollars at the domestic box office, which is lower than The Good Dinosaur, Onward, and Elemental.

The sad thing here is that people are always complaining how there are no original movies and yet here's a good original movie that very few people went to see. This is why we're stuck with sequels, remakes, and reboots

So can Elio turn a profit? There have been rumors that after a long and difficult production Elio cost $300 million dollars to make. Other more sources say the budget was $150 million. Conventional wisdom states a movie needs to gross twice it's budget at the box office to break even. If the budget is on the low end there is a world where Elio will grow legs and reach $300 million. Elemental eventually got there.

But if Elio really did cost $300 million, it's looking at 9 figure losses easy.

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James Gunn just nailed the reason why Hollywood is dying

And he explained what killed Marvel in the process. James Gunn’s new Superman movie hits theaters July 8th, so he’s been doing a lot of press recently to promote it, including a very candid interview with Rolling Stone where he talked about the problems facing the movie business.

“I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number-one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.”

Gunn then explained he and Peter Safran “killed a DC project” because the script wasn’t good enough. “Everybody wanted to make the movie. It was greenlit, ready to go. The screenplay wasn’t ready. And I couldn’t do a movie where the screenplay’s not good … Nothing goes before there’s a screenplay that I personally am happy with.”

Gunn also says quantity over quality can be deadly and he specifically brought up how Disney forced Marvel to increase its output. “That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it killed them.”

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Squid Game is over but it's creator has an idea for a spin off

In case you’re not aware, the 3rd and final season of Squid Game dropped all 6 of its episodes on Netflix today. And it was a doozy — can you even believe it?! Sorry, I’m trying to remain spoiler free as it hasn’t even been out for 24 hours yet.

But if you’re already craving more Squid Game, creator Hwang Dong-Hyuk revealed to Entertainment Weekly he’s got an idea for a spinoff - which sounds more like a gap-filling prequel.

"I actually had this faint ideation about possibly a spinoff about the three-year gap between season 1 and season 2 when Gi-hun [Lee Jung-jae] looks around for the recruiters. There is that three-year period, and maybe I could have a portrayal of what the recruiters or Captain Park or officers or masked men were doing in that period not inside the gaming arena, but their life outside of that. So that is some vague ideation that I have that could possibly be developed in the future."

This to me sounds a lot like what Star Wars has done in the last 2 decades, where it has told stories filling in the gaps between movies. That’s led to some really rich stuff like Andor. So if Hwang thinks there are interesting stories to tell in that period, I’d give it a shot.