Warner Brothers moves all film releases to HBOMax - the cinema is dead

[clearspira]

Nothing more to add than the title. How will things ever go back to what is was pre-Covid when everyone is now getting used to streaming? And for me personally, I never much liked the cinema experience anyway. Expensive food, sticky floors, crappy lights, ignorant members of the public chatting with their screaming kids, people holding up phones like lanterns. And I cannot be alone.

The traditional experience is now a dinosaur. It has gone the way of VHS. There will still be a few about but here's my prediction: Avengers Endgame was the last true cinema blockbuster. Remember its not just the film itself, it was the build up, the anticipation, the spectacle. Will that happen again?

[Beelzquill]

Well, I will miss it if you are right. The movie theatres contain some of my fondest memories of hanging out with my friends and family. I mean one of my earliest memories was going to see Babe for my 4th birthday. I really still enjoy the huge screen and comfy chairs that are standard nowadays and even the overpriced popcorn was something I looked forward to.

I don't think theatres will be completely gone because of this, they will most likely shrink into an extreme niche luxury hobby so they might as well be though.

[Makeshift Python]

My prediction: By 2025 studios buy and control movie large theater chains again like in the old days and make them the exclusive place to see their most prolific films. If you wanna see a Marvel film, this is your only option.

At the end of the day, it's all about profit and control. They rather have a group of people buy $15 tickets individually, rather than have just one person subscribe to a streaming platform and have all their friends come over to watch every content in their library including new titles.

Streaming is only in right now because it's becoming the ONLY way to make something of a profit during COVID with all the shutdowns/locksdowns. If the studios have a choice between putting their most prolific films on a streaming platform and making a billion dollars at the box office, they will go with the latter when COVID subsides/vaccinated.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Good grief.

The market is still there. Every human being I've spoken to is desperately longing to go to a real movie theater and eat overpriced popcorn with suspicious butter-like topping and a bladder-shattering blue raspberry slushie. If covid vanished tomorrow, an Adam Sandler film could break box-office records.

[Madner Kami]

The book? Is dead. The theatre? Is dead. The opera? Is dead. Video killed the radio-star, yadda yadda yadda. Cinema will survive, because it is a unique experience, though the framework will change.

[Captain Crimson]

I miss cable more than the cinema, TBH. Let me clear up, I was never really around that much for the golden age or silver age, the '50s and then later the revival with New Hollywood and the blockbuster age of the late '70s, it was in the decline when I first got to the scene, Disney was buying up everything, the writing's been on the wall for a while now.

But I still can distinctly remember the silver age of cable, and now it feels kinda like even TV is in a decline, and for that, as necessary and vital to growth as a society as it was, I blame services like Netflix's emergence in 2007 and YouTube's purchase from Google a year prior. It's democratizing the culture, but it's also furthering the chasm between content creators and the consumers especially as they hit higher marks in attempts to rake in even greater numbers of viewers - likely out of ego and fear, to squeeze the last drops of cash from their IPs before they go the way of the dinosaur, even if that's decades away.

I think cable needs a comeback when the streaming bubble bursts, and my money's on Amazon as the winner to the rumble.

[Makeshift Python]

I’m happy about the demise of cable. There’s nothing more tedious than channel surfing.

[TGLS]

The book? Is dead. The theatre? Is dead. The opera? Is dead. Video killed the radio-star, yadda yadda yadda. Cinema will survive, because it is a unique experience, though the framework will change.

Books are alive but the pulps are dead. The stage is alive but good fucking luck if you live outside of a huge city. I imagine movies could go a different way; superblockbusters might still make it to the big screen while smaller pictures go straight to streaming. Might be the end of the multiplex.

[Captain Crimson]

The death of cable insofar as I see it also means the death of the monoculture and the sort of classic TV we all loved. Pop culture isn't the same as it was decades ago. It does provide a bit of a bright spot in decentralizing the uber-corps same way society has fragmented, however. Let's hope.

Last thought, maybe the publishing industry wouldn't be hurting so hard, though, if these big mega-corps didn't keep messing over their business partners.