Is the cinema closed to thank guests temporarily? Maybe this is just the beginning--
Epidemic is changing the landscape of Hollywood industry
■ Our reporter Liu Qing
As the new crown pneumonia epidemic spreads in the United States, Broadway lights out and movie theaters close. However, the theater's doors will certainly reopen, but the closing of the theater may not be temporary. The deterioration of the new crown epidemic has unexpectedly accelerated the online operations of Hollywood studios and changes in the production pattern of the entire film industry. At the end of last year, a data analyst who researched U.S. streaming media data and provided business consulting services lamented in an interview with The New York Times: "I am often asked by people in the film and television industry: 'What is the impact of streaming media on our industry? Time is the head? 'Honestly, this is the beginning of the matter. "In a word, when this epidemic trapped people at home and spent time living alone with online entertainment resources, more and more people gradually became aware Then, maybe the cinema is undergoing an important change.
Award system becomes the last dyke of traditional film industry
When the results of this year ’s Academy Awards came out, American media and film critics circulated such a saying: If the producers of "Irish" and "Marriage Story" are traditional movie studios, such as Warner Bros. or Universal, the two films will be broken. Not to be applauded among the people, but the harvest was bleak in the awards season. In particular, the "Irish" suffered a cold reception, which is almost the result of long-time grievances between the producer Netflix and the movie studios and theaters.
Compared with the number and quality of film and television drama productions that have been continuously produced by streaming media producers such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon over the years, what does not match is the awards they received during the film festival and awards season. From streaming media instead of traditional studios, online viewing precedes cinema releases-this has become the original sin of many films when they were born. The awards and awards have become the last dyke of the traditional film industry to resist the new content producers.
In 2015, the film "The Beast Without Borders" produced by Netflix was shortlisted for the main competition of the Venice Film Festival. This was regarded as the beginning of its own name by the "Internet Movie". In the following five years, Netflix took a rugged " Seeking approval ". In 2017, "Junzi" directed by Feng Junhao and "The Story of Meyerowitz" directed by American director Baumbach were shortlisted for the main competition of the Cannes Film Festival. While Netflix gained unprecedented glory, it aroused unprecedented industry controversy. "A movie that goes online and bypasses the cinema is still a movie? Is it eligible for film awards?" After this vigorous scolding battle, "Jade" and "Meyerowitz's Story" were lost in Cannes. In 2018, the contradiction between Netflix and the French Screening Association intensified, and the Cannes Film Festival Organizing Committee was in dilemma. It ended with Netflix ’s strike and withdrawal. The films removed by the FireWire include: Go to the Academy Award for Best Picture in "Roman", Greengrass "Norway 7.22 Bombings" and Orson Wells's "The Other Side of the Wind". In 2019, Netflix still hasn't climbed to the top of the industry awards bio-chain, but "Irish", "Marriage Story", "Pope's Succession", "Atlantic", "American Factory", etc., have been shown at the Cannes, Venice, and North American Awards Seasons. Here, it becomes a topic-level work.
In fact, at the moment when HBO dramas are recognized as "sophisticated in production overtaking big movies," ordinary audiences and the industry know well that there is no gap in production levels between "big movies" and traditional studio productions. And even, works like "The Irish", when screened on the big screen, its movie feels far from the Scorsese director's unsightly Marvel superhero film. Old directors such as Scorsese, or Hollywood immigrants like Alfonso, the director of "Rome", in the current industrial environment, making a movie they want to make, investment is extremely difficult, this is their turn to and Prerequisites for cooperation between streaming media producers. These directors do not need Oscars, Palme d'Or, and Golden Lion awards to prove their professional abilities, but Netflix is eager for awards in order to prove its legal status in the industry.
This has something to do with Hollywood's default rules for more than half a century. Since the introduction of the anti-monopoly bill in the 1950s, both studios and cinema distribution have been stripped off, and Hollywood, which has a hierarchical system, has pursued a hidden rule: Class A productions with behind-the-scenes and reliable film completion have entered the cinema. The B-level films not to be on the stage, the most important thing is not to enter the theater, direct distribution of video works. Therefore, in the context of Hollywood, "no cinema screening" is a veto of the scale of a movie production and the quality of the finished product, born with the original sin of "no professional ability". Netflix, which has entered the field of content production from online screenings and expanded from drama productions to filming, has repeatedly defeated in order to break the stereotype within the industry.
Reverse killing by big studios
As data analysts and industry consultants have noticed, once the big studios realize that the price of "the ancestral law is immutable" is the loss of profits, they will inevitably move online to fight back that loss.
Netflix has not yet won a place in the traditional film industry. The three major studios of Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures have begun their online expansion with great fanfare. Internet content producers such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Google who haven't started for many years are still doing original work, and the traditional big three easily crushed them with huge inventory of works.
At the end of November last year, Disney opened the Disney + online channel. Users paid a monthly subscription fee of $ 6.99, and they could watch all Disney animated movies, Pixar movies, Star Wars series, and Marvel series with smooth Internet speeds. 30 seasons of The Simpsons and more than 7,500 episodes of Disney TV animation. In the words of Disney's CEO Robert Igor: "Our possessions are all on it." According to statistics, more than 10 million users have registered online to pay.
Even if there is no sudden outbreak, Universal Pictures plans to launch an online channel in the spring, with a total of more than 15,000 hours of movies and episodes including but not limited to: the comedy "Happy Family", the movie "Speed and Passion" series , All the "Saturday Night Live" and so on. Warner Bros. intends to launch an online channel in May at a monthly fee of $ 14.99, providing more than 10,000 hours of programs, covering classic episodes such as "Friends", South Park, and Sesame Street, as well as hundreds of Warner Bros. productions Movies and documentaries produced by CNN.
Formation of a new monopoly
After director Tim McCarthy won the Academy Award for Best Picture for "Focus", his new film "Tim Filtier, Wrong Made" was chosen to go live and be shown on the Disney + channel. With this in mind, the New York Times film review editors and film review authors started a discussion about "quality of movies released online", and concluded that most film directors are now putting down the burden of "cinema release". Even the old people who have spent their childhood in the cinema and have undergone the science class training in the film age film school, such as Scorsese and Spielberg, the big screen screening is only their nostalgia, and in the face of the real financial difficulties, they Between the strong expression of desire and the dilemma of not being able to start construction, the mentality and cooperation with streaming media will be rectified. Two years ago in Cannes, Spielberg scolded "the movie that can only be viewed online is not a real movie". Before the outbreak, he was shooting a high-investment mini-series for Amazon in Mexico City, about how the Spanish conquerors destroyed Dropped Aztec civilization.
Streaming media has already begun digging from the traditional film industry frequently. Many of the screenwriters of "American Horror Story", "Intern Gray" and "Game of Thrones" have been resigned to NetFly, betting on big studios once a year. By the time of two oversized productions, the industry's top screenwriters turned to TV series and streaming originals. Disney and Warner Studios have begun to use the fan audience accumulated by series of films and themed movies to open up Xinjiang for online consumption. On the line, after more than half a century, the middle link between the movie theater and the audience disappeared again. In fact, this is yet another industry change that Hollywood is going through: content producers will face consumers directly.
Technological changes make Hollywood seem to be back to its best time, mastering the content production process, and at the same time deciding on the window for distribution and screening, feeding the audience point-to-point precisely. But technology also makes the most important change. In the past, a film researched the audience ’s psychology and target audience during the production and planning stages. Although it refers to statistical data, it is ultimately an artificial behavior. Although there are overwhelming publicity and posters, the randomness of the audience ’s choice still exists. Behind the success or failure of each film, there is always a certain probability of unexpected factors. The "face-to-face" in the online era is dedicated to eliminating all accidents, and it is no longer experienced production and planning that determines the fate of a work, but big data that is closely calculated; as for the ones sitting in front of large and small screens What programs the audience will order depends more on the push of big data manufacturing.
The terminal link of film production is getting rid of the dependence of the theater and turning to the line. This seems to be a difficult trend to reverse. As for this, it will provide more opportunities for small and medium-sized productions, or create a new monopoly. Maybe everything is not completely optimistic about the impervious information cocoon room.