Boing Boing
has a link to a blog post about the death of the blockbuster. The author points to some graphs detailing how there are fewer attendees subsidising larger profits from studios. This says (to me anyway) there are fewer people paying more to see the "big" (read: blockbuster) pictures. The rest of us are choosing other means of entertainment or other films. I suspect it's largely a combination of the two. I've written on the problems of movies/entertainment before and this is more fuel for the fire. The studios no longer control the entertainment channels. Direct to DVD release is closing the gap. Once upon a time, straight to video was for films that were very bad or with limited appeal. Now, much less so. Now you have Mark Cuban releasing a DVD mere days after a theatrical release. Likewise we're seeing more and more people willling to pay for online content and even direct to DVD release programs.
If I had to guess, I think we're going to see niche fame. That is, people who will be wildly famous to a very narrow band of the population and virtually unknown to others. It's like being famous in Japan but unknown here. Example: David Beckham and Fernando Alonzo could walk down 5th Avenue in New York City at midday and few people would recognize Beckham and NOBODY would know who Alonzo was. Put those same two people in, say, Spain, and there would be rioting trying to get next to them. We might just see that here. We'll have hugely famous actors in a sci-fi series that doesn't register with people who do not subscribe to the latest Star Trek incarnation. I think we're a lot closer than people are willing to admit. Do your parents know who any pop stars are? Mine sure don't. I don't even know who half of them are. Some of them you can't avoid but some are only names that are familiar or faces I vaguely recognize. Most come and go so quickly, I hardly notice.
has a link to a blog post about the death of the blockbuster. The author points to some graphs detailing how there are fewer attendees subsidising larger profits from studios. This says (to me anyway) there are fewer people paying more to see the "big" (read: blockbuster) pictures. The rest of us are choosing other means of entertainment or other films. I suspect it's largely a combination of the two. I've written on the problems of movies/entertainment before and this is more fuel for the fire. The studios no longer control the entertainment channels. Direct to DVD release is closing the gap. Once upon a time, straight to video was for films that were very bad or with limited appeal. Now, much less so. Now you have Mark Cuban releasing a DVD mere days after a theatrical release. Likewise we're seeing more and more people willling to pay for online content and even direct to DVD release programs.
If I had to guess, I think we're going to see niche fame. That is, people who will be wildly famous to a very narrow band of the population and virtually unknown to others. It's like being famous in Japan but unknown here. Example: David Beckham and Fernando Alonzo could walk down 5th Avenue in New York City at midday and few people would recognize Beckham and NOBODY would know who Alonzo was. Put those same two people in, say, Spain, and there would be rioting trying to get next to them. We might just see that here. We'll have hugely famous actors in a sci-fi series that doesn't register with people who do not subscribe to the latest Star Trek incarnation. I think we're a lot closer than people are willing to admit. Do your parents know who any pop stars are? Mine sure don't. I don't even know who half of them are. Some of them you can't avoid but some are only names that are familiar or faces I vaguely recognize. Most come and go so quickly, I hardly notice.
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