In this episode of, “As Hollywood Burns”, we revisit our heroes sitting on barstools in a seedy dive crying in their high octane alcoholic beverage of choice.  

The bartender says, “Why the long face?”  

No, they’re not horses.  They are soon-to-be-underemployed Hollywood actors because their very good films are not being watched in the theaters.  

In an article from The New York Times called “Highbrow Films Aimed at Winning Oscars Are Losing Audiences”, Brooks Barnes points out:

• One after another, films for grown-ups have failed to find an audience big enough to justify their cost. “Armageddon Time” cost roughly $30 million to make and market and collected $1.9 million at the North American box office. “Tár” cost at least $35 million, including marketing; ticket sales total $5.3 million. Universal spent around $55 million to make and market “She Said,” which also took in $5.3 million. “Devotion” cost well over $100 million and has generated $14 million in ticket sales.
  

• Even a charmer from box office king Steven Spielberg has gotten off to a humdrum start. “The Fabelmans,” based on Spielberg’s adolescence, has collected $5.7 million in four weeks of limited play. Its budget was $40 million, not including marketing.

It looks like traditional Hollywood is being cancelled by the market.  Theatrical release only works for Marvel and little else.  Well, of course, Tom Cruise flying around in fighter jets works too.  

I know that some of you thought I was smoking something since the pandemic broke out and I started crowing about the destruction of Hollywood as far back as 2020.  I won’t say it.  I cannot say it.  Oh, what the heck….

I TOLD YOU SO.  

Barnes continues:

• This is about more than money. Hollywood sees the shift as an affront to its identity. Film power players have long clung to the fantasy that the cultural world revolves around them, as if it were 1940. But that delusion is hard to sustain when their lone measuring stick — bodies in seats — reveals that the masses can’t be bothered to come watch the films that they prize most. Hollywood equates this with cultural irrelevancy.

Emphasis mine.  

The power structures on the entertainment side of the culture wars are crumbling.  Haven’t you longed for the day when the elites at all of the major studios became irrelevant?  Tell the truth.  Yes, you have.  

The time is now.  

The time is now to build a streaming platform that rewards hard work and not just name recognition.  The time is now to create an arthouse for film that is based on a Christian worldview.  The time is now for a model that engages the younger generations with a gamified platform for funding film.  And the time is now for a truly capitalistic model to create the films YOU want to see.  

Not the steady stream of steaming crap that they serve on a trash can lid and call a holiday feast.  

Our tech team is scrambling to build the platform that will engage the biggest spenders on entertainment.  The beta testing is done, the date has been evaluated, and now we build towards launch of season one.  Such work takes money and lots of it.  Funding has begun on our second SAFE round and we seek accredited investors with vision and good, old-fashioned guts who can bring at least $200k to the table.  Is that you?  We hope so.  

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