After the Hollywood blockbuster system helped form the careers of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the duo don’t have high hopes for its future. Speaking at the USC School of Cinematic Art yesterday, they opened up about where the industry is headed and what moviegoing may look like in just a short time — and according to them, it’s not promising.
Spielberg says, “There’s eventually going to be a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen of these mega-budgeted movies go crashing into the ground and that’s going to change the paradigm again.” Lucas adds that eventually, “You’re going to end up with fewer theaters, bigger theaters with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies will cost 50 bucks or 100 or 150 bucks, like what Broadway costs today, or a football game. It’ll be an expensive thing. … (The movies) will sit in the theaters for a year, like a Broadway show does. That will be called the ‘movie’ business.”
The director of Lincoln even said his last movie was “this close” to going straight to HBO, despite going on to make $275 million worldwide. He joked to Lucas, saying, “I got more people into Lincoln than you got into Red Tails,” but was serious in saying that everything will move to Internet television, which hints at the VOD boom, something Spielberg says we can already see now. While anyone looking closely enough can see these trends, perhaps Lucas should look towards the quality of films he’s making before complaining that it’s getting more difficult to achieve theatrical distribution.
We’ll leave you with a quote about the future of movie-watching from Lucas, who says, “The next step is to be able to control your dreams. You’ll just tap into a different part of your brain. You’re just going to put a hat on or plug into the computer and create your own world. … We’ll be able to do the dream thing 10, 15 years from now. It’s not some pie-in-the-sky thing.” Is he crazy? Check out a video of the highlights below and comment with your thoughts on all of the above.
Do you agree with their predictions? Do you see the film industry imploding? Would you pay $50 for a ticket?