BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Leave it to "Star Wars" creator George Lucas to pronounce the death of the Hollywood blockbuster.Blockbusters had a pretty good run there for a while - basically, a quarter century of market dominance in the film industry. But I disagree with Lucas - in the future, the only thing on big screens in multiplex theatres will be dust and cobwebs. This is an industry that seems to be incapable of delivering a service that is enjoyable and makes you want to come back again. (Here I make an exception for small, second-run theatres, which are still affordable and not hostile to their customers.)
"The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie," said Lucas, a near-billionaire from his feverishly franchised outer-space epics. "Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with 'King Kong.[...] I think it's great that the major Oscar nominations have gone to independent films," Lucas told me, adding that it's no accident that the "small movies" outclassed the spectaculars in this year's Academy Awards. "Is that good for the business? No — it's bad for the business. But moviemaking isn't about business. It's about art!"
Was that a smirk? "In the future, almost everything that gets shown in theaters will be indie movies," Lucas declared. "I predict that by 2025 the average movie will cost only $15 million."
The irony of Lucas saying this, however, is too much. This is the man who made three horrible blockbusters, and now wants to blame "market forces" to cover up the fact that he made crap.
Update: Westacular defends Lucas in comments using - gasp! - "research" and "facts", and totally demolishes my argument that Lucas is bitter about his crappy Star Wars prequels. What Westacular fails to address, however, is that I'm bitter about Lucas' crappy prequels.
1 comment:
"Here I make an exception for small, second-run theatres, which are still affordable and not hostile to their customers."
The sorts of theatres that already spend most of their time running independent movies. The ones that about the art more than the business. Lucas wasn't specific in his prediction about which theatres would remain open in the future. Megaplexes depend on blockbusters to be viable; I see your prediction as something of a logical consequence of Lucas' prediction.
"This is the man who made three horrible blockbusters, and now wants to blame "market forces" to cover up the fact that he made crap."
Lucas has been making similar predictions since before the prequels; this isn't anything new. He's a strong believer that new technologies will allow talented, motivated individuals to make low-budget films that look just as good as anything Hollywood can produce.
Suggesting that his statements here are an instance of sour grapes doesn't make sense: business-wise, the prequels were very successful. He has no reason to blame anything on market forces. And, relatively speaking, the prequels were not that expensive to make -- each came in at around $120 million. A quick bit of research shows that while Revenge of the Sith was the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America and second-highest worldwide, it was the least expensive to make on both the top-five domestic and top-five worldwide lists.
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