[onelastjob]

Before streaming, a movie studio actually had to convince an audience to leave their houses and buy a ticket to make money from a movie. This meant the studio had to pour a lot of money into marketing for each movie. The cost to market a movie could be up $30M to $50M range for a blockbuster movie. For a mid-budget drama like Meet Joe Black or A River Runs Through It, you could be looking at a marketing budget that matches the production budget ($30M production + $30M marketing). These big marketing costs for every movie meant that the quality of those movies needed to be pretty high to justify the marketing costs. Streamers don’t have to convince people to go out and buy a ticket for every movie they release. They just have to keep the existing subscribers paying and get more people signing up. So the marketing cost per title goes way down. This takes some pressure off to make quality content because the risk per title is lower. Also quality movies on streamers don’t necessarily get the marketing and fanfare they would have before streaming.

[alisonkisk]

It takes off the pressure to make popular content. Quality content can be unpopular, niche, wonderful content. Popular content needs to be tolerable by as many people as possible, which means taking fewer risks on high-quality slightly controversial or intellectual or unfamiliar material.

[blooalien]

> Quality content can be unpopular, niche, wonderful content.

I was about to say this exact thing. I've seen some amazing content on various streaming services that would have simply not even existed in prior decades. Even some of the "big boys" of media have been able to produce some shockingly good content these days thanks to the lowered risks and costs of available outlet channels for their more "experimental" media offerings.

[agumonkey]

It's funny, I keep seeing this era the same way. There used to be such a different structure behind things. Everything was more expensive but we went to grab them because they were so superb. Also it imposed some kind of order.. those who managed to fabricate large things in front of the random nature of workgroups, social trends and audience desires got to grab the hero / fame status (for better or worse).

Today, available means flattens the whole landscape, you can indeed do everything at a fraction of the cost but so the goal vanished because there's nothing of greatness now ? (and many groups are in the "availability is key for .. whatever" .. I find the idea too naive)

This weird tension, or contrast, is interesting.

[foolfoolz]

think of it as “leveling the playing field” in which it over time asymptotically approaches shit

[agumonkey]

And I wonder how much of nature works the other way around, and how our biology is fit for unleveled playing fields. Make things hard to see who's the fittest.. not the other way around.

[SavantIdiot]

> Before streaming, a movie studio actually had to convince an audience to leave their houses and buy a ticket to make money from a movie.

I disagree. The masses that buy millions of tickets every week to watch the latest opening do so because that is a primary form of entertainment. Most people are that boring and will watch whatever is at the movies that week. I don't think they are going because they really like movies, because come on... but I could be just gatekeeping.

Excluding blockbusters that rack up hundreds of millions in opening week, most people will go see whatever is playing and not thing too much about it.

[wodenokoto]

Those numbers seems incredibly low for a blockbuster.

I see the google info box saying the average movie marketing spend matches your quote, but they are talking about productions averaging only 60 millions in costs.

Blockbusters like transformers or large marvel movies are much more expensive to produce and market.

Hollywood reports sets the marketing costs of summer blockbusters at 200 million worldwide - in 2014!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/200-mill...

[MeinBlutIstBlau]

I think this is why I've been struggling with finding good films to watch nowadays. Shows are doing great but movies have been suffering. Take the movie "Nobody" for instance. How the hell that movie got the ratings it did I will never know. Not only is it not good, but it was nothing what it was marketed as.

My solution to this is to watch actual films that are made with artistic intent or to see certain things that are submitted into festivals instead of just the main films shown to everyone. It's helped tremendously but it becomes a chore quick when there are a lot of "artsy" movies that tell the exact same story you've seen a million times.

[rmah]

Isn't it said that there are only seven actual stories? That every story is a variation of those seven plots with different names, places, times, etc?

[xarope]

I guess you are referring to this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

This, for example, is a perennial favourite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

However, I'd like to think it's not just the plot, but the acting and the interpersonal relationships, that makes things interesting.

[skinnymuch]

There are only seven if you insist on being very general and vague. Skimming I didnt see any thing about things getting worse or not changing. Tragedy story is about something being the protagonist’s undoing. However in films like Man Push Cart or Big Fan. The protagonist didn’t do anything to make their lives worse. It either just sucked more or always sucked from the beginning.

There are other examples too, but this is one immediate one.

[MeinBlutIstBlau]

At their root core, sure we could generalize that. But I would say like any art, the expression of the story is what matters. I have a hard time connecting films like The Lives of Others, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Les Innocentes, Star Wars, and Austin Powers as "just the same story." In essence all films are either a comedy or tragedy if you really want to get down to it.