David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…And it’s fascinating to see the shift of the playground that is the movie studio, the movie theater, all of Hollywood as a feature film production. The creativity and originality, it’s not happening there anymore. It’s happening elsewhere. And we’re in this era right now simultaneously of a great TV renaissance. Every season there’s brilliant dramas on with Hollywood acclaimed actors and best in class writing. You know, there was Mad Men, there was the Sopranos, like we’re leading up to this – and I’ll save, there’s one that I’m watching that’s my carveout that I don’t want to mention yet. But like, all of the experimentation has moved to cheaper things on TV or YouTube or social media. And Hollywood is the way to go in and make a billion dollars off of sure things because if you’re going to go pour a couple hundred million in, you want to get big, big money out and you’re not willing to take a chance. Yeah. It’s interesting, I think the question for me that that begs and I’ve been thinking about, I was starting to do the research and as we’ve been doing the episode, for all the justifiable admiration, deserved admiration that I think we’re keeping on Marvel and Disney here, I think there is one really key existential risk, and that’s if and when the pushback to this dynamic comes from the public, how many sequel – and people have been asking this for years, and so maybe it will never come. But how many sequels can we take, how long our superhero movie is going to be in vogue? Is this just a very extended fad cycle that we’ve been living in? Like in 10, 20, 30 years will we look back on this and feel like, “Man, that was like leisure suits. Remember the superhero movie days?” I just wonder, I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer to it. I guess it’s interesting like if this is like a permanent thing, what changed in the world, like what piece of technology or what societal norm shift or something changed that made it so that we were– Well, maybe it’s this. Maybe we’re actually capable of creating something that resonates so strongly with people’s nostalgia and were actually capable of creating multiple billions of dollars of revenue on a single film, therefore we’re going to spend all the money to produce that thing, therefore we’re not going to take chances.…

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