Hollywood: Hollywood has ramped up the number of movie releases every year, but the elephant in the room is left unaddressed. Is Hollywood prioritising quantity over quality? How many of these assembly-line releases are actually good?

With the advent and increasing popularity of streaming services, it is safe to say that, streaming services have become the supreme power in terms of showcasing and producing Hollywood content. Consider the streaming world’s behemoth – Netflix. In 2020, Netflix put more new productions on their playlists than the number of weeks in a year! Amazon is also, taking a good slice of the pie and coming up with an increasing number of native/exclusive productions. Far from shying away from the streaming revolution, the household names of Hollywood productions houses like Paramount, Sony and Walt Disney have hopped on the bandwagon and commenced streaming on their own OTT streaming services to get a slice of the pie for themselves.

However, what does this mean for Tinseltown? How will cinema proceed in the world’s most commercially successful filming industry? To answer that, have a look at the graphic posted above (Courtesy WSJ and Ampere Analysis). The devil lies in the details of how, success will be viewed in the era of streaming content.

Earlier on, the success or failure of any film was adjudged primarily by its box office sales (still very much relevant in current times). That convenient yardstick allows the stakeholders of a film a direct finger on the pulse of the market and the overall reception of the film. Cut to the streaming platforms, the best way to truly gauge the success of a film is, how much feedback and peer–to–peer recommendation is given by a viewer; This falls short as not many would actively give feedback on a film once, viewing is over.

Besides, where one can pay the same amount for a monthly subscription to anyone these services as, one would for a ticket for a single show in a theatre so the inclination and popularity, combined with the flexibility to view a film at the viewers’ convenient timings make streaming a very multi-faceted and versatile platform to enjoy content on.

Content! How Much Is Too Much?

With the audiences spoiled for choices and “binge-watching” and “watch parties” becoming a very popular way of enjoying a shared experience, it is an undeniable fact that the appetite for consumption of cinema is much higher than it was in the days of theatres and scheduled cable TV.

Hollywood has admirably scaled up production to meet the demand but the concerns over quality haven’t gone unheard. The answer has been to look at the problem from a different lens altogether. Instead of the popular wisdom of past decades, producing one or two long-lived hits is no longer the yardstick driving force. The new wisdom dictates that reasonable content and many newer projects can now be undertaken which, would not have happened earlier.

This has some of the veteran’s concerned as they say that lumping and sharing of cinematic genius and indubitable gems of cinema, with less than stellar ‘content’ and presented on the same platter. They are concerned that such an approach will not do any favours for the hallmark standards of Hollywood in the yesteryears.

In addition, the financial model that incentivised filmmakers to make the classics was to work with a studio and get a share of the box office profits. With streaming, the equation is now reliant on a large upfront payment with no incentives offered for the success of the films. 

With standards and models witnessing a landmark shift, figuring out how to craft movies that are hit with audiences and critics has never been easy. Even with the perceived higher or lower stakes for filmmakers and executives.