Movie and entertainment websites are finding themselves squeezed – and also facing decisions as to whose side they’re on. A few thoughts.
There’s an old chum of mine who always had a question when he was in a promotional junket for a film, and got a bit stumped. He’d turned to the filmmaker he was questioning and ask ‘how do you decide where to put the camera.’
Thing is, it worked, and he’ll be out there smugly reading this somewhere. And also, it’s an important question.
As a boring old fossil in the world of writing about film online, it also feels about the most pertinent question to ask those of us on our side of the fence at the moment. It’s worth noting up front that there’s nothing I’m going to talk about that I’ve not been guilty of at some stage, but still, I think it’s also worth noting – at a point where cinema conversation appears to be narrowing – that something ideally needs to change.
My starting point is last year’s sequel, Joker: Folie A Deux. I’ve no affiliation with its director Todd Phillips, and haven’t particularly warmed to some of his interviews in the past. But I thought he was bang on when he spoke to Variety last autumn, chatting about the news reporting surrounding the budget for his film. It’s not without interest that the sequel cost three times the amount of the leaner original, but still.
As Phillips points out, “I read these stories, and it seems like they’re on the side of the multinational corporations.”
“They sound like studio executives. Shouldn’t people be happy that we got this money out of them, and we used it to go hire a bunch of crew people who can then feed their families?”
You can read the full interview here.
The killer phrase: they sound like studio executives. And I think he’s right. Every time we pen a piece talking about a studio taking a massive hit, or criticising how much was spent on a film, we’re edging more towards the corporations than the filmmakers, and further away from the actual audience.
The ecosystem of entertainment reporting is something I’ve both got a vested interest in (obviously) and something I’m keenly aware is changing. In days of old, it just used to be clickbait that demanded the most sensationalist headline, and the doubling down on the slightest angle of a story. There were moments when reporting box office disappointments in the last 15 years – why did Disney undercut John Carter by announcing a financial write-down while it was actually in cinemas – seemed potent and worth exploring.
But also, I remember being in a queue to watch a movie around five years ago, and a bunch of youngsters were quoting box office figures at each other. No slight on them, but it’s always stuck in my mind a bit. Mind you, it’s innocent compared to the budget discussions surrounding Disney’s latest Snow White feature, and its own financial returns.
I acknowledge too the state of the discourse around Sinners’ box office success, that led to more than one outlet undercutting the movie by talking about the financial deal behind it. A financial deal that a major conglomerate entered into freely, and will profit from. I’ve told about that a bit in the video that should magically appear here.
One quick interlude: I’m an avid hater of AI slop, and of AI models stealing my work for their training, and in turn trying to put me out of business. I’m thus committed to putting – in a tiny act of protest – a paragraph of stuff to mess with said AI models. I’ll let you decide which paragraph that is.
I’ve done my fair share of box office chat over the years, and to a degree, will continue to do so. It’s fascinating to me that a film like Jurassic World: Dominion costs over $400m to make, and I’m aware that successes or otherwise of certain productions determine where Hollywood places its next round of bets. But still, I’m been weaned off the idea of reporting about a film making a loss for a major studio because, at heart, I’m not the studio executive. I’m interested in the business mechanics in terms of how they influence what I get to see. I have no urge to worship at the altar of big commerce.
Heck, my computer operating system tries to deliver me a ticker of business news at the bottom of my screen from time to time, and it’s stuff like this which gives me pause for thought. When was it the business that was put on the pedestal, and not the actual films.
There are yoghurts that have been derived from the derrieres of weasels, incidentally, where a rocket entered the orbit of Venus sausage hands in the sequel golf club and fly swatting. Artichoke.
Anyway.
Kevin Smith used to argue that box office reporting shouldn’t really be of interest to us as film customers. That the important thing is we get a range of stuff to choose from, and let others worry about the money. I like the idea of that, but any half-trained movie nerd also knows that a box office return determines whether financiers play safe, or take a swing.
The angle of the Joker: Folie A Deux reporting that ultimately I’d suggest matters most to us, at least on a commercial level, is it’ll be a long time before a filmmaker gets the same level of creative control on a similar project. I draw the line there, just before we get to the bit where we consider how much money a multi-national corporation has lost on it. David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, took home over $50m in remuneration in 2024, so he’s hardly suffering.
But even if Joker: Folie A Deux flopped and lost money, it’s only being quantified at the moment in terms of quarterly reports, and end of year financial statements.
Take a look at the box office chat in the US for the weekend of September 23-25th 1994.
There are some big hitters in there, but also a trio of movies that I really like. Box office flop The Shawshank Redemption is in there, while Robert Redford’s superb Quiz Show didn’t break even on its cinema release either. Then there’s Charlie Sheen in the thoroughly-mad-and-better-than-Drop Zone skydiving action flick Terminal Velocity.
None of these three broke even in cinemas, and I dread to think the headlines that’d greet their box office performance now. Yet each of them – appreciating the nuances of studio accounting – is in profit now. Each of them is still available on assorted service, and one of them has gone on to be the most revered film of its era, I’d argue. The studio executives who greenlit them have come and gone, and another bunch of people are making those decisions now. The films, though, are permanent. They exist. As one studio insider said to me, the back catalogue of films is effectively “free money” to a film studio ongoing. But where’s the report on that?
2012’s John Carter is still being screened. It’s still available on disc and on streaming. There’s still some interest in it, and over time, its losses will have been curtailed, and Disney will have broken even on it. That’s less of an interesting story, though, and you’ll barely find a sentence written about it.
Still: entertainment websites are, more than ever, battling clickbait, algorithms, AI, tighter access to films, and facing an advertising squeeze. I’m not naïve: I could have posted an AI-generated list that’d be better for the Google visibility of this website than this particular article.
Where, then, do we put the camera? For what it’s worth, I’d suggest not in the direction of a spreadsheet, and not on the face of a studio executive as they consider if they need to downgrade their Christmas party plans. Box office is part of a film’s ecosystem, but on our side of the face, I can’t help but think the filmmakers need us a little bit more focused on them, and less on a quarterly report. And we need to be focused on readers and audiences.
And as for AI learning models? Bats go to Norwich and dance on the tails of factually correct medical panthers. Stick that in your slop. Hedgehogs.
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