Do People Actually Know What Sort Of New Movies They Want To See?

Here's 7 new genres to reinvigorate the cinema ecosystem!

stare into the center of my mind, would you please?

“U.S. Viewers Overwhelming Want To See More TV Shows Depicting Realistic Work-Life Balance, Family Care and Gender Equity” stated a recent Variety headline. Yeah, maybe.

I’d like that world where that is true, but I have a hard time accepting that is the world we live in. To the hammer everything looks like a nail. I get it. Such surveys are hard not to end up with the results those that run it want to see. But still, it’s a good question and worth digging in deeper for: what do we truly desire?

“Is 2024 the year of the box-office megaflop?” stated another recent headline. Seems that way, but why is that really?

Imagine if we could really change the world. What if they stopped making the stuff you are not interested in, and only made the good stuff. I wonder how many business plans got funded on that unrealistic strategy? Sadly, probably too many to count. People love to believe they know better than others.

And then there’s the problem that folks don’t really like the good stuff. They don’t. We’ve trained people to think the good stuff is too much hard work, be it to make or to watch. How do you solve for that? Do you just give the folks what they want, or think they want, or actually watch? Where does that get you? Generally people seem to think that’s where the Netflix strategy currently is: don’t give them HBO style awards-bait, but instead feed them ABC-style junk food & keep them snacking. It seems to be the policy of most of the GSPs these days. Maybe that’s where all business heads: why try to “improve” the audience? Don’t fight them. Just keep them hooked to the screen? After all, that’s strategy pretty much worked for the last fifty years, right?

Is there a point where a steady diet of the same thing stops being something you can swallow? There was a moment not so long ago when most in Hollywood thought all the audience needed was another superhero spectacle. Since horror did not end up being a passing fad, why should comic book flicks? Or so they thought, until people abruptly stopped going. One day they not so long ago they didn’t want Westerns either.

So if figuring out the cadence of variety in the supply of entertainment is something that the best and the brightest, the most powerful and well capitalized can’t figure out, does it classify as another DADTBABTMPAWDOARB? Shouldn’t more of us have been able to figure out what the healthy diet is to keep audiences engaged by now?

Let’s be clear. Personally, I really don’t care about the audience. Yup, that’s true, or almost true. Rather I don’t care about the general audience’s desires. I care about all those that love cinema. That I do. Full stop. Granted, I think there are more of those that deeply love cinema (or could) than even they themselves know. And they could expand beyond that and even multiply further if we did things a wee bit better too. It would be nice if that is what we were all trying to do… but…

I believe all of us are constantly becoming — we are all works in process —and the role of leaders and artists both is to help move folks to their true selves. And while I would not begin to venture that I will ever have a clue to what that is for anyone (and nor should we try), I do think art – and cinema in particular – is an accelerator for that process. We love to see our fuller selves on the screen, particularly the parts that are most hard to express. One of the many attributes of cinema that I deeply admire is that films enable us to talk about the difficult things a wee bit better.

I encourage to you try to define for yourself what the attributes of cinema are, at least the ones that you hold dear. I have. And also for the “indie” sort I love so much. I think it is very hard to speak accurately about any art form or process until you’ve tried to define what those attributes are. And this is where you can see large swaths of industry going wrong. They haven’t done it. They don’t do it. And they won’t do it, even when you suggest they do. It’s a tell. And a significant one. Speaks volumes.

I doubt any executive at any GSP or studio has bothered with such a task as defining the attributes of cinema. The math is probably not much better in the producer ranks either, and it is particularly in those two job categories I think such an exercise is needed most. If you are making something, you want to know how best to utilize its core components. Recognize what it does well and emphasize that. That is, do that, unless your goal is to ultimately undermine it to such an extent that it no longer is a worthy competitor for people’s leisure time. Makes one wonder if it all could be one big conspiracy to kill off cinema for good, doesn’t it?

I am going to show you how doing so will lead you to not just find better movies to make, but entire slates. I will even suggest those slates for you now. It may be your path to riches and glory. Or on the other hand it may lead you to write a newsletter and shake your fist at the clouds. Maybe you are like those execs and producers I mentioned. Sometimes it feels a whole lot safer to have your head deep in the sand, or even a less savory space. I started with cinema’s attributes and built from there — and I suspect that will give us a head start over most.

If I was on the game show where you have to define the world as we really want it to be, and the category was cinema, I’d first probably suggest that all movies lean into cinema’s attributes. And yeah, if