For decades, television struggled to shake off its reputation as cinema’s poorer cousin. Sure, television was exciting — as the box in the corner of your room, it had a familiar intimacy that was hard to replicate — but it couldn’t measure up to the money, the glamour, the absolute star power of US movies.
How far that seems now. The international box office is in the midst of a worrying drought. Thanks to production delays caused by Covid, around half the usual number of films were released this summer and the bottom line shows it. The lack of blockbusters meant that the top movie in the US in early September was Top Gun: Maverick, a movie that came out back in May.
Also Covid has damaged the whole cinema experience. When cinemas reopened after lockdown, audiences were (perhaps reasonably) reluctant to spend another two hours in a room with hundreds of strangers. The lockdown has reduced the theatrical window – the length of time cinemas have exclusivity over a film before it’s released at home – from 90 to 45 days and this has helped make cinema even less attractive to audiences , than it already is was.
After all, why shell out big bucks for an evening to see the latest Marvel movie when you know you can see it in just six weeks as part of a Disney+ subscription? According to former Disney boss Bob Iger, Covid has left a “permanent scar” on the films.
Meanwhile, television has become more and more powerful. You want star power? Check out the IMDb Starmeter, a fairly reliable tool designed to measure the world’s most famous people. At the time of writing, only three of the top 10 are movie stars, with Brendan Fraser at #2, Austin Butler at #5, and Florence Pugh at #7.
“On the verge of collapse” … the cinema chain Cineworld. Photo: Ray Tang/REX/ShutterstockThe rest of the list is made up of actors from two huge TV shows, House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. You want glamour? Check out the internet-melting hyperventilation this year at D23, the official Disney fan club, just because a couple of new Marvel and Star Wars shows were announced. You want money? The total production budget for just one series of The Rings of Power is $715 million, including the initial fee paid by Amazon to Tolkien’s estate for the rights. For reference, you could have shot the last two Avengers movies with that money and then sailed away on the superyacht you bought with the remaining $15 million.
People spend far more on television than on movies. Last month, Variety reported that a fifth of UK households subscribe to at least three streaming platforms for around £300 a year. While the cost-of-living crisis means that number is likely to shrink as viewers become more selective about their entertainment options, it still exceeds the amount they spend in cinemas.
In 2019 – before Covid struck – average cinema spending in the UK was £18.72 per capita each year. In 2020, that number fell to just over £4 amid extended lockdowns. No wonder Cineworld, the second largest cinema chain in the world, is on the verge of collapse.
Even for those who found success in film, television is becoming more and more appealing. “Screenplays have been very good for me,” says Billy Ray, a Hollywood screenwriter whose credits include The Hunger Games and Captain Phillips. “But compared to the forced economics of 110 pages, there’s something very appealing about the idea of having five seasons to develop a character.”
Two years ago, Ray wrote the Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule and is now working on another television project, a limited series about the January 6 riot. From a creative point of view, Ray says, “The fundamental difference between the required disciplines is that the whole goal in movies is to shape the character and to fix what’s broken about them. But on TV, the series is over when you’ve done that. So the trick is to keep the characters unresolved for as long as humanly and economically possible.”
Bryan Cranston, left, and Aaron Paul in a scene from Breaking Bad. Photo: Frank Ockenfels/APYou can see that appeal in something like Breaking Bad. While this show would once have been a stepping stone for Bryan Cranston, who may have used it to achieve big box office success for himself (much like Bruce Willis or George Clooney did before him), it is likely to become his defining role. While fun, his film work is small compared to the deep, rich, developing character work he got to do as Walter White.
So, on the surface, it looks like television has finally licked the cinema. But Laura Martin, entertainment analyst at Needham and Company in LA, argues that we reject cinema at our peril. “What’s important is that this is an ecosystem,” she says. “Movies create an opportunity for storytellers to tell a story to an affluent or dating segment of the population. It actually serves a different purpose. You can’t really go on a date and watch a big movie at your house. Movies will continue to be a very important part, economically and in terms of content.”
What seems like a small sin. If she’s right, that means the defining culture medium of the last 100 years has now become a sideshow for rich people and horny teenagers. But Martin believes the system isn’t ready to let cinema die. “What counts is talent,” she says. “Talent wants to win Oscars, and that’s hard to do when you start streaming. It must be in a cinema. The other point is that there isn’t a great franchise created without a movie. It’s really important. We have yet to see if the television screen can make a lasting franchise.”
While Martin’s second assessment isn’t watertight — Game of Thrones, for example, was based on a series of novels rather than a film — it’s an important point. All of the shows people are crazy about had their roots in other media. Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power might have drawn large audiences, but it had the advantage of being able to piggyback on six popular, critically acclaimed films, as well as Tolkien’s novels.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Photo: Ben Rothstein/Prime VideoDisney+, on the other hand, relies almost entirely on our undying interest in Star Wars and Marvel films (not to mention our thirst for endless, if tangential, spinoffs) for new subscribers. The closest we’ve got to a non-cinematic franchise is probably Netflix’s Stranger Things, and that’s a largely untested IP. We won’t know how robust this series is until someone at Netflix tries to make a wacky prequel about Eddie learning guitar.
This focus on IP isn’t the best news for TV either. There’s a sense that streamers are throwing everything they have at their old properties to get new subscribers through the door, and that comes at the expense of the smaller, more interesting dramas that win critical acclaim and add texture to a service.
Tastes change. People keep walking. When the public loses its appetite for the spaceships and wizards and superheroes – and it will – streamers might find they’re out of tanks. This is perhaps not a case of television beating film, but of television blindfolding itself and blasting film into the void.
One of only three movie stars in the IMDB Top 10: Florence Pugh. Photo Credit: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Netflix“I don’t think anyone knows where things are going to be in five years,” says Ray. “A lot of very smart people try to guess. But that’s all they do – guess. Great stories will always find a way. Great characters will always captivate an audience. And all forms of exhibition have a piece of the cake. But anyone who tells you they know what the discs will look like is lying. The market just moves too fast.”
So what next? Martin says television and film still need each other, at least financially. “It doesn’t matter if TV gets bigger than movies,” she says. “When movies create a use case, economic platform, and economic stepping stones that help create a richer content experience, there’s no reason not to keep it [cinema] as part of the ecosystem.”
Ray, on the other hand, is a little more cautious. Looking out over the landscape – the cinemas with their dwindling blockbusters, the streamers with their sudden aversion to novelty – he says: “My advice to young writers remains the same. Work your ass off. Write. Getting better. rewrite. Study the big ones. But make sure your brilliant new script includes a podcast too, because shyness in the business is pathological right now.”