Yesterday we noted that the "Ouija" movie was cancelled. This article wonders why is Hollywood getting so cheap all of a sudden:
DVD sales is part of it. For a decade we were encouraged to build our own libraries of movies, so we could watch anything we liked any time - and then hey presto, streaming video comes along. Inferior picture, but $20 per DVD vs. $10 per month? Sure. Also, the economy is horrid, and no one wants to spend fifty bucks to take the family to some soulless CGI-infested 3D movie that beats you over the head and pokes things in your eyes. "Lone Ranger" with Johnny Depp would probably be fine, but they're not gong to recoup $250 mil selling masks to little kids, and they can't sell toy guns, so that's another revenue stream dried up for good.
They might ask themselves why these things are so expensive in the first place. I've seen plenty of good little-known Alfred Hitchcock films that were made for the modern equivalent of a million dollars, and while they didn't have enormous spaceships or people running away from fireballs or anything, they made up for it with curious, old-school tricks like "Acting," "Script," and "Story."
Then there's this:
"The Change-Up" cost $52 million. Grossed half as much so far.
So the days of brave, risk-taking, interesting cinema are over? Not at all:
See, there's hope.
