New York Times Writer Predicts Doom and Gloom For Theatrical Cinema's Future

On a slow news day, the biggest eye catcher, for me at least, was Kyle Buchanan’s must-read article in The New York Times (“How Will the Movies (As We Know Them) Survive the Next 10 Years?) — As you would guess, based on that title, it’s about the future of movies (spoiler alert: there is no happy ending).

In the piece, Buchanan manages to speak with 24 heavy hitters (producers, studio execs, writers, directors, actors), the thick of the discussion revolving around the rise of streaming and what its impact on theatrical distribution would look like ten years from now.

It’s well worth a read, but I’ll narrow it down to two particular interviews which spell doom and gloom for theatrical cinema. First, there’s Kumail Nanjiani’s insistence that today’s generation of young adults just don’t really care for going to the movies:

I was at a bar with a friend who directs big movies, and while we were in line for the bathroom, he was saying that movie theaters were going to go away. He was like, “Kids don’t watch movies, they watch YouTube.” Which I thought was crazy. So he goes, “Watch this.” There was a girl in front of us in line, and he said, “Hey, excuse me, what’s your favorite movie?” And she said, “I don’t watch movies.” Just randomly, he picked someone — and she was like 25, she wasn’t a child or anything. We were like, “Well, do any of your friends watch movies?” And she said, “Not really.”

Nanjiani continues:

I don’t want to sound like an old idiot, because I try to keep up with what’s happening on YouTube, and it’s a lot of people talking to camera, very personality-driven. I grew up watching “Ghostbusters” and “Gremlins” and “Indiana Jones.” If I had grown up watching YouTube, I don’t know if I would like movies.

Ava DuVernay has fairly similar sentiments about the subject:

My nieces and nephews don’t really care about produced content in the way that we do traditionally — my niece can sit there and watch IGTV for hours, which is on her phone, on Instagram, and it’s basically little clips of nothing. That’s why, when I hear people being so rigid and so strict about certain forms and presentations, it just reminds me of that “Simpsons” cartoon, “Old Man Yells at Cloud.”

The general sense that I got from the whole thing was that we are likely headed into a complete and total abyss in which there will no longer be movies available for adults in movie theaters. Instead, what will be playing at your multiplex will be limited to blockbusters, animated movies, and genre fare. Of course, film festivals will always remain as an oasis for us cinephiles, and be more important than ever before, but most of the mid-budget adult-driven dramas that we used to love catching in theaters will likely disappear and find room on streaming services like Netflix. It sucks, I know, but that’s where it’s headed.