"Theatrical is over."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have been listening to this bullshit for decades. And if you read David Puttnam's "Movies & Money" (from 1997!), you will see that this line of gloom & doom and hipster pronouncements about The Future started coming up a century ago.
This morning, Indiewire published a piece by Anne Thompson, who is fully committed to the idea of the end of theatrical as we know it and has been for a while. She rolled out a pretty complete rationale for this notion. And besides being soaked through with inaccuracies and errors of omission, there was an anger involved that took my breath away.
I will link after quoting the most offensive paragraph:
"Exhibitors are very different from their studio partners. Both groups are largely comprised of white men, but theater owners tend to reflect mainstream tastes and fairly conservative politics. (Imagine a Hollywood executive signing off emails like one Cinemark staffer: “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for Hi…
