Memo to Studios – July 2023

To: Any Studio Currently Spending $100+ Million to Make a Movie

From: The Audience

Dear Hollywood Studios, 

We, the audience, feel it’s time we had a serious conversation with you. Based on what we’ve been seeing lately, we have concerns.

It feels like you’ve lost sight of what you’re doing. Namely, spending your time figuring out how to entertain us, so we give you money. We understand making a movie, especially a big, expensive one, requires a lot of effort from a lot of people. But we’re worried the people at the ‘top’ may have lost perspective.

We don’t want to get into specific finger-pointing, because that’s not classy. However, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Flash are great examples of what’s gone wrong. From our perspective, neither of those movies was made to entertain us. At least, that wasn’t the first thing written on the whiteboard when the projects were being ‘hatched’ in your studio bunkers. We heard a lot about how Ant-Man was launching this bad guy, and that new phase of something or other. And The Flash felt like it was conceived to…well, honestly, we aren’t really sure why it was conceived.

Both films dabbled in something we want to officially declare is dead to us from an enjoyment perspective: The Multiverse. Just like vampires, we were curious about it for a moment, and you took that curiosity and bludgeoned us with it relentlessly, with some pretty mind-bogglingly confusing results, until we got really, really sick of it. And by 'we', we mean everyone who has never and will never go to Comic-Con. In other words, 90% of people who buy movie tickets. But hey, it was a mildly interesting ride for a second. Maybe you can finish it off by doing a ‘vampires in the multiverse’ just for fun?

Why Are They Always Blaming the Audience?

We’ve loved you for generations. You are a delightful, guilt-free, popcorn-filled escape from the mundane reality of our daily lives. But it may be time for you to take a breath, step back, and try to find the joy in what you do. Because the joy is very definitely lacking.

We know it must be hard having corporate overlords who want so desperately to squeeze movies into the parameters they are familiar with. Long-range planning, reports, strategies, meetings, share prices, and the idea a movie is a commodity, to be strategized and launched and all that fun jargon.

But here’s the truth. We, the audience, have no idea what we’ll be into in a year. We’re super fickle. We get bored. The most predictable thing about us is we are thoroughly unpredictable. The more you try to organize your release strategy for comic book heroes in 2027, the more we will develop an obsession with tiny horses. They are super cute by the way. Maybe the vampires can ride them in the last multiverse movie EVER?

Why The Audience Is More Important Than You

Also, it would be great if all the studio executives and development executives in the entire world looked in the mirror, and reminded themselves they are not the most important people in the creative process of filmmaking. They have a role to play, and they are amazingly lucky to earn millions and millions of dollars, despite not being the most important people, and it would be awesome if they remembered that…constantly.

Moving forward, we have some suggestions:

- Make more movies that cost less. Spread the risk. Who puts all their eggs in one basket? Your personal financial advisors don’t do that with your money, so why on earth are you doing it with movie money?

- Take some creative risks and try new ideas. How about spending a little time and money seeing what we may be into next, instead of clubbing us to death with what we said we liked in 2019?

- Share the wealth. We’re pretty sure writers not worried about living in a cardboard box will write scripts with more joy and fun.

- Scale back this franchise obsession. Please. We know that’s like asking the sun not to rise for a corporation. But can we all agree if you need to have seen more than 7 movies in order to understand what the heck’s going on with a new movie…something has gone seriously wrong with the whole system?

We know all of this is terrifying for you. But the good news is, if you spend less, you risk less. Sure, many of your creative ‘risks’ may ‘fail’. That comes with trying to please us, and as we mentioned, we don’t know what the heck we want. But some will work, launch new stars, and give you a bunch more opportunities.

You have made a conscious choice to be in the business of entertaining us. Which is tricky. But maybe stop thinking about us as faceless, demographically categorized blobs to be conned, hoodwinked, bewildered, or even shamed into throwing you cash, and instead think about the fun of creating something exciting, fresh, and new.

You should feel a genuine rush of excitement when the lights go down in a full theatre. We all should. We all want that. It’s all we’ve ever wanted. And you’re not giving that to us as often anymore.

So maybe, while everyone and their mother is on strike – which by the way might be another indicator you have lost a little perspective – you can hit the ‘reset’ button.

Breaking & Entering: The WGA Strike – What’s Happening, How We Got Here, and Why It Matters to You

Find your inner child. Remember what you are lucky enough to be doing with your career. Think about the magic of cinema. And remember, if you focus more on pleasing us instead of your shareholders, you’ll actually end up pleasing your shareholders. We know, crazy, right?

We, the audience, will always love you. Stop trying so hard to make us regret that.

You can do it. We know you can. And remember, tiny horses are insanely adorable.

Regards,

The Audience.

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