The motion picture feedback loop

We often perceive culture as something that happens to us rather than something we help create. Let’s flip the script.

Photo by Jill Marv on Unsplash (I didn’t have the right thing.)

I came across this Note on Substack last week:

I agree with his point. This isn’t a good sign for our culture. I went further and asked, “Is it the culture that’s stagnated, or is the industry stagnating the culture?”

The TLDR answer is: it’s both.

.

What's creating this stagnation?

I want to put forth three^¹ primary drivers for what studios currently produce and the resulting list of top grossing major motion pictures:

.

1. The industry is minimizing its risk.

It costs an average of $100 million to produce and market a major motion picture. Google AI (still experimental) says that the average is $120 million in 2024 with “a significant portion of that budget allocated towards marketing costs, often exceeding the production cost itself.”

The folks investing the money to produce a motion picture want to see it turn a profit or at the very least, not lose the studio any money. The emphasis on marketing spend reeks of fear — fear that …