Why Movies Suck Now

Plus: Leo in Heat 2, Spider-Man in NYC, Clooney + Sandler, and PWH's tattoo.

Author

Brock Swinson
August 06, 2025

👋 Your watchlist just got better.

We spoke with the creators of Wednesday here and Freakier Friday here.

TRENDING

TOGETHER WITH BROOKS ELMS

Can AI beat human creativity at story development? Let's find out.

Filmmaker Brooks Elms (30 years, WGA member) is testing whether AI actually helps writers develop stories. Submit your 1-2 sentence story idea for free.

Nine concepts get chosen, developed, then blind-rated. Live call reveals results and teaches professional concept development.

Deadline: today 12pm PST 👈

Even if you don't get picked, you get the feedback session. You'll finally know if AI helps your writing or not. Join here.

FEATURE

🎬 The Problem with Hollywood

The numbers don't lie. Box office receipts are tanking, Oscar viewership has cratered, and audiences have stopped caring about movies. Here's exactly what went wrong.

Hollywood is in full-blown crisis mode, and for once, we can pinpoint exactly when it all went sideways. The industry made a catastrophic bet on franchise tentpoles and comic book dominance—and it's backfiring spectacularly.

Director James Gray recently laid out the brutal reality in an interview that should be required viewing for every studio executive. The diagnosis? Hollywood killed its own audience.

The MBA Death Spiral Here's the fundamental mistake: Hollywood reduced filmmaking to pure spreadsheet logic. "This film did not make a ton of money, thus we don't make that film. This film will make a ton of money, thus we make that one."

Sounds reasonable, right? It's actually industry suicide.

When you only make "movies that only make a ton of money and they're only one kind of movie," you "begin to get a large segment of the population out of the habit of going to the movies."

The result: Cultural irrelevance.

The Superhero Stranglehold The numbers tell the story:

  • Superhero fatigue is hitting box office hard

  • Theatrical diversity has vanished from multiplexes

  • Academy Awards viewership is at historic lows

  • Cultural engagement with cinema is collapsing

Hollywood forced audiences into smaller and smaller segments instead of serving the broad-based appetite that once made movies a universal cultural experience.

The Memory Test Failure. Want proof that modern blockbusters aren't working? Try quoting a memorable line from Aquaman. You can't. These movies are forgettable content, not lasting art.

Meanwhile, everyone can still quote lines from movies that "didn't make a billion dollars" but "maintained broad-based interest"—films like The Ice Storm, There Will Be Blood, or No Country for Old Men.

The Oscar Mystery Solved. Academy executives sit around asking "Why is viewership going down?" The answer is staring them in the face: "We did not make the investment in broad-based engagement with the product."

You can't build cultural relevance on superhero movies alone.

The Streaming Paradox. Even more damning: "The streaming movies that do the best are the movies that come out in theaters first." Theatrical releases still matter—but only when they're worth caring about.

The $300 Million Solution Nobody Wants to Hear The fix requires something that makes every MBA executive physically ill: Studios need to lose money on purpose.

They should "be willing to lose money for a couple years on art film divisions" because "in the end, they will be happier because it'll come back."

It's about rebuilding audience habits, broadening the customer base, and investing in long-term cultural relevance over quarterly earnings reports.

The question isn't whether this analysis is correct. The question is whether Hollywood has the vision to act on it before it's too late.

PUNCHLINES