Lest anyone cling to the delusion that our lawless ruling class operates on a profit motive, one of their most loyal servants has willingly walked the plank.
It’s official: North American box office revenue plummeted 80 percent in 2020 amid the novel coronavirus pandemic and unprecedented theater closures, while global revenue tumbled more than 70 percent.
As predicted, domestic movie tickets sold between Jan. 1 through Dec. 31 came generated an estimated $2.3 billion (or $2.28 billion) compared to $11.4 billion in 2019, according to Comscore estimates. That’s the lowest showing in at least 40 years. The dramatic fall-off was expected, considering that many cinemas have been closed for more than nine months in the U.S.
Globally, 2020 movie ticket sales are expected to come in between $11.5 billion and $12 billion, compared to 2019’s $42.5 billion.
In a first, China supplanted North America as the world’s moviegoing market in 2020, generating an estimated $2.7 billion in ticket sales, per Comscore.
In another first, a Chinese movie — the World War II epic The Eight Hundred — topped the worldwide box office chart with nearly $440 million. A number of other Chinese films, including My People, My Homeland, populated the upper reaches of the chart, as did Japan’s hit Demon Slayer. In non-pandemic times, Hollywood blockbusters generally dominate.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Chinese film industry surpassed Hollywood because China’s lockdowns only lasted a few weeks, while Californians are still under house arrest.
What baffles a lot of people is American elites’ motives for imposing tyrannical measures that are crushing everyone–even their greatest allies.
The reason has nothing to do with money or a Chinese Communist plot. There’s no reason involved at all.
Submitting to the constantly changing dogmas of a hysterical Death Cult can hardly be called rational.
But that’s what our ruling class have done. They abandoned Christianity–first for Malthusian population control snake oil, then the climate change hysteria, and now the Covid craze.
Having rejected the cultivation of true virtue, they seize every faddish chance to signal false virtue.
Hence managerial class wine aunts sitting alone in their rooms wearing masks on Zoom calls.
So far, the forces of unreason have marched from triumph to triumph. There’s a hard limit on how far they can push, though.
Reason is the faculty that tells you if your ideas conform to reality. Persistently refusing to use that faculty invites serious consequences.
Hollywood is currently feeling some of those consequences as theaters empty and close.
They’re counting on streaming to make up for the loss in exhibition revenue. Don’t help them.
The "mask up" crazies are the ones who allowed this to happen–the same ones who were calling China travel bans racist a year ago. These same people who do not follow any of the rules they enforce on others, but use it as a excuse to lord over them. Morally vapid people have caused this to happen, and continue to allow it to exist.
Selfish opportunists have used Corona as an excuse to demonize other people while simultaneously throwing off all the rules for themselves.
This free-for-all is not liable to cease anytime soon.
Probably not soon, but won't can't continue won't continue.
More likely than not, because you can't continue to squeeze industries you've already destroyed.
Unseen is how the studios attempted to save American box office results bu depriving the rest of the world of films. Because preventing spoilers was more important than preserving international market share.
That's one way to step on a rake.
Hollywood is finished. Villeneuve's and Nolan's angry posturing about HBO Max and Tom Cruise's well-publicized blowup are the beginnings of rearranging the deck chairs on this Titanic.
Nah, they'll go the waycof other failing industries. In 20 years they'll still be around and we'll be wondering why.
It's because profit is not the point.
True, profit is not the point.
It's also true that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
The next 20 years will show if Hollywood's financiers really do have unlimited coffers.
Brian
I doubt it. Ordinary people have gotten wise. Consequently they vote with their wallets and deny money and attention to those who hate them.
Releasing movies exclusively to studio streaming services is a short term gimmick soon exhausting itself.
xavier
Profit isn't the point, but expended resources are expended resources. Time and entropy destroy everything in the end.
We say this about woke institution after woke institution, yet they constantly are outladting their sell-by dates.
Fat cat funders will keep Hollywood zombied long, long after it's profitable.
I fear you are right.
In an earlier post you mentioned comics as one of 4 original American forms of art. What are the other 3, outta curiousity?
If memory serves, Harlan Ellison compiled the list. The other three art forms are banjo music, the blues, and musical theater.