Avid film watchers are starting to skip out on the blockbusters and stay in for the night to enjoy TV, as Hollywood is starting to set its sights on the small screen.
For the past few years, the film industry has survived on a steady diet of film remakes.
This month, a remake of the 1976 horror movie, Carrie, was released; next year will come a remake of Robocop and yet another remake of the gun-toting gangster film, Scarface, has been announced. Pile these remakes on top of a slew of big-budget films with little substance and you have a picture of the current state of the movie industry.
That isn’t to say that Hollywood has lost all of its originality.
Oscar season is getting underway with critically acclaimed films such as Gravity, which stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. These days, however, it seems film buffs would rather talk about the newest episode of Breaking Bad than the latest blockbuster. In the near future, TV may replace film as a dominant form of entertainment.
Some of Hollywood’s biggest names have noticed this trend and are making the move from the big screen to the TV set. Kevin Spacey, an acclaimed film actor; has moved to TV. In his speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival this year, he praised Netflix for taking a chance on picking up his now Emmy award-winning TV series, House of Cards.
Spacey attributed the program’s success to the audience’s desire for in-depth stories with well-developed characters, something that TV shows are able to achieve more so than films because movies only have two hours to tell the story.
There really isn’t a difference between movies and TV today, because both are forms of entertainment, which can be viewed in multiple ways, whether on a TV, a tablet, or a laptop.
What makes TV even more interesting is the viewer’s ability to binge view their favourite programs. You can view a 13-hour season of content on Netflix for a lower price than the theatre ticket for a two-hour film.
In his speech at the University of Southern California earlier this year, Steven Spielberg said that his Oscar award-winning film, Lincoln, was almost never made due to Hollywood straying away from subjects that don’t appeal to a massive audience. Spielberg said Lincoln was close to becoming an HBO made-for-TV film.
What has Hollywood become when one of its most celebrated directors has trouble getting his own film off the ground?
Unlike the movie studios, it seems that television networks are willing to take a chance on original ideas.
HBO’s hit-series, Game of Thrones, is taking creativity seriously. The show’s creators, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, successfully lobbied for a 15-per cent budget increase for the second season in order to create one of the largest on-screen battles in television history, and to fund the costly computer-generated imagery for the show’s life-like dragons.
At the end of the day, going to the cinema with friends still offers an experience that no TV set can replicate. The movie industry isn’t shaking in its boots yet; however, it should be wary of its dangerously creative little brother.
For those who can’t afford to make it out to the theatre all the time, they may be wise to buy a subscription to Netflix and stay in for the night.