The Hollywood blockbuster formula:
- Make a movie with some sort of draw—action, big-name star, whatever. Don’t worry too much about quality, since it won’t matter.
- Publicize the heck out of it.
- Watch lots of people go see it opening weekend.
- Watch as attendence drops off sharply because they all told their friends it sucked. Who cares? You already made tons of money the first week!
- Release on DVD two months later with special features. You’ll make enough on sales and rentals to cover your expenses.
- Repeat.
The end result: tons of substandard movies that nobody really likes, but that make plenty of money. More to the point, there’s not much incentive to make anything better
I had an idea on how to deal with the problem, based partly on mine and alenxa’s viewing habits: Unless you’re reasonably certain the movie will be worth seeing, wait until the second week it’s out. Aside from saving you from ghastly lines, it gives you a chance to pick up the word-of-mouth. If it turns out to be lousy, you save yourself 2 hours (more like three when you throw in parking) and 10 bucks. More importantly, if enough people wait for week 2, films will need to keep second-week ticket sales, which should encourage studios to make films that will have first-weekend people saying, “I loved it! It was better than Cats!” and recommend it to all their second-weekend friends.
It’ll never happen, but it’s at least an idea.