Older generations can’t be bothered to go, and younger people want to stream their films.
Most weeks, this column labors to avoid sentimentality. But ’tis the holiday season, and our subject is the future of movie theaters. Indulge me.
Jerry Seinfeld, who presumably knows a thing or two about show business, has said the film industry as currently constituted is kaput, even if Tinseltown has been slow to understand what’s happened in recent decades. “They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over,” he told GQ magazine last year. “Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”
Mr. Seinfeld may be slightly overstating the case, but his observation is worth pondering as Netflix and Paramount bid for Warner Bros. and its storied film library, which includes not only the “Harry Potter,” “Batman” and “Barbie” films but also classics such as “The Matrix,” “Dirty Harry,” “Rio Bravo” and “Casablanca.” The comedian’s comments were self-serving to some extent. At the time, Mr. Seinfeld was promoting his new film, “Unfrosted,” which was backed by Netflix rather than a legacy studio. Like more and more films these days, it had a brief run in theaters before debuting on the streaming service.
If Netflix acquires Warner Bros., some fear, the future is more streaming and fewer theatrical releases. The movie-going audience will shrink, and theaters will go the way of Blockbuster video stores. Others say that missile has launched, regardless of who acquires Warner Bros.
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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