Tech Won't Save Us - Streaming Wars: Revenge of the Cinema? w/ Gita Jackson

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

Paris Marx is joined by Gita Jackson to discuss how streaming has altered the film and television industry, what happens as their business models are coming under question, and whether cinemas have reason to celebrate streaming’s woes.Gita Jackson is a staff writer at Motherboard, Vice’s tech vertical. Follow Gita on Twitter at @xoxogossipgita.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:Gita wrote about why Eternals was still bad even though it was diverse, Netflix laying off Tudum writers, and some of the challenges Netflix faces.Paris wrote about the end of the Paramount Decrees, the need to break up the media giants, and the problem with the new Spider-Man movies.EA considered a merger with NBC Universal, and had talks with other companies.Raven Software at Activision Blizzard and Bioware contractors at Keywords Studios have voted to unionize. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer said the company would recognize the Raven Software union if its acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through.CNN+ was shut down after a few weeks of operation.Netflix is changing its content investment strategy as investors lose confidence.Netflix’s share price plummeted in April after reporting it lost subscribers. The following week, the cinema celebrated the negative turn on streaming at CinemaCon.The Mandalorian pioneered a new kind of film set with massive LED screens instead of green screen.Support the show

because they don't think about these things as art, think about them as products, just more more freaking slop, you know, it's just slop. Just put it out there and people will eat it up. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Gita Jackson. Gita is a staff writer at Motherboard, and you might remember them from our previous conversation in December about unionization in the video games industry and what was going on in that period with Activision Blizzard. We start this week's episode with a quick update on what has been going on there, and if I might say so myself, it's a positive update. And then we switch to talking about what has been going on in the film and television industry, how streaming services were so key to how we consumed that type

of entertainment during the pandemic, but how as people increasingly go back to normal, there's a recognition that maybe streaming services are not going to have the kind of sustainable business model, let alone a lucrative one, that was once imagined or envisioned as investors were plowing billions of dollars into these companies. In April, Netflix announced that it had lost subscribers, and as a result, its stock price continued to tank. And there have been questions about other streaming services and whether their strategies make much sense. In light of that, the cinemas, which have been on the back foot for the past decade and have been positioned as the losers in this switch to streaming, have been taking a victory lap, have been celebrating. But is that premature or is this something that is actually going to work out for them in the long term? That's something that we'll talk about in this week's conversation. I have to say I had a really fun time chatting with Gita. And you know,

we not only get into these kind of business-y industry aspects of what's going on with streaming and cinemas, but we also get into a number of the films and television shows that have been coming out in recent years and what they tell us about these ongoing trends, both with the streaming services, but also with the cinemas as well. So I really enjoy this. I hope that you enjoy it as well. Just a quick reminder that if you do like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would enjoy it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every single week and to keeping it free for everybody, you can join supporters like Milo from Washington, D.C., Alec in Astoria, New York, and Benedikt from Germany

by going to patreon.com slash techwon'tsaveus and becoming a supporter. Gita, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Hi, thank you so much for having me back. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. We had this great conversation back in December about the video games industry, about the prospects for unionization in the industry. I feel like we should kind of briefly follow up on that conversation to get started because we've had some good wins there. Well, we have the first unionized video game team in the United States now with Raven QA. They've unionized with the Communications Workers of America, which has been doing a little intense unionizing in the tech sector, which has been really exciting to see, really

exciting to see them make some inroads with union the google tech workers and like it's been a part of this huge wave of workers utilizing across the united states and now there's some talk of other studios there is a now working group similar to a better activision blizzard called a better ubisoft that has started up so we might see some action from other video game developer dev teams. The Raven is the QA team of Activision Blizzard. They're one of many QA teams. This is one that experienced a high amount of turnover. And they went on strike for a week straight until they decided to go back to work to begin talking about unionization.

And despite all of the union busting that Activision Blizzard really tried, and they have not voluntarily recognized the union, which sucks, it was an almost unanimous vote. I think there was like one or two no votes out of 20 people there. So I'm incredibly proud. I'm incredibly excited. And this could really start a huge wave of better labor conditions for people who make video games if they desperately need it. Yeah, you know, I think just two points on that. First of all, I think it was really notable that Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, which is, you know, in the process of buying Activision Blizzard right now, said that he would recognize the union if they took over, which like, you know,

I guess is a pretty low bar, but like, it seemed positive, I guess. It'll be interesting, you know, there was um microsoft is buying activision blizzard but i believe usually it's jason schreier over at bloomberg i used to work with him and it's usually him yeah he usually has all the scoops like he's great i love jason yeah um jason i think wrote an article about how they were also looking at and decided not to. The deal fell through. No, it was NBCUniversal that looked at buying EA. So there is this consolidation of video game companies into legacy media companies that these companies are curious about.

I think for reasons that will become clear in the conversation we're about to have. You know, EA is an enormous company. They make The Sims, which is like a license to print money. They make FIFA. They make Madden. You know, these are incredibly lucrative games. And it's not surprising that large corporations want to buy them. But they also come with their own issues. So I see Phil Spencer saying you'd recognize the union as a good thing.

But I also see kind of a support kind of what is to come for these major studios like maybe dealing with being a subsidiary of something else yeah no i think it's a fantastic point and yeah i think the consolidation that we see in the video games industry is very indicative of like a larger consolidation that's happening in like media entertainment more generally um and you gave a shout out to raven software i also have to give a shout out of course to the workers at keyword studios up here in Edmonton, Alberta, QA team there who voted unanimously. I believe it was 16 workers. They work on BioWare projects like Dragon Age and Mass Effect to unionize as well. So that's a really positive story up north. You know, QA, it is a thankless job, but it was one of the most important jobs in video game development.

And they do not get enough props. And they generally speaking, all I've heard is that these big studios use these jobs as a way to get students in to work for a couple of months until they burn out and then just hire more students. So I am so happy to see QA specifically quality assurance unionizing because they really, really need it. Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I'm happy that we started our conversation with a little follow up on that episode. And of course, listeners can go back and listen to it if they want to know more. But now, you know, the actual topic that we wanted to discuss in, you know, a much greater detail today is the streaming services, the larger film and television industry, what is going on there? And I wanted to start by positioning us in the pandemic, right?

During the early days of COVID-19, many people had cinemas marked for dead, right? As they had to shut their doors and viewership on streaming services soared, right? It played into this narrative, this longstanding narrative that streaming services were the future. This was how we were all going to watch. And for a while, there was concern that one of the major that, you know, a company that makes the content can't also own the cinemas that show them no longer exists because that's been removed. And, you know, that's not ultimately what happened. You know, the cinemas have now reopened. There are big blockbusters coming out again. They seem happy with the slow return of people to cinemas. In hindsight, how do you see that period and the effects that it had on the film and television industry?

Well, I think you can definitely see that the cinema industry of cinema is completely unstable as it stands. You know, I think that's the big takeaway from there is that any slight disruption to the supply chain of putting movies in theaters and audience people, you know, butts in seats will lead to a disastrous

economic decline. That's very scary, especially when you think about how much movies cost to make and how much studios depend on movies recouping their costs, either domestically or now more commonly internationally. Especially China. Especially China. There's all these stories about films that had to have parts of them edited out for the chinese audience most specifically um in top gun maverick he has a flag of taiwan in the american version of the film but not in the chinese version you know little stuff like that that is just to try to appease chinese audiences in the chinese government and it is not unsurprising that once theaters opened back up, people wanted to go to them.

It turns out going to the movies is like nice and fun. And also movies look better on a bigger screen and when it's around sound and when you're in a completely pitch black, dark room and there's the joy of going to the cinema and hearing everyone gasp at the same time as you is unbeatable for me. But also I think if you look at box offices lately, and this is something I've been trying to do now every weekend, just like look at the weekend box office, things have shaken up in terms of what movies people want to see.

And I think it really complicates the idea that before the pandemic, there was this idea, and especially during the pandemic, when not many movies came out in theaters, and the things that would chart in the box office were really from very specific studios but mainly i'm talking disney they were basically only disney movies there's this conversation it's like uh well if marvel takes over box offices and disney and movie theaters only show marvel movies then that's fine because streaming will take over the more interesting arty indie films i feel chills just hearing that. I know it like really made me feel bad because I was like, that's not the solution. It's not the solution you think it is. It is true that streaming has made independent film more accessible to people than it has been ever before.

You no longer just have to live in New York or Los Angeles to see an interesting film. You can wait till it comes to streaming. But if you look at movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once or The Northman, you can see that while people were inside streaming, they've developed a hunger for more and different kinds of movies. And now the people that really, really like movies, the movies that are coming back to theaters to see are not just the ones that are the biggest, bestest, marvelous of movies. You know, everything, everywhere, all at once is still in the box office top 10. It's at number five still. It's been out for at least one month, which is absolutely wild.

From an independent distributor, A24, an independent movie, that is bonkers. And The Northman was supposed to completely bomb. You know, I don't know if it made back its 90 million dollar budget but focus features the studio that just uh produced distributed it didn't seem to mind too much that it wasn't gonna they're making it a loss that stayed in in box office and stayed in the top 10 i think it dropped off last week you know and it's coming to streaming like next week. So it complicates that idea. And you also see some of the investment that all of these studio, that these streaming services put into the streaming services during the pandemic under this idea that they would continue to be an

economically lucrative have not actually borne fruit in that way. I think the most, like the most egregious example of this is CNN+. I don't know if you remember the short-lived CNN Plus streaming service that I used to walk past a bus stop that had a big old splash ad for that every day. And it started up. It was the big, splashy, 24-hour news streaming network, essentially. And it started up. It was live for a week or two. And then CNN got bought in a huge merger.

And the first thing to go was the streaming service. It is not actually true that audiences will just snap up every single streaming service that is out there. They want to watch really, really, really specific things. It's really interesting to watch now that all these different streaming services exist. I don't know.

You told me a little bit about what it's like in Canada. But in America, New York, where I am, I have this is like so many streaming services. And I did not want to get most of these. It was we have Apple TV Plus, Netflix, Hulu, Paramount Plus. We are television also advertises to us because i bought an apple fire television so we have amazon prime and then we also get advertised says this is included free v which used to be imb imdb tv which just seems to be like where uh anything that's cheap to buy a license to, they've got. For a while, they had all seven Twilight movies, but now they're back on Amazon Prime.

I don't know. I think those movies are great, actually. But that's a different conversation. Twilight movies is lesbian culture, and I won't explain, but it makes sense if you think about it. But there you go. Sounds good. Yeah, you know, it's a little bit different up here.

As I was telling you, I have Netflix as well. I have Crave, which is kind of our mishmash of some Canadian content, Paramount Plus stuff, HBO Max. It's all kind of mixed in there. And then Apple TV as well. I don't have Amazon. We don't have a ton of like competing Canadian streaming services. It's kind of like there used to be a second one. I think it was called show me or something,

but that one shut down years ago. Now here it's just like head to head combat, really. Like I also have HBO max, which I completely forgot about, which tells you a lot about what programming on HBO max is like. And then I also have crunchy rollroll, the now Sony-owned and operated anime streaming service, which they've certainly improved the app for that, I'll just say. It is now pretty much literally the only place to watch anime in the United States. Sony has completely consolidated all anime streaming. They own all of it now, which is concerning And I think a trend that we're going to see continue in non niche streaming services as well. Yeah. I've been meaning to get criterion channel as well to get like all those old films, you know,

watch the brood on there. Holy shit. I have criterion also. What the fuck? Well, you are a reporter who covers these things. So we'll give you a pass on having that many streaming services. Thank you. I should get rid of them. I'll say, though, before we move on to the next aspect of this, I think one of the things that stood out to me during the pandemic and one of the things that they couldn't have these festivals where people came or or you know even bigger films that were being shown they were like for the first time for their north american premieres and whatnot and still be able to watch them online which i thought was really cool and made those types of films a lot more accessible even if like the ticket price is higher than you would usually get if you went to the cinema um so i thought that was cool and then like but then uh i noticed that in the second year uh it

was a bit less accessible a bit more expensive you know they were trying to like limit it now that the festival itself was reopened again which was like i don't know i thought kind of sucked but yeah i just went to check the tribeca film festival which is about to kick off in new york right now and it is as far I can tell, there's no streaming options anymore, which I think is such a shame because it really did open up that space. I think if you look at the American box office, you could really tell there is a hunger for a different kind of movie. It is not as great as it is for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness or something, or even Top Gun, which has dethroned the Multiverse of Madness. Multiverse of Madness is sitting at number two and has been since Top Gun came out, which is honestly very surprising to me. But there's still, you know, a movie like Everything,

Everywhere, All at Once hit on with audiences. And you can tell when you see that movie with other people, people come out of the theater and they are very happy. They're very, very, very excited. You know, I think you can also see this in America. There has been a little bit of crossover success with some Indian movies too, especially this film that I just wrote a blog about over at Motherboard called RRR. So named for the director, who is SS Rajmuli, then the two stars who are some of the two biggest stars in Telugu language, Indian cinema. The joke is that they've never been in a movie before together because no studio could afford them. And it's Ramachandran and NTR Ramarajan.

And it is an incredible movie. If you hate the British Empire, you will love this movie because it's all about Indian revolutionaries being best friends and just exploding British people. Like, just explode explode I love that it's really fun and you know that charted in the American box office it went into theaters and had a really good American theatrical run and these special screenings they just had IFC center and New York and Los Angeles were so popular they brought the movie back for another week people

and that is like a very you know mainstream very americanized well that's not americanized it's definitely an indie movie like it's there's songs it's so good it's you no longer have to worry and warn people that a movie is three hours long anymore i also like that kind of because it is three hours long it is a three hour long musical action movie it's just such a spectacle it is like an action movie. It's just such a spectacle. It is like an action movie. It is like a straightforward action movie. It is about the stunts, but it is so unlike things you would see in American cinema. And you can tell that like, it is not necessarily true that theaters are the only for the four Marvel movies and everything else is for streaming.

Yeah. I think it's such an important point and, you know, hopefully RRR did good in its re-release on like Morbius. Yeah, I know. So this is what we're seeing, you know, it's an interesting, there's an understanding now that the internet is a part of what movie watchers like and need, but there's a complete lack of understanding about what that, what this means. You know, Netflix, they've had some financial woes in the past sort of year. And part of that, I want to get into that. Yeah. Yeah. Part of that is the really, you know, the high profile layoffs that they did of their, for Tudum, which was their quote, unquote, fandom engine. So it would be in-house interviews that they had with the Stranger Things kids and like directors of the films on Netflix and, you know, essentially a marketing job. It's something that I have seen at Star Trek,

I think has done very successfully with StarTrek.com. My friend, Kendra James, who's now like on an incredible press tour for her book admissions about being a black woman at boarding school. So, which is just a great, it's a great memoir. But she was editor-in-chief and she told me on Twitter

that the biggest problem with Tidum was that fandom is clearly an economic selling point for these companies. Marvel depends on its fandom as being an advertiser for it, essentially, and to drive their films to the top of the box office every single release. And they do that by essentially making it impossible to talk about these movies on the internet without getting mobbed by fans and planting stories, not necessarily even planting stories, but giving people ideas for favorable stories, like the one about Eternals, the movie being on the right side of history

because it got mildly review bombed on imdb for having a gay kiss in it like now we can see that it is more important than ever to have gay people in media just being gay but that is not necessarily why people did not like the movie eternals people didn't like eternals because the movie was bad which is not a good movie and you wrote a good story about that breaking that down. I think that I think that's a good way to kind of shift us into this conversation about Netflix as well. Right? Because in April, after all of this discourse that we were talking about through the pandemic about how you know, cinemas were in trouble, streaming was the future. In April,

Netflix reported that it lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years, and its share price immediately plummeted. Before recording, I checked and Netflix's share price is down almost 70% in the past six months, which is kind of shocking. That's a big drop. But that announcement seemed to lead to a broader recognition that the streaming business model isn't as lucrative, or we might even say sustainable, as the traditional model of film and television. What did you make of the discourse that followed that earnings report? I mean, it really called me to look back at the entire history of Netflix as a company. And I think it really helps to think about the first time you ever knew anyone that signed up for Netflix. In this case, it was my dad, who anytime there's a new technological toy, he is on it. He is very excited about all this stuff. Also,

he's extremely left wing. So if you're listening to this, dad, hi, I love you. But he, he signed up for Netflix with his DVD only. And the incredible thing about Netflix at that time, and what caused so many people to sign up for it was that they had every movie you could possibly want. You could look up, like my mom was very excited because they had a lot of Indian films that she needed to use for work and just likes to watch for her own pleasure. It was felt like a resource, like a real archive, but created by people who love movies and get those movies into your hands like within a couple of days it was it felt incredible it felt enormous and then when they started streaming video that was literally the first time any of us had ever seen a service like that ever especially ever seen it working

it's so funny when you go on youtube and you look at like music videos from bands in the early 2000s and they're like 360 dpi it's like like so, it looks like someone recorded it off the screen on a sidekick, you know? It looks like what streaming video was, you know? I remember on the Space Jam website, you had to download a QuickTime file to watch the trailer for Space Jam. And it was like, it was like the size of a potion stamp. It was like tiny. And that took like an entire hour.

I remember back in the day when like the big kept to, just linking to the high def trailer because YouTube didn't support high resolution video for a long time. And Netflix had not yet become essentially a multimedia platform rather than a streaming service. But as time went on with Netflix, as know, as they sort of invented streaming video as we know it, like obviously the studios that are leasing, like they buy licensing agreements from studios to get these collections of movies to stream. The studios that they buy these things from, it was only a matter of time until they realized that they could just build their own platform and not have to send anything or buy, sell anything to Netflix. They could make the money that Netflix was making without using Netflix at all. And that is exactly what has occurred. If you look at the Netflix library, it is less and less movies from other

studios that are good and more and more absolutely bullshit like reality television, stuff that they make cheaply and quickly, international stuff that doesn't have their own streaming services, although that's changing a little bit too. You know, RRR is on Netflix, but only in Hindi. If you want to watch in the original Telugu, you have to sign up for V5, which is an Indian streaming service. That's so wild. You can see that there are some studios that are like, we're not giving this shit away for free anymore. We're going to bring other people to us. And that means that Netflix loses what it was for a long time.

It's huge appeal for me, which is that it had everything. I am so not interested in what Netflix is producing as a studio. There's very few things on there that I want to see. If you look at the way they've invested in their original content, the number that came out of Stranger Things is 30 million per episode. This is a complete mismatch. But it's because if they don't create their own content now, they won't have anything in their library. Unfortunately, they are now competing in a market with studios that have huge libraries of critically acclaimed films that people really, really like. And then beyond that, there's an enormous archive of films in the

past that specialty and niche films that they can get people to sign up for. If you go to Paramount Plus, which I signed up for specifically for Star Trek Strange New World, because I heard this is the one that's most like a normal Star Trek show and it's episode of the week you know thank god that's all I gotta say they didn't need to serialize Star Trek that was a bad choice yeah but we set up for that and I started just browsing to see what it was on there and it's you know Paramount Studios stuff going all the way back to the 60s which is cool but then you tab over to this tab that says Westerns and it's all of the Westerns they've ever produced that they just clearly no one else wants on their streaming service. They weren't notable Westerns at all. I think the original True Grit was the only one I recognized in there. So it's like just

they have all these digitized films. Why instead of selling it to someone else or making people buy it on Google and getting only a small cut of that money. Why not just put it on Paramount Plus? You can see this, if you look at HBO Max, it's exactly the same business model, especially in the early days before they started, you know, HBO based out HBO go and then combine everything into this.

Before that happened, essentially this was the place where I could watch all the Warner Brothers movies I wanted. And they have an incredible collection because Warner Brothers has made some incredible movies dating back to the 40s and 50s. You know, so they are able to also curate that selection and they can use the branding of channels that they also own in the Warner Brothers package. Like there is a TCM, which is Turner Classic Movies. That is an entire tab and it's all curated, which is like very, very nice. But the reason why this can exist is because they are taking their movies away

from Netflix. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I feel like one of the issues that people had with Netflix for a long time was that its catalog was always like very recent stuff. Like there wasn't a lot that wasn't from like before Netflix existed or like even from, you know, a few years ago, right? Like because things would cycle out so quickly and there wasn't much of an interest in having that kind of library other than popular shows like The Office or Friends or something like that, right? The real draws. If you sign up for the DVD service, which you can still do actually, and I may do. You can get DVDs of those older things, too, which is like the part that is so frustrating, I think, for a lot of users now because they're used to or they have vague memories of being

able to get anything. And now they can only get what's on the streaming service and they cater to what's most popular. And you mentioned The Office. But what happened when NBC opened up their own streaming service Peacock they immediately snatched back the office immediately and the streaming tiers actually tell you how many different seasons of the office you get when you sign up for that on Peacock which is it really says a lot about the office yeah that's pretty crazy actually I still see so many people in Dunder Mifflin t-shirts i don't know if that

anyway that's a bad show i never really got into it so i don't understand it but i feel like there was certainly like even more of a resurgence when like it had its like second wind or whatever because it was on netflix you know yeah yeah it's just so fascinating to me to see how that develops but you know you were you were saying about content on Netflix. And I wanted to follow up on that. Because I think it's a really interesting point, right? You were talking about fandom and how these companies are trying to use fandom to drive people like young adult IP and novels and turn those into films to like get that audience to bring into its streaming service and to show that this is the place where these things are. But then on top of that, you know, as you were saying, there was like, there was a desire to create this like really high quality content for a while House of Cards is obviously the first one, but then, you know, they were trying to be like this new hpo the streaming hbo the tech

hbo right um and it does feel like when they announced like the new season of stranger things when it came out recently it did feel like that was like a piece of an earlier stage of netflix that is like coming to an end as it shifts its content strategy to something else. And like, even when it came out, like personally, I, I watched the earlier seasons. I was not interested at all, but I feel like you can see this distinct shift in what they're doing. Right. You know, you're absolutely right. I, and I had the same reaction to this latest season of stranger things. I have a great affection for all the children especially the child actors winona writer for a long time was like gender presentation goals for me winona in the 80s when she was wearing like little boy suit vests and like white t-shirts i

was like that's gender but there was a recent i think the ceo netflix or someone involved in content strategy at netflix recently said that they are, quote, like, not exact quote, paraphrase, not going to be a place where auteurs just get a blank check anymore. And I know some people in the industry have disputed that reputation for Netflix. You know, at least one producer I know, the producer who worked on The Guest with Adam Wingard, I forget his name, but he's produced some really great films. He said that this was just not a true assessment that Netflix was a micromanaging studio just like any other studio. But also the example they used was one of the best movies I've seen in a very long time, The Irishman by Martin Scorsese, which is not a frivolous waste of money. It's like a very deeply considered, very good movie that says something important about American culture, like Americans'

relationship to themselves and to politics and to crime. I highly recommend watching it, even though it is very, very long, because it earns its length. It's not long for no reason, like Marvel movies are. Marvel movies are long just for the sake of being long. There's no real reason for The Multiverse of Madness, a movie I saw in theaters for work, there's no reason for that movie to be three hours long. You could easily cut a half hour from it or an even entire hour and it would be a better movie for it. But you can't cut anything from The Irishman. So there's this backlash to the idea now that they are trying to foment, weirdly, that auteurs, the money they spent on creating roma and and the

irishman and chasing awards is a waste and now they're going to go back to what the people want and they are now reinvesting the same exact amounts of money by the way into right-wing comedy specials and like that is very telling about what that means, because, I mean, comedy specials take a lot less money to produce in a season in television. They have a lot fewer crew members. Their reputation, I'd also heard about Netflix, is always that they cancel everything before the third season because third season is when you have to renegotiate contracts with crew. And then at the same time as this, they cut almost their entire animation department, which I see lots of animation and comic book fans talking about on Twitter, especially where it is very difficult to find studios to finance, especially adult-oriented animation. And Netflix was one of those places. And now they're just not interested. And it seems like a lot of really harsh moves to deal with a basic problem of not having enough content on your

platform but it also tells you what kind of content they're interested in making it's going to be like 3 000 like like seasons of the circle or something like that it's going to be more the christmas prince one of the most cheaply produced confusing movies series that i've ever seen in my life you know even some of the nicer YA stuff that they've made, I really like the YA romantic comedy they have, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, which is based on a YA book about an Asian American woman that I just think is very sweet. And, you know, even that stuff is, I think, higher quality than the thing that they're chasing, which is like Hallmark. Like, they want to be the Hallmark channel. Because, you know why? Because there like Hallmark. Like they want to be the Hallmark channel because you know why? Because

there's Hallmark adults, just like there are Disney adults that just love Hallmark Christmas movies and will watch them endlessly and do not really care if they're good or not. And that's the kind of consumer that they would like to have. That's such a big shift though, right? Like from, like we're selling this streaming service, we're making this original content. We're going to be the new HBO to like, we're going to be the service where you come for like cheap hallmark movies um and a person screaming about how trans women are able you know yeah like it's it's so wild and it's so hard to see how like that is like the future that is something that people that is going to like attract people keep subscriber numbers growing um like you know one of the other or or some of the other aspects of

this like as they reported these numbers that were down these subscribers numbers that were down and people kind of shifted or you know investors kind of shifted on netflix was that they started talking about how they might bring in an ad tier or like advertising on the platform, which is something they said that they would never do. Obviously, we've seen prices rising on Netflix continually over a number of years. And I think a lot of people are starting to feel that the price is becoming too high for what they're actually receiving from the platform, or at least that's my kind of read on people's response. And then, as you say, there's also the cutting of the staff,

including the people at Tudum, but also within the production side of the company as well, would that be the right way to put it? And it seems like they're cutting budgets and things. There seems to be this significant shift going on within the company. And it's not at all clear to me that this is going to make a service that is like going to be more attractive to people and more sustainable. It just seems like, I don't know, trying to like plug the holes on a sinking ship or something. Yeah. It feels like they're trying to find more slop for the hogs. Really? Like I love watching season upon season of mindless reality television while I am like working or something. But I do need like a baseline level of quality that does not always make it onto Netflix shows. You know, there's all these little things about Netflix shows that are kind of off.

One, have you noticed that they all are lit and shot the same? They all are weirdly blue. I don't know why that is but they're all blue and then you know we notice little things with the subtitles the people they have writing subtitles are clearly so underpaid and under so much pressure the subtitles are frequently misspelled and don't actually say the things that the characters are saying you know there's all these quarters you can already see being cut but they just need more stuff because the catalog is emptying out i was watching the new season of borgen uh just not too long ago danish political series and like there are times when like text messages come in and stuff like that and like sometimes they'll do the the subtitle

of the text message and other times they won't i'm like i don't know what it says i wish i knew danish you know it's like a crunchy roll't know what it says. I wish I knew Danish. You know, it's like a crunchy roll. I know there are some issues with the translators there as well. But I know that the translations are always accurate and that they're always there. Like that is a baseline function of the streaming service. It always functions. There's a lot of things about Netflix, like as a service that just don't always function.

It is just like interminable. It really feels like Netflix was a thing that was supposed to allow us to all be free from television, from cable. We're cutting the cord. And now when I look at the streaming services I have, I don't really feel like it's all that different and it's just as expensive. That's it, you know?

Netflix is just like they're not becoming one of the millions of channels you get in your cable package that just has random stuff and like occasionally you might google something that you want to see and the only place you can see it is netflix but it's been a really long time since that's happened to me it's been a really long time since i've opened up netflix or anything other than star trek which now i don't need to do because Star Trek is on Paramount+. Absolutely. You know, I find during the initial part of the pandemic when like, you know, you weren't

really going out and seeing many people, you were mainly at home. I feel like I watched a ton of Netflix. And now I feel like I never turned to it. Like I go to Crave, which is, as I was saying, our kind of combination of like, you know, Peacock, Paramount, HBO Max, Canadian stuff, like a whole mix of rights that they've picked up, right? I feel like I hardly ever open Netflix anymore, which seems like a huge change.

And I feel like I get that impression from like more and more people. I did want to shift a little bit. I want to come back to talking about some more of the streaming companies. But you know, in the days after Netflix reported its results, and there was this whole discourse around, oh, shit, did we get it wrong with streaming? Did the business model ever make sense? The National Association of Theater Owners held CinemaCon in Las Vegas. And it was almost like they were taking a victory lap, right? After all of these narratives for so

long that streaming was going to take over, you after a decade the narrative and the momentum was kind of or it seemed like it shifted back to their side a little bit especially after the pandemic and how they were kind of how it was said that cinemas were kind of dead after that right um because people are as you as you were saying people are going back to cinemas to see blockbusters and even to see independent films like everything everywhere all at once i'm waiting to see how uh crimes blockbusters and even to see independent films, like everything, everywhere all at once. I'm waiting to see how crimes of the future is going to do the new David Cronenberg. I haven't seen it yet,

but I can't wait. I know someone who saw it and they, they really liked it. I'm very excited for it. Awesome. Awesome. I love Christian Stewart. Honestly,

I love to see this glow up of her going into, I love seeing both her and Robert Pattinson, just doing weirder and weirder movies and now i guess they both worked with cronenberg so that's cool yeah and i love vigo mortensen as well from like lord of the rings days you know so yeah very excited i i gotta re-watch lord of the rings i feel like that's on the on the agenda soon um so in this moment there was this discussion like as the cinema owners were taking their kind of victory lap, like it seemed pretty conclusive that day and date releases in cinema and streaming

are dead. There will be a shortened window 45 days between theater release and when it can be released on streaming. But the idea that you can see a film on streaming the same day as it's in cinemas, that seems to have been defeated after the experiment during the pandemic. And now you have Netflix talking about putting more of its movies, I guess the few good ones it'll still make, in cinemas for people to go see there before it comes out on the streaming service. So, you know, I guess what do you make of how the cinemas have responded to this news about the streaming services? Do you think they're celebrating prematurely? Or do you think that there is some greater recognition that the cinemas have an important role and the streaming services won't like completely wipe them out as some people maybe

thought might happen? Well, I think there is an element I think of counting your tickets before they hatch here because we don't have a lot of data to work off on. And although numbers are going okay-ish in most places in terms of COVID transmission, it is still a risk. You are still taking a risk when you go out to see a movie. And it is still nerve-wracking. I know a lot of people who still have not been back to cinemas and i completely understand that decision there is no easier place i think to get covet than in an enclosed space where you're going to be with a bunch of people all just breathing in and out everyone's little water droplets they're sending out hours at a time for hours at a time you know i look for the showings that are like in the afternoon or like a week after it comes out when like not many people would be there

to like reduce the risk you know we went we were in los angeles when we saw everything everywhere and we thought we had gotten a screening that wouldn't be as packed but then when we got there it was literally shoulder to shoulder and we were like ah it was fine but it was also it's scary it is i haven't been shoulder to shoulder like that with a bunch of people i didn't know in a very long time there's you know so there's a lack of data to see how this bears out, really. There's also the additional problem that has not been resolved, which is losing the Paramount thing. Like, as you know, Netflix wants to own the entire machine of a film, essentially. They want to own the production.

They want to own the distribution. And they also want to own where people talk about it and how people talk about it. That's what Tudum was. And if Tudum, if they hadn't lost money, that was the kind of thing that they were trying to build. The thing that exists already for a service like Disney Plus, right? You know, Disney Plus is a service where they own every single thing that goes on there from every single second of production to release and distribution. But they also own how people talk about it. They own the conversation. It is the messaging that Disney puts out about their own films is so specific and fandom just eats it up with every single second of it. And it is a completely insular community. That means, you know, what is next in terms of how can we continue to own every single

aspect of this production of this product? Because they don't think about these things as art, think about them as products. As content. Yeah, it's just more, more freaking slop. You know, it's just slop. Just put it out there and people eat it up. Well, they can own the theaters now. Like that is something that I feel like is on the horizon.

And I feel like people, if you look at how video games are becoming to be consolidated into different larger media companies, legacy media companies, those things that were supposed to die out because of new media, that's not going to happen. They're just going to buy stuff. And I feel like that's a possibility. I also just feel like if cinemas are so precariously positioned that a pandemic can seriously hamper the business model, then there is no time to take a victory lap ever at all. You know, you've got to be shoring up how you can serve your community without necessarily being a theater space before this happens again. This won't be the last pandemic. You know, you've got to be storing up how you can serve your community without necessarily being a theater space.

Before this happens again, this won't be the last pandemic. You know, there will be, with the advent of climate change, this is still not the last severe disease that is going to start just taking over countries internationally. You will be more often than not, I think, dealing with how to navigate multiple different illnesses that are going out there, rather than nothing's going to be like it was before the pandemic. So it's just, I'm happy that cinemas still exist. I don't feel like they're safe at all. I feel very nervous about them. No, I completely agree. And I think it's a great point. You know, since we're talking about cinemas, and as you were saying earlier, Marvel movies have really dominated cinemas, particularly in the pre pandemic years. And, you know, they're kind of ramping up their slate of new Disney films, including Marvel, Star Wars, and you know, the other stuff that they create, are really kind

of ramping that up to have this really frequent release schedule, I guess you could say, after the kind of delay of the pandemic, right? And so I wonder what you make of Disney's strategy where on the one hand, they have all of these really lucrative blockbusters, and even the ones that don't perform as well still generally seem like they're profitable for them. They still seem to bring in a lot of money because, as you were saying, there's this fandom aspect to it where there's this massive group of people, whether it's a Marvel movie or a Star Wars movie, who will go see it no matter how shit it is. And they'll make money that way because these people feel like they

have to support the brand. They have to see what is being released, right? And then on the other hand, they have the streaming service where you can see these films after they come out. But then there's also this whole array of TV shows and additional content that not only builds out the world, but that if you're a real kind of diehard fan, you have to have watched to know what is actually being referenced in the

films themselves. So what do you make of this whole thing that they've created? That exact thing came to such a head in multiverse of madness with spoilers. If you want to see that movie, more power to you, but spoilers for that movie starting right now, there's a scene in which not only do they have fucking black bolt from the Hulu Inhumans show that no one watched.

They also brought in a character from Loki showed up, a character from WandaVision showed up. And then, you know, it's celebrating the big corporate merger that happened a few years ago. They had Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier in the wheelchair. corporate merger that happened a few years ago they had patrick stewart as professor charles xavier in the wheelchair what i was elated for a brief moment and then i was fucking infuriated because fuck you you know fuck you guys for essentially creating an advertisement for your own movies in this movie that's all that it is you know rrr as an action movie works for me because the plot only has to serve itself there is no indian revolutionary cinematic universe although that would be pretty funny yeah there wasn't like a gandhi tease or anything like that there there wasn't an

another villain that they had to set up at the end of the film they could just have the movie end but every single one of these Disney movies has to be an advertisement for the next movie in the sequence. And that becomes something that is just interminable for me. Like it never ends. And you look at what's going on with their television shows, and that is exactly the same thing that happens. WandaVision set up, Loki set up, the Falcon and Winter Soldier set up, whatever the hell came next. And now Ms. Marvel is premiering today, I think. Ms. Marvel is the one I'm actually excited for.

It's about like a Muslim girl that becomes a superhero based on the very kindhearted and sweet comic by G. Willow Wilson. I really like that comic. But it is, you know, I go into all these now with a sense of trepidation because i know i will not see a plot resolution i will see an advertisement for the next thing in sequence but audiences do really like that that is a compelling like hook for a lot of people i just find it extremely empty at this point. You know, Star Wars is very similar. The Obi-Wan Kenobi show, which Ewan McGregor is really good in it. And they got a very, I mean, it's Disney.

So they got a really good child actress to play a 10-year-old Princess Leia, which is a very cute character. It's compelling, but I haven't wanted to watch more because I don't want to be advertised to. You know, like, I don't want to watch this and just feel disappointed by the end feel like they're just trying, they're not trying to tell me a story, but trying to advertise a franchise to me. And I mean, again, the appealing thing about those original three Star Wars movies is that they had no masters to serve other than themselves. They were huge blockbusters, so they had to serve merchandising and all that. But in terms of how those stories were told,

they just had to tell a good one. In these big franchise films, that is less and less true. You know, even Top Gun Maverick, which has beat out these, you know, the biggest Marvel Disney movie that's out there, even that is like, it's a sequel. and it's a jingoistic propaganda machine. So people love that stuff, though. People love that stuff.

They love to see Americans get in the big plane and shoot guns. I understand it. Nationalism is very easy to get swept up in. It's really easy to chant USA. It's fun to do. But say that, I don't know, if you're watching NASCAR on TV. I don't need it in my movies, please. Chant USA or sing Oh Canada.

At the end of RRR, it is like there is a whole song about how when you are feeling down, you should raise the flag. They celebrate all the revolutionary leaders in parts of India. So there's like a little bit of a better politic behind it. But still, it's like nationalistic. Nationalism is very easy to insert into films. You know, war films, news films, those were things that were very, very popular. These films all function as parts of propaganda. You know, what is the Marvel movie, other than a new avenue for the Western, and the Westerns were all about our engagements in Vietnam and Korea. So it's, it's just wild,

right? And a way to kind of build up the US military, the Pentagon, like all this kind of like, there's a there's a whole kind of ideology that's happening there. But I think just briefly in your point about, I was never a big comic book person. And I watched some of the Marvel movies, like when the whole thing was first getting started, like back in the early 2010s. But then I just got so tired of it. Like it was too, it didn't end. And it just kept going. And I didn't want to watch it anymore. And so now I watched the Spider Man ones ones and that's it. And even those like kind of make me mad sometimes because I'm like, why don't I get a real story? Why aren't you working class Spider-Man anymore?

I know. It was like Tobey Maguire, like actually leaving a college life of having a shitty job and being late to class. Like, yeah, it was relatable. I really understood that very much and now he's like the fucking protege of a billionaire i don't know what kind of new york these kids are living in it doesn't make any sense to me it does make sense though actually that the news funny thing about the new spider-man is that the prettiest girl in school is a black woman and then he also falls in love with a different black woman that feels very very real for where Spider-Man is situated in Queens.

You know, like an accurate, accurate casting choice. But it is like the other issue with a lot of these comic book movies is that there's not a lot of evidence of the people that created these characters and created the costumes. And sometimes the panels that they directly draw reference from and the costumes that are direct, exact recreations of what's in the comics. It's not a lot of evidence that these original creators are getting paid for their work that is launching these characters into superstardom, but it is all just becoming like a self feeding machine, like just an Ouroboros that is feeding itself, a creation of content leading to more content being created without any kind of

cathartic release in that cycle whatsoever. For me, Avengers Endgame was like the last one I really wanted to see in theaters. I was like, okay, well, I watched Iron Man when I was a freshman in college or something. I'm a freshman, who knows? 10 years ago. God, I watched Iron Man like a decade ago, and I'll see this one because then it'll be a season finale, essentially. Sometimes it really feels like television or movies and movies or TV where all of the TV are these like highly produced, like incredibly intellectually stimulating, like pieces of spectacle. And my movies are just like one episode of an adventure that will never conclude yeah i feel the same about endgame even at that point like i was already getting fed up with it

yeah i was like i'll get to there because that's like the end of this kind of arc but then i'm done like when i'm out um and i want to follow up on one one of the points you said there i'll just relate it to star wars though i. I was a Star Wars fan. My dad, my uncle were fans of Star Wars, so I grew up with it, right? Like, I was not a Trekkie. I was a Star Wars person because that's what they liked and that's what they got me into. But since Disney took over, like, I just don't care about any of it. Like, I don't care about the new movies they made.

I started watching Mandalorian a few episodes in. I gave up on it. And I'll finish watching the Obi Wan series just because it's Obi Wan Kenobi from the prequels. I like him, you know, blah, blah, blah. Even that, like, I'm really not impressed with it, really. Like, I like Ewan McGregor, but I'm not impressed with the series. But I'll finish it, right? And this kind of goes beyond the conversation. But I want to get your quick thoughts on it. In these television shows that they're making, Star Wars ones in particular, but I think it's also quick thoughts on it. In these television shows that they're making,

Star Wars ones in particular, but I think it's also bleeding into the Marvel ones. And I'm sure it will go further if it hasn't already. There's a reliance on these like visual effects sets so that they don't actually need to set up the set. I can't remember the name on it now. It's LED vision. LED vision. Okay.

They don't need to actually really dress the set in the way they would have before. And you don't have the traditional green screen where you fill it in later. It's like you can put the backdrop up as you're filming so you can feel like you're in the environment, but then you don't actually need to go to like the physical location to film or anything like that. And I feel like in the new Star Trek series, I can see it. Like I can see when they're using it. I can feel it in the scene. And I feel the same way in this Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Like I know when they're on one of those sets and they're filming it. And I feel like on one hand, I'm like, okay, you know, they used to do this and use like painted backdrops. Like it's just

the next evolution of this kind of way of filming. But then on the other hand, I feel like there's something happening there that I'm just not comfortable with. And I feel like I can't properly express it yet. Yeah, I think the the one on the one hand, this is so much better for the actors who have something to act against. They also use LED visions in the the Batman film that from Warner Brothers with Robert Pattinson. And I think it's used a great effect there. They use it for a lot of the skyline shots to create sort of their own Gotham skyline. They could adjust, you know, have everything occur like at night when it's raining. It really worked for that movie because that movie is creating a stylized version of an actual city. Funnily enough, this actually was invented for The Mandalorian because Jon Favreau found that you could not

digitally erase the reflections of the green screen in the Mandalorian because Jon Favreau found that you could not digitally erase the reflections of the green screen in the Mandalorian armor that was too shiny. So they had to create a different solution. And they came up with this one that was LED screens that are in a semi-circle, have a roof around you, create a natural looking environment. And I think it creates a better looking movie than a green screen and better performances from actors by far. Also, it makes the lighting look really, really good. But you can at this point, you can definitely tell when it's being used. And I think part of the issue here are the VFX artists that are being asked to make these things. VFX is an area of cinema that

is like the only one that is not broadly unionized. And that means that they can be overworked in more intense ways than other people in the film industry. And I think a lot of the disconnect that you see in terms of visual effects in television shows and in movies has everything to do with those workers being working in the worst possible conditions. And I can only imagine if you have to build out a 3D environment that directors can not only adjust the lighting on, but manipulate and sort of place characters in different spaces. That's incredibly complicated. And then to composite that in post, that's also incredibly complicated. So the question has to be like who is making these backgrounds not

just the technology that we use but the art that they put on that we have to consider that just as matte painting was a real art form but the people are doing these led vision that is also a real art form and the people who make that need better working conditions as does everyone truly but i feel like that is the thing I genuinely have concerns about, because it has so much, it's so familiar to me with video game development, where people talk about how incredible the technology is, but then don't talk about the people who created the assets that you're using with that technology. And I hear a lot about how incredible LED vision is for directors and actors, but I don't hear a lot about the people who are the ones that are creating those backgrounds and creating those environments

and i want to hear more about that that's the thing that really just i'd be happy to see this technology more and i think the more that people use it the better it's going to look i think i hope that disney stops doing horrible fucking green screens that don't look like anyone standing anywhere and just weird stuff. And instead they start using this, but I need that to come alongside more information about how these environments are created and protections for those workers. Yeah. I think you nailed it in that response. I'll just say, I know we're running a little bit long. There's two other things that I want to hit on before we tie up this conversation. First of all, you know, Netflix really entered this space as a tech company, right? And as a result, it had a lot of money. For a long time, it could operate at a loss. It didn't need to worry about turning a profit. Now we are entering this stage where, you know, the cheap money system that made that possible is tightening as interest rates rise. And, you know, there's a greater expectation for these companies to show a profit because,

you know, a company like Netflix really doesn't have anything else other than its streaming service. But there are companies like Apple and Amazon who are also in the streaming space and they have massive businesses that are behind their streaming services. And the streaming service is just like a fun thing that they do on the side. That's part of this larger ecosystem of services and products they have. How do you see their continued existence in this space, their continued operation as tightening comes for some of these other companies and how that affects the streaming services, but also like the film and television industry more

broadly? I mean, I think video games is again, like a really good analog for what's going on here. There are some studios that exclusively make video games. They're like companies like Nintendo or companies like EA, Ubisoft, et cetera, et cetera. But then there's companies like Microsoft or Sony, and those are companies for which the video game industry is a lucrative and therefore important in their eyes, but it's like a tertiary money stream. It's not even a secondary money stream. It is not the thing Sony or Microsoft

could completely ax their video game departments tomorrow and not see too much of a loss because they have market dominance in many other sectors. Apple is the same way. And if I was at Netflix, the thing I'd be pointing out is that cinemas and theaters and television, you know, cable television, these are not the things that are actually a threat to me. It's something like Apple TV Plus. You watch the stuff on Apple TV Plus, like to my shock and horror, it's very, very good. Severance was absolutely incredible. I mean, I'd heard that they're, I want to mention with Severance, some of the crew were saying that they had issues with payment and working conditions there, which is incredibly ironic

given what the show is about, But it is one of the best television shows I've seen in an incredibly long time. And the only way you could make a show that good is if you had more money than God. And Apple is essentially, you know, they give away Apple TV memberships. They do not need subscribers in the same way that Netflix does. What they're after is the legitimacy that comes with awards and good reviews and prestige. So if you look at For All Mankind, which is Ronald D. Moore from Star Trek doing his alternate reality space show, the production value on the show is incredibly high and incredibly accurate. It is wild. All of the stuff they do on the moon, they build these massive sets, but then they also

have really cool looking CGI of people flying spaceships. And it must be very, very expensive. And it's clear that it doesn't matter. And it would never matter. Amazon Prime is really similar. And that is like a free thing you get if you sign up for amazon prime you know and prime video it just comes with a whole bunch of junk essentially that amazon owns but they don't really care about that they got an oscar they want an oscar it's really really bad and they're also buying mgm and have spent like i think they're spending a billion dollars on Lord of the Rings, like, because money doesn't matter. Money doesn't matter. And that Lord of the Rings show looks not very good. Yeah. It looks like I, it's, I don't know that I needed more Lord of the Rings. And like, there are some costuming choices on this show that I have questions about. And it's also,

why would you cue so closely to the Peter Jackson, like, iconography and aesthetic when he is not on this project? And also when the last two Lord of the Rings related things he did were not good. It's like really weird. But they can just do this. You know, they can buy the rights to Jack Ryan and just make a new Jack Ryan show because they can just do that. Like the thing that's really a threat to other streaming services are the biggest tech companies getting into this. If Microsoft started one, you know, if they bought a movie studio, which they could do easily, they could also dominate here because they would not have to worry about money. You know,

you can see them experimenting a little bit with the Halo TV show and Paramount Plus. And that show is not as, doesn't have as high production value as the, you know, a lot of other streaming television shows, I would say. But I mean, I think it's been successful enough that the idea of creating television based on IP that they own was not, it does not seem like a bad choice for them. All of these entertainment industries they're looking at just like being consolidated completely into one or two big, big, big companies. And it's funny and sad because this was something that the film industry has previously tried hard to not have occur, to not have companies own every single part of the process, because you can see how easily you can monopolize the entirety of cinema. And also how that leads to worse, less good art.

You know, you bet as soon as Apple has market dominance for their streaming stuff, as soon as they've got the awards they want, they'll do the same thing as Netflix and stop throwing their money away. Because it only is valuable to them until it gets them all the prestige they want, and then they won't need it anymore. And then what? Yeah, I think it's such a good point. And I think it's a good way to lead us into the question to finally like wrap up this conversation, right? You mentioned earlier how the kind of proliferation of these streaming services, but also the consolidation that we're seeing now into a few major streaming services is almost like

recreating the cable package, right? We're going back to this thing that it was supposed to replace and wipe out and make so much better. And there's a quote from 1997 by a guy named Thomas Streeter that always comes back to me when I think about this. And he wrote, the cable fable is a story of repeated utopian high hopes followed by repeated disappointments. Cable was to end television oligopoly. Instead, it has merely provided an arena for the formation of a new oligopoly. So when Cable came in, it was supposed to have this big revolutionizing effect. Really, it didn't do any of that. Streaming, I think, as we can now see, has had a largely similar effect. It was supposed to revolutionize everything.

But once again, it has just further oligopolized, consolidated the industry into a few major companies that have a significant degree of control over all of the entertainment that we produce. So I guess, where do you see things going from here? And is there reason for hope in this whole industry and what we're seeing? I mean, I think the reason for hope you can have is that independent film still exists. Independent film is still able to be produced. And you can start a cinema really easily if you have a projector and can rent a space. Like it is easier than you think to become a space where you can show movies to the public and curate your own shows. If you want to do it illegally in your backyard, more power to you.

Cinema, because it is art, it cannot ever be truly corporatized entirely. There will always be outsiders to the system pushing at it. And as much as places like Apple, et cetera, et cetera, want to chase prestige, there will always be an artist on the outside that will not work for them. I'm thinking, you know, another movie that did very well in the special circuit, didn't translate to box office success, but horror fans especially said that this is one of the best films that they've seen all year. And I really wanted to see it. We're all going to the World's Fair. That is like outside, outside of what audiences want to see. And you can't stop that from existing

there will always be people that want to invest in it you know there will always be movie stars like drew barrymore's magnolia pictures that want to invest in the people the making independent film there will always be a small independent niche that doesn't mean that we're not in danger of seeing a huge monopoly occur within film and television. And I am very fearful of that happening because it seems inevitable that Apple will start, I don't know, building their own movie theaters or whatever. They haven't really done physical spaces. But if you look at the way that Apple stores have completely standardized their aesthetic,

you know that they understand how it works. You know, there's a lot of potential for this to go very poorly, especially as things begin to collapse. But the thought that I've had most frequently is like, why do I have all this shit? Why do I have all of this when I could just cancel all of these and go back to cable or do what I used to do when I was in college and legally download things. I think if we're going to look at another oligopoly in terms of streaming services, what we'll also be looking at is a new golden age of piracy. People will make piracy so much easier and accessible the same way that it was in the early days, right before streaming. There will always be a challenge to this idea

that we have to go to the same five companies over and over and over again. If you remember, you know, downloading movies and watching them on like Putlocker was so easy to do right before Netflix really took over everything. And I think it'll become that easy again. It's still not too hard for those who want to do it. I think it's a good point. You know, even as you know, if we think about Amazon, which is also this big behemoth, it was supposed to never have physical stores because it was this e-commerce company, everything was moving online. And then that has changed. It owns Whole Foods and it's building out a ton of stores. So yeah, I think we can

definitely see things change here. But I think that the consolidation that we're seeing in film and television entertainment more generally when we're looking at gaming too, is a big concern that I think people need to be more concerned about instead of just being like, yeah, we get a new Marvel movie or whatever. Gita, it is always fantastic to chat with you. I have enjoyed this so much. Thank you for taking the time. This was such a fun conversation. I love being on this show. Thank you so much for having me on. MathWriter at Motherboard, and you can follow them on Twitter at at XOXO Gossip Gita. You can follow me at at Paris Marks, and you can follow the show at at TechWon'tSaveUs. TechWon'tSaveUs is part of the Harbinger Media Network, and you can find out more about that at HarbingerMediaNetwork.com.

And if you do want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash TechWon'tSaveUs and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.