Don Shanahan
Plenty of regular everyday people make New Year’s Resolutions, but I think bigger entities, namely filmmakers and studio moguls, need to make them as well. For the fourth consecutive year, I bring my film critic credentials to the editorial side and have fun taking the movie industry to task for things they need to update and change. As always, some resolutions (a banner year for animation) come true, while others never get fulfilled (going back to the 1980s is beating a dead horse). Welcome to 2025, the powers-that-be of the movie industry! Here are your requested resolutions for improvement.
RESOLUTION #1: TO MAKE A THEATRICAL SUCCESS, YOU HAVE TO LEAVE A MOVIE IN A THEATER.
The first two resolutions on this list target disturbing industry-level trends that, somewhere, studio head honchos think were the best ideas to make money and capitalize on buzz. For years, we’ve been seeing the windows between theatrical releases and streaming/home media dates shrink since before the COVID-19 pandemic year reduced them in many cases to zero days. The elders among us still remember when it was 6-12 months before movie would get its second life on video rental shelves. While streaming business is booming, theatrical ticket sales are still where the biggest money is to be made.
Well, you can’t make that money if you take a movie out of the theater after less than a month. A movie can’t find or hold an audience if you take it so quickly. Universal Pictures’ treatment of The Fall Guy this past year was the perfect example for this necessary resolution. Certainly, the movie underperformed so-called expectations (see Resolution #2 in a moment), but it only dropped 51% in its second weekend in a summer landscape where a lingering bump of casual viewing is always available. The studio panicked and dropped The Fall Guy on digital after only 19 days at the box office, snipping any chance to recoup its budget with a little more time. Studios, let your box office babies grow some legs while you grow spines to have patience for word-of-mouth and wandering attention spans. Cream rises to the top if you just wait a little bit.
RESOLUTION #2: FIRE YOUR PROGNOSTICATION ANALYSTS.
I know I mainly occupy the film critic side of things here at Film Obsessive, but I’m in a position, like many of my peers, where we still have a finger on the pulse of industry trends. We’re on the front line hearing the noise, and, too often in 2024, the noise sounded like it came from the news team of Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
It’s true the first month of the summer box office which included The Fall Guy, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, IF, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and The Garfield Movie as the top possible tentpoles lacked a truly monster financial hit. Around Memorial Day, if you followed the industry trades and the studios themselves crying poor, the water cooler narrative was touting the certain death of the theatrical experience and the whole damn industry. Guess what? The impending disasters they were hollering about never came. The summer season had three more months to go, and a couple of little Disney projects called Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine raked a combined $1.2 billon domestic dollars. Despicable Me 4 and Twisters piled on and all was fine.
Studios, it’s time to fire your prognositication analysts and public relations teams. Combined with Resolution #1, you’re getting bad information. Whoever is reading your tea leaves can’t see 24 hours in front of them, let alone 24 days. Whoever is tasked with reporting the status and blowing smoke up your asses can’t build a sustainable fire. Film journalists are culpable here as well. They drink the press release Kool-Aid and amplify the manufactured bad messaging into clickbait that feeds the frenzy and spread the fake panic. Patience. To all involved, find patience to wait a season out.
RESOLUTION #3: STAY THIN AND SPECIAL, MARVEL STUDIOS.
Kevin Feige, look how good you slayed the box office when you weren’t oversaturating it! Whether it was a result of work slowdowns from 2023’s industry strikes or Marvel Films actually listening to their fans, they made Deadpool & Wolverine special by taking their time and having it stand as their only theatrical release of 2024. Absence away made the heart grow fonder and audience stamina was restored, leading to Marvel’s first billion dollar worldwide smash in three years. It felt good to see an event movie matter and deliver as an event. Frankly, that leanness needs to be their release schedule going forward: one or two big hitters a year, tops. Sadly, we can see the 2025 calendar coming. They’re going right back to their old habits with three planned theatrical movies (and SIX connected TV serieses). That’s too much and they’re going to find out the hard way again, even if they are too big to fail.
RESOLUTION #4: SONY PICTURES, PLEASE SELL SPIDER-MAN TO MARVEL.
Look, I get it. In these tough times of fickle audiences, nostalgia inebriation, and endangered cash cow properties, I can understand why studios will hold onto any profitable intellectual property they can. As they are more than allowed to do, Sony Pictures clings to the big screen rights to the trademarked character of Spider-Man as long as they produce at least one movie with him every five years. Meanwhile, Marvel’s parent company Disney enjoys the comic book money, all of the merchandising, and 5% box office royalties on any of Sony’s Spider-Man films.
In 2024, Sony’s efforts made the haphazard Spider-Man universe a laughingstock disaster. Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter, and Venom: The Last Dance either bombed or drastically underperformed at the box office. Deflating the balloon further, the animation side failed to capitalize on the cliffhanger success of 2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and missed the planned March 2024 release date of Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. That sure-fire hit sequel is not delayed until 2027.
Sounding like a disgruntled sports fan (I should know; I’m a Chicagoan), it’s time for the owners to “sell the team” to someone more competent and competitive. Just like those athletic armchair rants, those calls will fall on deaf ears because, once again, you’re not going to get billionaires to sell one of the things that keeps them billionaires, even if they’re shamed and embarrassed to no end by the public.
RESOLUTION #5: GOOD FANS NEED TO OUTNUMBER THE HATE WAGONS.
This next resolution is far easier said than done, but eternally necessary. I’m calling for good people to come forward and defeat their ornery neighbors. The polluted cesspools of certain fandoms seem to grow every year in numbers and ugliness. 2024 found its share of toxic peaks that are going to start 2025 on the wrong foot. The Star Wars crowd’s backlash for The Acolyte on TV threatens to sour the next movies. The announcement of Robert Downey Jr.’s return to the MCU as Doctor Doom in the next phase split that fanbase with conniptions. With the arrival of a David Corenswet incarnation of the Big Blue Boy Scout in Superman stewarded by James Gunn, the never-dormant SnyderBros are starting their whiny protests already after set photos and one teaser trailer. There are even gatekeepers pissing and moaning about mustaches in Nosferatu.
True to the trends of social media and representing a second resolution where entertainment journalists have their fault of adding to the problem, hyperbole sells and negative hyperbole sells double. Even with the reduction of Twitter, the hate wagons of these shitty fandoms have their platforms. No amount of reporting and blocking is going to shut them up. However, as with any bad element, they are nothing but a loud minority. They can outnumbered, drowned out, depowered, and ignored. It takes good people willing to get out there with support and word of mouth in positive directions.
RESOLUTION #6: IT’S TIME TO BRING BACK THE TIGHT 90-MINUTE MOVIE.
Part of the poor returns in the busted box office analyses cited above is the number of times a theater can turn a crowd over in the limited weeks you have (or set yourself to have) to make money. Film length is the number one variable in that equation, not overall quality or number of screens granted to the movie itself. For this final resolution, I’m going to sound like an old curmudgeon, and I’m not sorry. Movies need to be shorter, period.
Six of the top ten movies at the 2024 box office were under two hours in length. They clearly benefited from more rapid turnover and ease of repeat visits. While there are definitely exceptions from this past year, including Wicked and Dune: Part Two stretched over 160 minutes and making dough, a long length hurts the more prestigious films that need as many butts in seats as they can get for awards consideration and word-of-mouth audience multiplication. Case in point, nine of the ten Best Picture nominees for the 30th Critics Choice Awards are over two hours, topped by The Brutalist’s paralyzing 195 minutes.
When those riskier movies like The Subtance and Anora aren’t the sure things that Wicked and Dune are, less people—and less awards voters—are going to sink their time and, more importantly, their hard-earned money to see them, especially in today’s tough economy. When the high-fallutin’ cinephiles get to Oscar night and complain that the so-called “best” movies of the year don’t win enough statuettes, one of the chief reasons will be because those movies are underseen from being too long and, therefore, unapproachable. I’ll go ahead and lay out the bold prediction now that The Brutalist will follow the lumbering footsteps of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Irishman before it where the interminable film will win zero awards on double-digit nominations, partly because voters aren’t going to sit through it.
This resolution is obviousness talking, not a small bladder. There was a time not all that long ago when the sweet spot for audience impact and maximum box office earning potential was 90 minutes. I get that directors have earned their artistic freedom to make their wannabe masterpieces, but this is a business first and an art exposition second. Make your opus shorter and tighter, and more people will come and see it. You’ll make more money and cease being a starving artist. You don’t want to end up like Barry Jenkins making a Disney movie, do you?
