Whither, Hollywood, Wither?

Last week I wrote about television; this week I've been thinking about Hollywood. Not least because a screenwriter with a pretty good track record recently attached himself to my squirrel book¹ and is hoping to adapt it into a big animated movie. But it often takes five years or more to go from script to screen, so I can't help wondering--will Hollywood as we know it still be around by then? Internet hero Cory Doctorow doesn't think so. A few years ago he wrote an essay predicting the death of big-budget movies: "The specific, rarefied animal that is the gigantic film spectacle demands a technological reality that has ceased to exist: just enough technology to distribute the films everywhere, but not so much technology that the audience gets to overrule your distribution decisions." So far, perhaps surprisingly, he's been dead wrong. Theater attendance is down 20% in the USA over the last decade, but actual box-office income is flat, thanks to higher ticket prices. Home-entertainment spending--DVDs, rentals, Netflix, etc--is overall down almost 30% in constant dollars since 2005, but that's counteracted by the huge rise in 'foreign' box office over the same period. Hollywood seems to be fighting the Internet to a standstill. But does anyone out there really think that can last?

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