Quote Originally Posted by thwhtGuardian View Post
They're still just a piece of the pie, true, it's a larger slice than before but that's due to the increasingly competitive entertainment field in which film is only one player among many. There's increasingly more demands on the audience's entertainment dollar from streaming services(and there are almost more of those every day!) the quality of TV has gone up, and video games continue to grow as well, and with that competition it means studios are under a greater pressure to perform than before which means appealing to the largest number of people they can and playing it a bit safer.

But even with block busters taking up more of the screen there is still more than enough room for other films; it's like I said there are only so many auteur writers and directors so it's not like we'd have more of those types of films if there were less block busters.

And yes, I think that even 15 years ago Scorsese may have been turned down by a major studio...it's not that uncommon a thing to happen even for a guy like him. There are literally dozens of films he's wanted to make only to be turned down over the years of his career so rather than being a sign of doom that he has to go to a different platform to get his project financed it should rather be seen as a great sign because that other platform exists and can fund a film that wouldn't have other wise been made.

And auteur films really always have been a minority, that's a flat fact. Other than a very brief period from the late 60's to early 70's profit driven studio films have always been the norm and they have always chased what ever trend was hot in order to turn out the most profit possible.
Yeah I respectively disagree on that. Scorsese was able to get films like Taxi Driver and Mean Streets made when he had very little clout as a filmmaker and they were much further outside the main stream than a mafia flick with Al Pacino, Rob Deniro, and Joe Pesci would be. Those films wouldn’t get made today under similar circumstances.

Nobody is arguing the film industry isn’t trying to make a profit. It’s that a long time ago you would take a risk on a film like a Rocky or Godfather or even things like Karate Kid where a creator thought he had a vision for an appealing film that would captivate audiences. Now there is a definite rush to how much you can milk IP’s.

I saw someone mention universal horror monsters as an example. But at the time most of those were risks. The first Dracula and Frankenstein were really pushing and tearing audiences and nobody knew they would take the way they did. Yeah obviously they made sequels after sure, but there was still the element of “this is new and we are testing creativity vs audience appeal”. I mean fuck would even a film like Casablanca or Sunset Boulevard which are legit mainstream classics be made today? I can’t see it under this system. So I think it goes beyond some 60’s and 70’s golden age.