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 **** 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.