Stop showing ads before movies

Todd Phillips could divide his audience by making A Joker a movie where the Joker is a sad, unhappy guy who doesn’t really want to be the Joker anymorebut don’t doubt that Hangover the director is still true to his populist roots. Phillips recently took part in A Empire survey of several Hollywood directors about the importance of the theatrical experience, with people like George Miller, Sofia Coppola, Paul Feig and others talking about the communal nature of movie-watching together, or lamenting the lost soul of modern cinema, or simply speaking out about the constant encroachment of AI. Phillips, however, ignores all this arrogant nonsense and offers a simple way to get people to stop defaulting to streaming: “Stop showing ads before movies,” Phillips demands. “We paid for the tickets.”

And while we might poke fun at Phillips a little for focusing on practicality rather than art, that doesn’t mean he wrong about the drawn-out, hyper-commercialized nature of many theater chains’ pre-rolls. (On a personal note, if we have pre-purchased tickets, we no longer arrive at our local Cinemark more than 15 minutes later). after official movie start time, so we only have to watch 10 minutes before showing.) Phillips specifically focused his commentary on the question of how to get audiences to choose a movie night instead of streaming something. , and we are not sure about his main argument, that No getting people to watch 10-minute Coca-Cola commercials and phone commercials in addition to trailers may not be a better option than more elevated appeals to art. “We’re really excited to be there,” Phillips added. “Advertising tends to take the air out of the room.”

Meanwhile, other directors did pay more attention to the artistic side of things, including AnoraSean Baker, who noted: “People are moving away from celluloid. We have filmmakers who, for whatever reason, are okay with their films going straight to air, or they just give up on the movie and say, “Hey, I’ll take it to a TV series.” Or guys like Adam Wingard and Feig, who both acknowledged that streaming is helping a lot of films that otherwise wouldn’t get made reach people. somehow. Still, Phillips’ argument sticks with us: You don’t have to tell us you’re selling popcorn in the lobby. We damn well know!