“It’s the pictures that got small”: How movies have changed in the era of streaming

Hollywood has been re-inventing itself for more 100 years. Change is part of the culture. But a pocket-sized “Sunset Boulevard”? That’s not a close-up!

We visited the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. Built in 1922, it was home of the very first Hollywood premiere, when Douglas Fairbanks debuted “Robin Hood” there. It was a big, spectacular night in Tinsel Town. Today, the Egyptian is owned by the world’s largest streaming service, Netflix, which spent $70 million to renovate the movie palace.

Why? According to Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, seeing movies in a theater is inspiring. “I could think back to my first time being in a movie theater watching ‘Jaws’ at 11 years old. And I remember like it was yesterday – popcorn went this way, and the soda went this way, and the audience screamed. And that’s a very unique and different experience.”

And an increasingly distant one. Today, screens are smaller, and ticket prices higher. It all leads to a common refrain: “They don’t make ’em like they used to.”

“It’s probably like everything else; the thing we grew up on is what we want,” said Sarandos. “It’s oftentimes the art forms move on, and advances in ways that we kind of miss the old version of it. But they do make movies like they used to. And I think they’re better than ever.”

That, of course, is debatable. What’s not in doubt is that the big movies are far more predictable than ever. In 2024, the top 15 films at the box office were all franchises, sequels, or reboots.

Sarandos said, “The business has become very stratified. Either movies are gigantic spectaculars built to make billions of dollars, or they’re very small, independent films. And there’s not much in the middle anymore.”

Tom Rothman, who runs Sony’s motion picture group, said, “Movies still do really well, and big movies are still really big, right? But what’s missing at the moment, I believe, is a range and a breadth of originality.”

Rothman, like Sarandos, is among the most powerful people in this business. His films do stream on Netflix, but only after they play in theaters. “You can have quality or you can have quantity; it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have both quality and quantity together,” said Rothman. “What does streaming have? It has quantity. Okay, so that’s a very broad, wide net. And … it’s a very low bar.”

Nancy Meyers has made films that have earned more than $1.5 billion. She’s the writer and director of hit romantic comedies like “The Holiday,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” and “It’s Complicated.” She believes the shift to, let’s call it “the super-hero formula” has killed off the types of movies many of us have loved for generations.

“There is an enormous difference,” Meyers said. “I felt in the ’90s a freedom to have ideas that people would want to make – I wasn’t worried that they wouldn’t be open to the kind of movies that I make.”

“Creativity and originality, you saw as an asset?” I asked.

“Yes, I did!” she laughed. “Character, wit, comedy, heart, big screen. I had no crystal ball. I couldn’t see into the future of how movies were gonna change.”

The change, says Meyers, means films like “Chinatown,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” even “Dirty Dancing” might not get made today. “Movies, it’s always been a business to make money, always,” she said. “But they were less afraid, I think. They were less afraid. They took more chances.”

Michael Schulman, who writes about movies and culture for The New Yorker, and is author of the book “Sscar Wars,” said, “I would love for the movies to be a little bit less like they used to. Every two seconds there’s a new ‘Superman,’ ‘Beetlejuice,’ ‘Lion King,’ ‘Alien,’ ‘Mission: Impossible,’ ‘Bridget Jones,’ ‘Indiana Jones.’ The goal is to not come up with the next great idea, but to excite the shareholders about a sure bet for the next quarter.”

Schulman says the movies we grew up on are still out there, produced by the independent studios behind “Anora” (Neon), “The Brutalist” (A24), and other best picture nominees. Schulman said, “I often hear people say when the list comes out for the Academy Awards, ‘Well, I haven’t heard of half of those movies.’  If you go to the movie theater and they have ten screens showing ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ and no ‘Brutalist,’ then there’s your problem.”

Netflix’s Sarandos said, “Even now, the average American goes to the movie theaters twice a year. The average Netflix member watches seven movies a month. So, I feel like that’s gotta be good for the business, and it’s gotta be good for the art of storytelling to have a platform, and an audience of 700 million people who still watch movies, when they could watch TikTok videos, they could watch YouTube clips, they could be listening to podcasts. But they still watch movies.”

What Sarandos knows (and what many of us may be trying to avoid admitting) is this:  If they don’t make movies like they used to, it might be because we don’t watch ’em like we used to. “There’s all this opportunity, I think, to get the history of this art form, the history of storytelling, the history of humans, on the screen,” he said. “If the screen is gigantic here, or a good-sized at home, or even small on your phone, I don’t think it’s sacrilege for someone to watch a great movie on their phone. I’d much rather them do that than not watch movies at all.”

Tom Rothman and Nancy Meyers concede there’s value in streaming movies at home. But what they want – and what they believe the audience wants – is something cinematic.

“The movie experience is not on your phone,” Rothman said. “A movie experience is a collective, big-screen experience. You’re there, you’re in the dark.”

Hollywood, said Meyers, “used to be called a dream factory, right? And somebody’s dream is up on the screen – somebody’s version of a world that you get pulled into and you get sucked into. The lights come up at the end and, you know, you’ve been somewhere. You’ve had an experience when we’re in a movie theater. That’s what a movie is.”

Watch an extended interview with Nancy Meyers: 

I said, “There are movies being made that meet the standard of bold originality. But there aren’t many. And it feels – and maybe it always felt this at all moments where there was a sea change in Hollywood – but it feels like the hill is too steep to climb.”

“I love that question,” said Rothman. “The hill is steep, and the climb is hard. But it is not too steep, and it is not too hard, if you’re tough and bold enough, right? And if it were easy, anybody could do it. And it’s not easy. And you have to be willing to risk, and you have to be willing to fail.”

His advice? “Tighten up your boots and climb.”

Watch an extended interview with Tom Rothman: 

Watch an extended interview with Ted Sarandos:

      
For more info:

      
Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Joseph Frandino.

          
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