Former movie star Seth Rogen, who has jumped with both feet into TV acting, delivered a beautiful self-own by comparing movie theaters to museums.
Things must be pretty bad when this is the only argument he could summon in defense of the movie business:
“Paintings are still around. People still go to museums! There’s things flashier or more ‘interesting’ than…oil on canvas, but people still flock from all over the world, enough to keep museums open. Not a ton of people have to like movies to keep movies going. It’s always been a very small percentage of the population that actually goes and sees movies.”
That might be the funniest thing Rogen’s come up with in a decade.
On top of comparing the theatrical experience to a museum, this is an even bigger self-own: “Not a ton of people have to like movies to keep movies going.”
Exactly!
Thank you!
That is 100 percent correct!
And yet…
The 2024 box office is still down 43 percent compared to the last pre-pandemic year of 2019 — 43 percent!
The argument that you don’t need a whole lot of people to earn a win at the box office is an argument I frequently make to back up my claim that movies are dying.
If just five percent of the American population went to a movie — a mere five percent — that movie would gross around $150 million domestically. Movies are so dreadful today that they cannot even attract that five percent.
Hell, if you attract just one percent of the U.S. population — a measly one percent — your movie will gross over $30 million domestically. Look at how many movies fail to cross that number.
Things are so bad that when a movie hits $100 million domestically today, we are lied to about it being a hit. That’s insane. The $100 million mark was a hit metric four decades ago in the 1990s. If you account for inflation, that $100 million metric should be $200 million today.
We’re told Civil War is a hit, even though it topped out under $70 million. If you account for inflation, Civil War would’ve grossed just $34 million in 1995, and no one would be calling it a hit. We’re told Challengers has announced the arrival of a brand-new movie star named Zendaya. Challengers has grossed just $44 million domestically over three weekends, which is $22 million in 1995 dollars.
The funniest thing is how Hollywood continues to produce woke, left-wing flops that cannot attract even ten percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In other words, no one wants to see this shit.
The movie business is becoming a museum, and what’s a museum? A place people maybe visit every five or ten years. As recently as 20 years ago, movies were a way of life for millions and millions of people, a thing we all did regularly, a kind of entertainment church where we came together to feel and express the same emotions, where we saw our common humanity explored, where we walked out into the harsh light feeling more fulfilled than we did walking in.
Today, the greatest art form ever created bombards us with icky gay sex, smug lectures, lies about human nature, and sexless Mary Sues. Our kids are “queered” by outfits like the Disney Grooming Syndicate, and then we exit the theater feeling ripped off and sucker punched, wondering why we wasted three hours and $20.
That’s what happened to Seth Rogen. That’s why he moved to TV. He couldn’t attract even five percent of the population to his stupid, unfunny comedies.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.