Summary

Will Smith explains that it’s harder to get audiences to go to the theater for a movie when watching things at home can now be an elevated experience.
COVID had a big impact on the current state of the box office, with more audiences now trained to wait to watch things at home.
Some movies like Oppenheimer and Barbie still break through and succeed, and all hope is not lost for Hollywood.

Will Smith addresses why so many Hollywood blockbusters are struggling at the box office these days. Smith is one of the best-known actors working in Hollywood today, and has starred in hits like the Men in Black franchise, I Am Legend, Bad Boys, I, Robot, and Hitch, among many others. While Smith has starred in his fair share of hits over the course of his career, the box office has been struggling for a number of years now. Recent movies like The Marvels, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, The Fall Guy, and Furiosa, for example, all underperformed.

During a recent interview on the “Hot Ones” video series from First We Feast to promote the upcoming release of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Smith is asked about the current state of Hollywood and why hits are harder to come by.

According to the actor, one big issue facing Hollywood is that it’s harder to convince audiences to go to the movies when a TV show at home can now deliver content with a similar level of spectacle. Check out Smith’s comment below:

“The definition of a hit is still pretty much the same. Essentially, it’s just harder to get one. You used to be able to put some explosions in the trailer and a couple of good jokes and people were there. And television is so good, there are things that people just aren’t going to leave their house for. There’s definitely a higher demand for a certain type of film for people to leave their homes.”

Is Will Smith Right About The Struggles Facing Hollywood?

There’s More To The Story

In recent decades, TV shows have certainly become grander in scale and scope, and some have sported truly gargantuan budgets. Shows like Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and 3 Body Problem, for example, are all wildly expensive. The availability of such high quality TV shows is certainly part of the issue, then, but so too is the quality of actual televisions and sound systems that are available to consumers. People can make their own comfortable home theater setups.

COVID also had a big impact. During the pandemic, some movies were released day-and-date on streaming and in theaters simultaneously. Other movies did get exclusive theatrical windows, but these windows were far shorter than the 90 days that used to be the industry standard. Now, movies are lucky to get 45-day windows. All of this means that audiences were trained to wait to watch things at home. This is compounded by the fact that going to the movies now is more expensive and movies themselves are more expensive, meaning it’s harder for them to become profitable.

Smith, then, is right that it’s now harder than ever before to convince audiences to leave their homes to go to a movie theater. It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as movies, under the right circumstances, can still connect in a major way. Barbie and Oppenheimer‘s simultaneous release last year, for example, is a major success story. Smith is evidently hoping that the Bad Boys: Ride or Die release is met with success in theaters, but it will certainly be harder than it used to be.

Source: First We Feast