Cinema’s Next Quantum Leap
The world’s most glamorous film festival, the Festival de Cannes, has its 75th edition from May 17 to 28, and where Hollywood megastar Tom Cruise on May 18 premiered ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, the sequel to his 1986 blockbuster, gracing the bright red-carpet steps of the Palais des Festivals for the first time in thirty years. It is, therefore, a timely opportunity to take stock of where the global cinema industry is and envisage its potential next quantum leap.
Cinema remains the world’s most powerful cultural art form, in both its global impact and commercial firepower, but it is certainly at an inflection point. Faced with the mauling that COVID-19 gave the industry in 2020 – bringing it to an actual and veritable global standstill – what the industry seeks to do at this critical stage will have long-lasting consequences over the next decade and beyond.
Michael Ovitz, co-founder of one of Hollywood’s most powerful talent agencies, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), former President of Disney, and as per the title of his memoirs, at one time, ‘The Most Powerful Man in Hollywood’, has said that entertainment is “the most cut-throat, competitive, difficult business in the world.” The world’s entertainment capital is, undoubtedly, Hollywood in Los Angeles in the US; the pinnacle of entertainment is cinema; and the pinnacle of cinema, from the industry’s perspective, is the blockbuster.
“At the end of the day, there’s something everyone forgets … it’s a business that defies description,” said Ovitz in September 2018, following the release of his memoirs. “It’s unregulated. It’s all about human beings and their ideas. Your capital comes from complex places. Your ideas come from complicated people. And putting one complicated person with another complicated person takes you to the 100th power of how complex it is. And everyone is competing with everyone else in a very hard and heavy-handed way.”
Despite the ubiquitous nature of the sector, the global cinema industry has endured its own various disruptions over the past few decades, but has always shown a propensity for resilience: as long as humans have a binocular visual field of around 120 degrees, then cinema remains the most expansive gadget-free way for watching a movie, and so competition from the likes of the Metaverse is, therefore, still analogous to previous disruptions like television.
But what the global cinema industry needs, which will have repercussions on content creation across the entertainment industry as a whole, are significant innovations that take advantage of the current technologies that exist and are forthcoming. These potential innovations are in five areas, and are envisaged to be such a quantum leap, they represent as much a move as from analogue to digital.
The first innovation in cinema is in institutionalisation and scaling of access to capital for producers and content creators at the development stage, which is akin to angel investment in start-ups. The start-up ecosystem that has evolved in Silicon Valley for tech start-ups, with replication efforts globally, can be adapted for the cinema and content creation sector, as intellectual property (IP) is the quantum leap of investments in terms of value creation when done right, with untapped potential and synergies aplenty. This is why Michael Ovitz is mentoring entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, why Steve Jobs bought and scaled Pixar after his first tenure at Apple, why Jeff Bezos at Amazon bought MGM and why Elon Musk did a cameo as a relatively-lesser known entrepreneur, by global standards, back in Marvel’s ‘Iron Man 2’ in 2010.
The second innovation in cinema is in the realm of cast and crew from actors, directors, producers to cinematographers and editors where technology now allows for a near-exponential ability to cast anyone, anywhere, from any (recent) time. Today, with the use of deepfake technology to replicate both the visual image and voice, at any age, allows for the creation of the digital avatars of actors of today, not only as their younger selves, but of the deceased actors of yesteryear via their estates, utilising the bankability of yesteryear, as well as more ethnic and global iterations of various characters.
So, for example, how much would today’s cinema audiences be willing to pay to watch a movie of Tom Cruise of yesteryear starring as Spider-Man, opposite Hollywood icon Arnold Schwarzenegger of yesteryear as Doctor Octopus, as written and directed by the blockbuster auteur James Cameron, as produced by Mario Kassar of yesteryear’s Carolco? What if, for India, there were two iterations released, one with Tom Cruise with a Hindi & Urdu dub of his synthetic voice and a second with Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff? Or bringing back the unique Sean Connery as James Bond with Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan for India and Omar Sharif for Arabia? Or 75-year old Hollywood icon Sylvester Stallone rebooting his Rocky and Rambo franchises with himself, and also franchised out to China’s Wu Jing or Bollywood’s Hrithik Roshan? And then in the future, beyond Hollywood and Bollywood actors, how about an immersive point of view (POV) film where, in fact, it is your face and voice as Spider-Man, James Bond, Rocky and Rambo? The possibilities, and ensuing revenue streams, for studios and talent agencies, can be exponential.
The third innovation is the ubiquitous cinema itself, and how it needs to be transformed, both in its actual facilities but in its business model too, transforming the concept of commission revenues to be beyond just up-charging on food and popcorn. In 2013, Hollywood blockbuster auteurs Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had spoken about higher-priced tickets, where going to cinema theatres would actually be more like an actual theatrical experience. Nearly a decade on, there has been an evolution of the theatrical experience with restaurant dine-in and 4D, but this seems to be only touching the surface of what is potential. The cinema needs to evolve to be a more community centre, shopping mall and theme park experience, where each of these aspects is contributing to enhancing the experience for the cinema-goer but maximising revenue for the industry as well.
For example, as opposed to just a merchandise option within a cinema for the next Marvel or DC film, within the cinema itself, there is the gaming arcade option, the Lego-building option, the Metaverse with its virtual reality and augumented reality options, as add-ons, experienced before or after the movie to enhance the experience, or complimentary to it, like a creative business hub. This way the cinema’s community centre feel means that the number of hours spent in the theatre itself will be at two hours, but ancillary enhancement experiences can extend the time spent at the cinema to four hours or more, literally a day or half day out at the cinema. Moreover, if you missed the last franchise entry of a new film that is showing, that can be released as a refresher or catch-up, as can the re-release anniversary of classic films to be seen in the theatre. The life-cycle of both old films and more recent releases for the cinema, therefore, also has been extended.
The fourth innovation in cinema is the concept of collectibles, tangible and intangible assets. With the rise of streaming and cloud-computing, and the rise of digital collectibles like NFTs, there has been a simultaneous neglect of tangible collectible assets, as the ownership of the movies from video cassettes, to DVDs to Blue Ray, has become largely for high-definition connoisseurs fans of certain film.
One key aspect of this is that the cinema industry needs to focus on what does the Blue-Ray of tomorrow – the tangible physical product of the movie – look like and how can its use be scaled? This is where producers become hugely important – it is in the physical product of the movie – which the cinema-goer can hold in their hands, and touch, feel and hold – that there can be the unique add-on separate from the theatrical experience so from commentaries, and behind-the-scenes (making of) boxed sets, but combining all the collectability that the retail sales of Amazon and eBay enable from signed physical autographs of cast and crew with toy and car figures. A signed autograph of the lead actor can normally only be yielded by standing for hours at a major world city premiere of the film, and this cannot, by definition, be paperless. It is critical that the boxed set of a movie enjoys a revival, and is scaled to go beyond connoisseurs to the mainstream, and that this adds literal tangible value beyond the theatrical experience.
The fifth innovation for the cinema industry is globalised bespoke content, where technology allows for the content to be catered to different global audiences and demographics, like a tailored suit, which can enable a more collaborate approach between the content creator and the cinema-goer. So, for example, content creators, both as individuals and companies, will need to decide, in any cultural wars, what is the extent to the adaptability of that content at the expense of box office revenue versus their creative principles. The bottom line, therefore, will be between global content, contained content (which has been self-limited by creative principle) and niche content, intended only for a specific audience.
Another aspect of this is representation, in that to what extent will those cinema audiences be more keen to see films in which they themselves are represented, and does that mean that content creators will need to utilise deepfake technology to cater to this, and will they in fact choose to do this? For example in China, certain Marvel movies historically nearly had 20% of their box office revenue from the country, but suggested censorship changes to recent films based on political reasons have not been made, ultimately leading to the loss of that potential revenue. It is clear that those in the cinema industry able to navigate this space of globalised bespoke content will reap the greatest financial rewards as a result.
These five potential innovations in the cinema industry – from scaling an ecosystem to finance producers and content creators, the promotion of digital avatars of cast and crew, the transformation of the cinema to the cinema community centre, the revival of tangible collectible assets for cinema and globalised bespoke content – are valuable because they are all now possible, strategic and immediately monetisable, and can therefore help the industry to not only survive, but genuinely thrive. They, however, will require a shift in mindset, with appropriate talent, time and resources, but for those entrepreneurially smart and courageous to do so, will reap literal dividends as they lead the quantum leap.
Talal Malik is the CEO and Film Producer for Alpha1Media, a global media and entertainment firm.