Justice League star Ben Affleck thinks the coronavirus pandemic has killed any chance that movie theaters will release small or mid-sized movies moving forward. Affleck is a rare thing in Hollywood, as an actor he has been able to lead big-budget for his entire career, and has also cultivated a reputation as a talented writer and director of smaller movies like Gone Baby Gone, The Town and the 2012 Best Picture winner Argo. He's also starred in a number of smaller movies from other writer and directors, the most recent of which, The Way Back, struggled at the box office earlier this year, but did well as a VOD release.
Affleck has always moved between the two film types, with the star happy to star in big-budget action thrillers or superhero films and take the big pay checks, while often using his high profile from those films to get his more intimate dramas made. It's allowed the star to keep making successful films for over 25 years now, and he isn't slowing down any time soon either. Affleck is currently set to star as Batman in 2022's The Flash, and is also appearing in Ridley Scott's The Last Duel, a film which he co-wrote alongside Nicole Holofcener and his friend and regular collaborator, Matt Damon.
Speaking recently with EW, Affleck candidly shared his thoughts on the future of Hollywood, and admitted that he thinks the days of mid-size movies appearing in theaters are over, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Saying that the pandemic hastened the shift, he reveals that he believes only big budget IP, blockbuster films will be released on big screens, with the possibility of only "20 to 25 movies a year" getting theatrical releases. Check out his full comments below:
I think after COVID, movies like The Town, movies like Argo, all the movies I made would effectively end up on streamers, There will probably be like 20 to 25 movies a year that are distributed and they’ll all be big IP movies, whether it’s the type of movies that Disney makes like Aladdin or Star Wars or Avengers, something where you can count on the low-end being half a billion dollars worth of business. And I think it’s going to be very, very difficult for dramas and sort of mid-budget movies like [The Town] to get theatrical distribution. You’ll either see massive, massive movies getting huge wide-scale distribution or small movies doing little prestige releases in a few theaters but mostly being shown on streamers. I think that’s for better or worse, and you can draw your own conclusions, but that would be my best guess about the direction of the movie business just based on what I’m seeing now and experiences I’m having trying to get stuff made.
Thanks to the release of films like Tenet this summer, the future of theatrical distribution has been a constant topic of discussion in recent months. Based on his comments, it seems Affleck is taking a pragmatic approach to the current theatrical situation, acknowledging that the change he's seeing was likely inevitable. Earlier in the interview, Affleck also noted that streaming can actually be a way to get more people to watch smaller movies, saying that he thinks The Way Back managed to get more viewers by being released on VOD early after COVID closed movie theaters just a couple of weeks after its initial theatrical release. Affleck's assessment of the industry rings particularly true right now as well. With 2020's box office essentially a non-starter, the theaters that survive the pandemic are already going to be on the back foot in 2021, and may understandably be less likely to invest in screening movies that won't fill their auditoriums.
Big budget blockbusters, like the MCU movies and other superhero efforts like Justice League are, during normal times, guaranteed to fill seats. Smaller movies are a big risk, one that cinema chains will likely not be interested in taking after such a disastrous financial year. However, as Affleck says, it's not all bad. People interested in smaller, more intimate dramas arguably have more chance of watching them on a streaming service from the comfort of their own home than they do in theaters. So, assuming Affleck's predictions here come true, it may only be blockbuster films that are still around in the coming years to give film fans the traditional theatrical experience they've come to love and respect so much.
Source: EW