Steven Spielberg has denied predicting a Hollywood “implosion” in comments he made alongside the Star Wars creator George Lucas two years ago.
Spielberg’s suggestion that a succession of box-office failures could radically change the shape of the film industry, and lead to dramatically hiked ticket prices for blockbuster films, made headlines around the world in June 2013. But the three-time Oscar-winner appeared to backtrack at a press conference for his new cold war espionage drama, Bridge of Spies.
“To clarify, I didn’t ever predict the implosion of the film industry at all,” he said, in comments reported by USA Today. “I simply predicted that [with] a number of blockbusters in one summer — those big sort of tentpole superhero movies — there was going to come a time where two or three or four of them in a row didn’t work. That’s really all I said. I didn’t say the film industry was ever going to end because of them. “I also was simply saying that that particular [superhero] genre doesn’t have the legs or the longevity of the western, which was around since the beginning of film, and only started to wither and shrivel in the 60s. I was also trying to make a point that there was room for every kind of movie today, because there seems to be an audience for everything.
“Even five years ago, there wasn’t an audience for everything. But now, these little movies are squeezing in and finding a berth next to these huge Queen Mary-type movies. And they’re able to find enough of an audience to encourage the distributor and the film companies to finance more of them. And these just aren’t films like Bridge of Spies, but it’s independent movies as well.”
Spielberg’s 2013 comments, made at the opening of a media centre at the University of Southern California, did predict an “implosion” in the industry. He was quoted as saying: “That’s the big danger ... there’s eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.” Spielberg also suggested that this could lead to audiences being asked to pay $25 (Dh91) a ticket for films such as Iron Man 3, but just $7 for movies such as his own Lincoln.
In fact, ticket prices have remained fairly steady in the US, at about $8. And both the key North American box office and the global box office are heading for record-breaking years after the $1bn success of films such as the Spielberg-produced Jurassic World, Fast & Furious 7, Minions and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Of 2015’s $150m budgeted films, only Disney’s Tomorrowland ($208.6m) and the fantasy opus Jupiter Ascending ($183.9m) struggled at the box office, and their failings were more than offset by the success of other films.
