Ask anyone who closely observes the American film industry, and they'll tell you it's collapsing like an Antarctic ice shelf. Hollywood has not recovered from the box office catastrophe of the pandemic, nor the subsequent historic strikes of 2023. But these realities, which are now in the past, unearthed deeper, more existential problems, for which no one (so far) has any solutions.

Well, no good solutions. The heads of the majors have been cancelling projects and firing people, in the hope that bottom-line discipline will put them back on track for "business as usual." It hasn't worked yet, but maybe we should give it time? Or maybe there's no going back?

What would that mean, anyway? In the minds of the executives at the conglomerates that run Hollywood, "going back" would surely mean "back to 2019," when the modern superhero movie project had its apotheosis in Avengers: Endgame, a world-bestriding success that surely meant there was no end to audience lust for much, much more of the same.

But maybe "going back" would mean somehow returning to the era before every studio started pouring billions into streaming services with no plan for making a profit, and subsequently losing their fucking shirts while, at the same time, they were giving people dozens of new reasons to skip the trip to the theater?

Wouldn't going back really mean returning to the moment before Netflix destroyed the fifty year television business model that had supported an entire industry for decades? The destruction of which led inevitably to the strikes, which the media spun as somehow about "artificial intelligence," a mal-named technology years away from creating the kind of threats imagined by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. The destruction of which led directly to the panicked spending by the majors on their own streaming services, which cannibalized their own businesses and cost them billions.

From the mid-80s, Hollywood enjoyed two decades of annual record box office. The increases were uneven, but they were always in the right direction. But in the early aughts, this changed. 2005 saw the first drop in twenty years, with returns down almost 6 percent (according to Box Office Mojo). Then, the returns began to seesaw every couple years. Up a few percentage points, down a few percentage points, until the pandemic year of 2020, which saw an 81% drop. Things have trended up since then—how could they not—but 2024, if it beats 2023 (and it looks like it may not quite get there) only gets us back to annual grosses in 2005 territory, a devastating result. Imagine that: the annual returns have not been this low since 2005.

This is the bottom line, and looking at the stats, it's easy to put the blame on the pandemic, which certainly demolished consumer behavior vis-à-vis the movies. But something else was already going on.

What was going on was a different kind of business-as-usual for Hollywood. Three trends that had their roots in the 1990s flourished into the 2000s to shake the entertainment industry to its core, and two of them originated in the technology sector. No surprise there, since the rise of the personal computer and then the Internet has been the greatest cultural shift in our lifetime.

First, a new television golden age was brewing. The logic of capitalism tells us that corporations must make more and more money year over year, or they die like a shark that has stopped moving, and sink to the bottom to be stripped to the bone by opportunistic scavengers. For the movies, this meant the rise of the blockbuster in the 1970s and 80s and the gradual abandonment of mid-budget dramas for grown-ups (which became more acute as multi-national conglomerates began buying movie studios for some reason—it's always been a terrible business). Television writers saw an opportunity, and captured that adult audience, perhaps once and for all. With more mature, complex stories unfolding on the small screen, the movies (of course) doubled-down on the younger audience that wants mostly spectacle. (A smaller-scale version of this played out in the late 50s and early 60s, as well.)

Second, online digital media companies began savagely disrupting older media business models. The first salvo nearly obliterated the music business as it had been for decades, and it was forced to adapt along with the artists who had come up through that old system. The next attack was aimed at the television business, and has succeeded to date in almost entirely uprooting one of the most successful media business models in history, the ad-based, calendar-based broadcast and cable TV business. Alongside these specific disruptions, the digital online space has created new forms of media that have further cannibalized older businesses that depend on people's attention. Video games, social media and online video have diverted younger generations almost completely from taking up the TV and movie habits of their immediate forbears. Crucially, traditional Hollywood understands fuck all about technology and—still—behaves as if the new forms that dominate younger people's leisure time and attention are merely passing fads. They might now be realizing that they are very wrong about that, but it may be far too late.

Third, by the late 90s, the technical barriers-to-entry of the filmmaking profession crumbled dramatically, thanks to new consumer technologies. Digital video cameras became a viable tool for filmmakers looking to make their own work without the expense of film cameras and processing, and the difficulties of raising money for a traditional film shoot. The Dogme 95 filmmakers were among the first to insist that cheap video could be a viable medium for independents; by the start of the new century, there was an explosion of video-shot documentaries and even feature films. New software and faster computers and increased storage capacity meant that non-linear editing, which only a few years earlier was the sole domain of highly-paid studio professionals, was now available to the masses. Hollywood soon got on board the video train and, as soon as the quality improved enough, mostly abandoned celluloid film after more than 100 years. The democratizing effect of these newly accessible technologies, much like the supposed democratizing effect of the Internet that was touted so much in those days, turned out to be overly-optimistic. But the barriers have continued to crumble, nonetheless, and now almost everyone on the planet has an extremely sophisticated film studio in their pocket. Rather than remaking Hollywood, however, these 21st century creators have innovated their own spaces online, spaces in which modern youth spend far more time than they do watching movies or television shows.

And yet, as always, the rumors of Hollywood's death have been greatly exaggerated. As it always has, the movie business will reinvent itself by necessity, as it did with sound, when television came along, when the studio system collapsed (and was helped to collapse by the Paramount Decree), when home video emerged, when indie films briefly ate Hollywood's lunch in the nineties, and when the Internet pulled people in new directions. It may feel different now, the crisis may feel more existential, and there are many incredibly talented movie and TV workers who are suffering at the moment, and who will continue to suffer for a bit. Then, the wheel will turn, and a new cycle will commence.

It will not be the takeover of AI. As William Goldman said about Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything," but I think we can relax about that one. At least for another round or two.