Look How They Massacred My Boy
Or, The Death of Cinema
The Dale Theater—now long gone—sat fifteen minutes by bus from the Bronx apartment I grew up in. Throughout the 1990s, my best friend, also Jason, and me would hit the Dale regularly. This was a pre-multiplex house; two screens, small rooms, upright seats. Still, as Third Places went, the Dale looms large. We caught Heat there, Michael Mann’s hugely influential 1995 crime epic. The sound system was probably shit, but in my mind the gunshots from the bank heist shootout made my chest thump. Me and Jason walked out of that movie absolutely rocked. We talked about it on the bus ride home, and for days after. It was a shared experience I hope I’ll never forget. One of many I had at small theaters in the Bronx and Yonkers and White Plains.
And now it’s all over.
Heat made $63 million in its initial domestic run, from no more than 1,700 screens at its widest release. Adjusted for inflation, this three-hour, original, R-rated adult drama pulled in $128 million dollars. In the US. For comparison, Longlegs, Oz Perkins’s excellent serial killer chiller made $74 million domestically from 2,800 screens—and was considered a huge hit. I reference Longlegs because it’s the highest-earning original screenplay from 2024—and ranks 28th in box office take (It Ends With Us is based on a Colleen Hoover novel). Every film above it is a sequel or a reboot. Thirty years, more screens, less money. Cinema is dying, and we swung the axe.
Over the weekend of March 14-16, 2025, theaters pulled in $45 million—total. No single movie earned more than $9 million. Novocaine, Mickey 17, Black Bag, Last Breath; all original movies (Mickey 17 is based on a novel) and every one struck out. Warner Brothers gave Bong Joon-Ho a $120 million budget to make Mickey 17. Steven Soderbergh got $60 million from Focus Features (Universal) to produce Black Bag. Novocaine premiered on 3,300 screens, double Heat’s, and made $8.8 million. As of this writing it sits at $14 mil. We can debate the quality of these films (Mickey 17 is a tonally discordant, unfunny, leaden mess; Last Breath is a tight-but-unsurprising survival story; Black Bag is a genius screenplay, impeccably shot and acted) but the fact remains that most people go to movies only when they’re marketed as events. See any Marvel movie before Endgame, or the Barbenheimer phenomenon. I’ll even throw Wicked in here. As an only child who spent many afternoons in darkened theaters, this shift guts me.
Before I go any further, I know I sound like the Old Guy Yelling At Clouds. Every generation complains about the ones that come after, and new media always kneecaps what came before, you say. Radio killed novels (nope, books still sell). TV killed radio (when it comes to audio dramas, true; but witness podcasts’ rise). Home video killed movie theaters (wrong again). Streaming has destroyed movies as an art form (absolutely, check Matt Damon explaining how the death of DVDs killed the industry on Hot Ones). But the real challenge for legacy studios comes from video games and the rise of user-made content—YouTube—and social media. The dopamine rush from short-form video has destroyed attention spans. Millie Bobby Brown, star of the Russo Brothers-directed, Netflix-produced, $320 million dystopian, incomprehensible clusterfuck The Electric State, recently told The Sun she doesn’t watch movies because she can’t sit and stare at a screen that long. Brown is, ostensibly, a modern movie star. Rose to fame in Stranger Things. 63 million people follow her on Instagram. She’s headlined four Netflix films. But watching a two-hour movie is beyond her. I mean, if the people making streaming content can’t be bothered watching, why should we?
This year’s Academy Awards honored some great movies. I loved Sean Baker’s Anora, really dug Conclave’s throwback political thriller vibe, had a blast watching Coralie Fargeat’s no-shits-given The Substance, and drove two hours to a screening of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist in 70mm—as the Lord intended. Even RaMell Ross’s formally-challenging Nickel Boys hit me in the emotional kidneys. But are they at the center of the culture? That’s a hard no. Combined, these movies have made $89.2 million domestically. Remember, Heat pulled in $128 mil, inflation-adjusted. Now, they will doubtlessly draw more eyes via at-home rentals (PVOD) and streaming (SVOD), but, like Sean Baker, I think we lose an intrinsic piece of the movie-going experience when we’re all in our homes, watching separately, as opposed to being in a shared space, engaging in a communal experience. The pandemic and studios’ responses to it taught viewers to expect to see first-run films on their sofas.
In response to Covid Universal established a 17-day theatrical window. That means its movies are available for PVOD rental ($19.99) less than three weeks after they hit theaters. So, people wait. And I get why; the costs add up. My wife and I don’t have kids, and we have a Regal multiplex three minutes from our house. Free parking, no babysitters, and we can go whenever we want, as we both work for ourselves. But this change is titanic. The theatrical/DVD/syndication release pipeline produced incredible movies and made their creators a lot of money. Now Netflix pays “cost plus” to producers and eliminates back end payments. Every writer and director and actor and craftsperson wants to make good work. But when you’re getting paid the same regardless of how many people see your movie—a figure producers probably won’t ever learn—are you really going to put in the extra effort? For every Rebel Ridge and Carry-On, two very good Netflix movies that feel like modern versions of 90s thrillers, there are countless projects that hit the service and make no cultural waves. Streaming has made movies ephemeral.
I’ve written before about seeing Die Hard with my grandfather in Loews Paradise on the Grand Concourse. That old theater went up in the 1930s, had ornate gold ceilings and floor-to-ceiling red velvet drapes. Felt like Radio City Music Hall’s not-so-distant cousin. The place possessed a sense of class our modern (dying) mall multiplexes can’t touch. Seeing a movie there was an event. I met friends there. I made friends there. Movies dragged this shy, only child with bad teeth off his bed and out of his apartment and into the world. Then Silicon Valley muscled its way into Hollywood, and convinced us all to stay at home. Forever.
Filmmakers believe theatrical releases remain a core element of movies. Check Sean Baker’s Best Director acceptance speech at this year’s Oscars. And though I feel the patient slipping away, I still love movies. I see three or four a month—in theaters—and drive into Boston for rep screenings. I love settling in with my M&Ms and root beer. Hell, I can even handle the 23 minutes of ads Regal runs before every showing. But those dark rooms are filled now with empty seats. And I can’t help but think back to Jason and me sharing a giant tub of popcorn in a crowded theater, nobody on their phones, no whispered conversations, all us drawn into the same story. All of us spending three hours watching men in suits shoot the ever-loving shit out of Los Angeles. All of us walking back out into the light together.