\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWe\u2019re now in the thick of the fall movie season, but you wouldn\u2019t know it from how skimpy the box office is, or how muted the chatter. Simply put: Where have all the indie hits gone?<\/p>\n
\n\tNot so long ago, the slate of buzzy, critically acclaimed prestige movies that opened during the fall added up to something like the indie version of blockbuster season. There\u2019s a reason the movie calendar was arranged that way. Critically acclaimed films tended to open in the last part of the year because that\u2019s when they did well<\/em>. And the trend crystallized in the \u201990s, when Harvey Weinstein transformed the old awards season into the awards-industrial complex (welcome to your life, actors and directors who now have to spend five months on the road-to-the-Oscars campaign trail).<\/p>\n \n\tBut the days when a buzzy fall movie could be a box-office bonanza are starting to look like a weirdly distant memory. The flameout has been creeping up for a while, ever since the pandemic produced its unhappy paradigm shift in moviegoing (i.e., more and more folks don\u2019t like going). You could see it in the disconnect between praise and popularity that greeted such films as \u201cT\u00e1r,\u201d \u201cAnatomy of a Fall,\u201d and, last year, \u201cAnora\u201d \u2014 which crawled its way to $20 million, though that was a sobering reminder that in the indie-film world, $20 million is the new $50 million.<\/p>\n \n\tThis fall, however, it has seriously begun to look like the bottom is falling out. One high-profile, high-prestige film after another has opened to a deafening thud at the box office, and the failures are so varied that each movie tends to come with its own elaborately tailored excuse.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAfter the Hunt\u201c? People didn\u2019t want to see an anti-\u201cwoke\u201d academic thriller starring Julia Roberts as a pill of a professor. \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201c? People didn\u2019t want to see Dwayne Johnson in a serious role, looking like the Hulk\u2019s damaged cousin, in a movie that felt like a staged documentary. \u201cSpringsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere\u201d? People didn\u2019t want to see an \u201cart-house\u201d music biopic about the making of the Boss\u2019s most austere record. And \u201cChristy,\u201d which is opening to the usual so-so grosses this weekend? People were more interested in scrutinizing Sydney Sweeney\u2019s jeans commercial than they are in seeing her acclaimed performance in a gritty empowering boxing biopic.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd then there\u2019s \u201cBugonia,\u201d the most exciting movie of the bunch. It will have earned $12.5 million at the end of its second wide-release weekend \u2014\u00a0in other words, it\u2019s no \u201cPoor Things\u201d (the previous, highly successful collaboration between Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos), but just maybe it will wind up joining the $20-is-the-new-$50-million club.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhat, exactly, is going on? Is indie film dying on the vine? I think that\u2019s an overstatement, but before we get to the larger meaning of it all (and yes, there are signs of hope at the end of the rainbow), let\u2019s run through the reasons this is happening.<\/p>\n \n\tThe rise of streaming.<\/strong> Speaks for itself, at this point. People no longer need to go out to the movies because the movies are coming to them.<\/p>\n \n\tThe closing of windows.<\/strong> If it took longer for films to move from theaters to home viewing, there would be more incentive to see them. The collapse of the window has been a Hollywood catastrophe. But can the industry collectively reverse course?<\/p>\n \n\tTheaters suck. <\/strong>An overhyped factor, in my book. But we all know the litany of gripes (the floors are scuzzy, people are on their phones, the trailers last 35 minutes, and there\u2019s now less of an avid populated hum<\/em> to the whole experience).<\/p>\n \n\tTV is the new indie film.<\/strong> Quality television, and even not-so-quality television, now fills the space that indie films used to.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s part of Netflix\u2019s business plan to rob us of hits.<\/strong> I think \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d like \u201cNosferatu,\u201d would have been a major hit in movie theaters. And \u201cWake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery\u201d? A no-brainer \u2014 it\u2019s the best \u201cKnives Out\u201d movie yet. \u201cA House of Dynamite\u201d? I\u2019m not a fan, but everyone\u2019s talking about it. It should have been in theaters<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tDoes the film-festival \u201cblast-off\u201d still matter?<\/strong> This year\u2019s slate of buzzy Sundance movies, when released, has been barely visible. (Sorry, \u201cSorry, Baby,\u201d but the world hardly knew you existed.) From \u201cEleanor the Great\u201d to \u201cEddington,\u201d the 2025 Cannes films have been met with a meh response (though \u201cSentimental Value\u201d may prove a different story). Same for the Venice titles. Yet the one major prestige hit of the fall, Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s \u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d didn\u2019t even play at a festival. Is there a message here?<\/p>\n \n\tI think there\u2019s a major message nestled in all of this, but it\u2019s not about festivals, or streaming, or any of the other factors listed above. It\u2019s about the kinds of movies that people are making. It\u2019s a message that should echo through the indie-film world: If you build it, they will not <\/em>come \u2014 unless you build it the right way.<\/p>\n \n\tThere have been a small handful of daring and original movies that are hits this year, and what that adds up to is a story. A story about storytelling. Those hits are Celine Song\u2019s \u201cMaterialists,\u201d which had the audacity to be a romantic comedy about the real live current dating world; \u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d which is such an up-to-the-minute X-ray of what\u2019s happening in America that it hits you like a thunderbolt; and, I predict, \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d (opening Dec. 25), Josh Safdie\u2019s existential ping-pong thriller, starring a ferociously committed Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet \u2014 a movie that\u2019s like \u201cUncut Gems\u201d remade as a crowd-pleaser.<\/p>\n \n\tHere\u2019s the message of those films. In a world of faltering attention spans and blockbuster numbness, indie filmmakers need to start thinking more about the audience. Not in a cautious, lame, pandering way but in a bold and adventurous way. They need to meet what the marketplace is telling them. They need to start thinking like entertainers<\/em> again.<\/p>\n \n\tIt may sound like I\u2019m making a reactionary argument, or doing one of those anti-art-film polemics. But I\u2019m not. This is what Hollywood, at its greatest, has always <\/em>stood for. This is what the New Hollywood of the \u201970s stood for. This is what the \u201990s indie-film revolution, incarnated by Quentin Tarantino, stood for. This is what \u201cMaterialists\u201d and \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d and (mark my words) \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d stand for. <\/p>\n \n\tThere needs to be a place for small and highly idiosyncratic movies. No question. But if indie film is going to save itself, it\u2019s going to have to get busy remembering that movies, before they do anything else, need to lift us out of ourselves. They need to reach for danger, for beauty, for the third rail of reality, for a higher love. And they need to start doing it now.<\/p>\n \n\tThe stakes are too high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re now in the thick of the fall movie season, but you wouldn\u2019t know it from how skimpy the box office is, or how muted the chatter. Simply put: Where have all the indie hits gone? Not so long ago, the slate of buzzy, critically acclaimed prestige movies that opened during the fall added up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[102,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-32663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-hits","9":"tag-indie"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}