My 'Blair Witch' Star Q&A; Zaslav, Ari & CEO Paycheck Shock

I speak with the original found footage star about being rebooted without consent

THAT WAS THEN One of the Blair Witch Project marketing “artifacts” was a missing poster featuring the three original actors who starred in the film, (from left) Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams. (William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)

Welcome to the Jamboree, my weekly series of quick(ish) takes on the industry’s passing parade.

What’s the Deal with This Dying Movie Business?

Jerry Seinfeld, along the way of promoting his directorial film debut, got some headlines this week with his declaration that “Movies are over.”

For me, his comments aren’t interesting for any special insight into the state of the film industry — a wing of the industry he’s never been a part of — as much as they are reflective of a certain conventional wisdom in establishment Hollywood circles, where one hears that defeatism about the future of film quite a bit.

Frankly, it’s not just chatter. I don’t believe that film is doomed, but I do believe a lot of studio execs are behaving like they believe it is. If you take the collective decisions of studios over the past few years, look at them on their own and ask: Do these look like the actions of people who are looking to build up film or retreat from it? That question pretty much answers itself. Are they treating film like a thriving, healthy, vibrant ecosystem, or are they tiptoeing around it like they are afraid of waking up the patient on life support?

Seinfeld might not know the film industry, but he keeps tabs on comedy, and it probably hasn’t escaped his notice that he’s not heading down to the multiplex much to see many studio comedies — outside of some rare mega-budget tentpoles like Barbie and The Fall Guy. (And any superstar standup peers like Adam Sandler or Kevin Hart are mostly making Netflix movies — like him.) It’s not his imagination that the film world has closed up shop on the half of the spectrum he’s from.

But the studios have made some moves back from the depths of the abyss, and the signs at CinemaCon, as far as they went, were more positive than negative. But the problem is — they didn’t go far enough. Not nearly, not yet.

The problem with conventional wisdom is it takes on a life of its own, and it can guide the mindsets of people who make the actual decisions, particularly in a herdlike business like ours. Audiences may or may not have given up on moviegoing, but what business can survive its own leadership deciding that it’s over?