Joseph E. Levine was the movie producer who basically invented the "wide release." As he pointed out 50-plus years ago to screenwriter William Goldman (who recounts this in his book "Adventures in the Screen Trade"), he did it with his first movie "Hercules": "I knew it wasn't very good and the critics were going to hate it, so I got all the money I could out of it that first weekend." That was the original reason for the wide release: to salvage what could be pulled out of what the makers knew was a failure.
The platformed release was designed to maximize the best movie advertising there is: word of mouth, so that a complex, interesting movie, would attract the audience that would "get it\.
Given that those now running Hollywood, and the corporate drones who work for them, wouldn't know any of the rules of Hollywood that worked for nearly a century (until the arrival of these idiots, who I have long called the intergalactic widgetmakers) if they tripped over them, it's unsurprising that they don't know up from down when it comes to marketing. One size doesn't fit all, you fucking incompetent morons.
Of course, the fact they're marketing "content" instead of "movies" doesn't make their job any easier, even if they did know what they were doing.
Joseph E. Levine was the movie producer who basically invented the "wide release." As he pointed out 50-plus years ago to screenwriter William Goldman (who recounts this in his book "Adventures in the Screen Trade"), he did it with his first movie "Hercules": "I knew it wasn't very good and the critics were going to hate it, so I got all the money I could out of it that first weekend." That was the original reason for the wide release: to salvage what could be pulled out of what the makers knew was a failure.
The platformed release was designed to maximize the best movie advertising there is: word of mouth, so that a complex, interesting movie, would attract the audience that would "get it\.
Given that those now running Hollywood, and the corporate drones who work for them, wouldn't know any of the rules of Hollywood that worked for nearly a century (until the arrival of these idiots, who I have long called the intergalactic widgetmakers) if they tripped over them, it's unsurprising that they don't know up from down when it comes to marketing. One size doesn't fit all, you fucking incompetent morons.
Of course, the fact they're marketing "content" instead of "movies" doesn't make their job any easier, even if they did know what they were doing.