The Death of Dramatic Films: Hollywood Fades into Emotional Flatline
Are we really okay with just white men making action comedies?
Over the last two weeks, I’ve written about significant steps backward in the film industry regarding the opportunities available to female and non-white directors in the studio system.
My focus this week is ostensibly a bit more esoteric than the last two, but it’s all of a piece, coming from the same place, with the problems feeding on each other. It’s about Hollywood closing the aperture on storytelling in so many ways — from who tells the stories to the types of stories we tell — and our field of play getting steadily narrower, which is sort of the opposite of what you generally strive for in a creative profession.
We’ve talked at length, repeatedly, about the death of big-screen comedy, and here and there, we’ve touched on the death of big-screen drama. Both, it was said, had migrated from the big screen to the small. The flight of comedy has been much discussed, not only for its senselessness but for the hole it leaves in the traditional cinematic diet, and the ensuing box office returns. (The highest-grossing comedy this year, using a broad definition, is Freakier Friday, with $94 million in North American ticket sales, good for 18th place overall. After that, The Naked Gun is next with almost $53 million in 31st place.)
The flight of drama to the small screen is less discussed because, first of all, it has been a long time since drama was a box office heavyweight category. You have to go back at least to the early 1980s, to the era of 1981’s On Golden Pond (no. 2 for the year) and 1983’s Terms of Endearment (also no. 2 for the year), to get to the last moment when dramas consistently ranked anywhere near the top of the charts. (In 1988, Rain Man was the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America, arguably the last time a traditional, no-frills drama has topped the charts, though your mileage may vary on films like 1994’s Forrest Gump, 1997’s Titanic and 1998’s Saving Private Ryan.) Since then, there have been freak breakouts like 2023’s Oppenheimer ($330 million in North America, no. 5 for the year) and 2012’s Lincoln ($182 million, no. 13 for the year), but the genre steadily migrated to the indie ghetto and the prestige quarter, long before the dawn of Netflix.
It was drama’s relatively limited role in the big-screen story that made the genre an easy target for streamers to scoop up and make their own, allowing those movies to fuel their rise with a steady drumbeat of awards and nominations.
If there was less harrumphing about drama’s migration than about comedy, it’s that the departure to home viewing came with the sad, resigned sense that maybe it was for the best — that things weren’t working out here, and maybe poor old drama would be more comfortable someplace else.
Well, a funny thing happened while we weren’t looking. Drama, to a great extent, did indeed migrate from Hollywood’s main stage to its indie corners and then out of theaters entirely, onto VOD.
Out of sight, out of mind.
But that wasn’t the end of drama’s sad voyage. Sometime in the last few years, their new foster parents decided they didn’t want this layabout either and sent drama packing.
And suddenly, Hollywood isn’t making dramatic films anymore, which should be a cause for concern. A little more than a canary in the coal mine. I mean, we’ve lost comedy and drama — both halves of the spectrum — and kept the mushy undefined in between. That can’t be good, can it?
So before we get into the whys and wherefores, let us stare into the void of the numbers.
The Grim Numbers
In this year’s box office so far, here in early November, you have four films that could be classified as “dramas” that have grossed more than $20 million.
Note that number there — that’s not four films that have topped $100 million or $50 million. That’s all of three that have done more than $20 million domestic.
Those films are: