I don't know why you think things will change. I know it happened in the 60s and 70s, when people and not corporations ran studios.

However, with a hardline stance about spending or experimenting with new projects I don't see any end in sight.

From a fiscal standpoint their MO makes complete sense as pre-branded entertainment does minimize risk. Until corporations change the way they deal with creative properties, why would it ever change -- especially when the current process is successfully creating megablockbusters. (Inception and Avatar not withstanding.)

I think it's important to note that corporations are not interested in the satisfaction of the consumer as long as they continue to spend money on the product -- for the most part. ANNND... people are still going to see these terrible movies in droves. Why would corporations change something that's working?

Corporations hear through their wallets. If you want a corporation to change policy... people have to stop buying their crap...which will never happen. Why? Because people are lemmings. They don't care, for the most part, what's on the screen as long as it gets them out of the house on Friday night.

As an insider to the process and outside of it happening previously, what other evidence do you have to support that things will change in Hollywood?

@The Grinder: One need only look at the five movies nominated for this year's Best Director Academy Award: “The King's Speech,” “The Social Network,” “The Fighter,” “True Grit” and “Black Swan”. None of them expensive, all of them dramas that at least in part targeted adult audiences, and each of them has made more than $85M at the box office. In other words, they're all going to be profitable, in some cases hugely so.

Perhaps it's a fluke that we got all these good movies that resonated with large audiences, including adults, at the same time. But if you go here, you'll see a post I had from April 2009 where some were suggesting the death of adult dramas. And now here we are not even 2 years later with this confluence of really strong movies that found an audience.

So apart from the cyclical nature of Hwood, why do I think things might change? Because if the studios see evidence there's money in a certain market segment, they'll go after it. And here we have five films that are, for lack of a better term, aimed at more 'serious-minded' moviegoers.

And lest we forget, each of these five films' directors is now positioned to do even riskier fare based upon the success of their most recent movies.

Finally by most accounts, the recent Sundance Film Festival was a successful one as compared to the last few in terms of movies getting distribution deals, so we have some positive energy in the specialty world, too.

So I will choose to be confident things will get better. And then they'll get worse... then better... then...

I think there is a little discussed issue at play here and that is truly knowing your audience; who you’re pitching to and who will see the finished product.

An executive’s main goal is to make money. The more risk he takes, the less likely he’ll make money. If he doesn’t make money, he’s out of a job. Conversely, if the risk pays off, he stands to make more money than expected and that will propel his career forward to a level where he no longer has to worry about risk – risk can be pawned off on a subordinate (harsh, but true).

In your pitch you must be aware that no matter how much of a history geek you and the executive are because you’re both in a weekend reenactment society, if he can’t see the dollar signs; he’s not going to buy. But if you can identify a broad audience for your script, and you can show a logical reason for your belief that the film will make money, you are way ahead of the curve.

If someone came in with an idea for a super hero movie about an avenger who calls himself Batman, but no one had ever seen a comic book about super heroes because the concept just didn’t exist, how would you sell the third highest grossing movie to be? You would need some sort of data to back up your belief that this idea was great – maybe an informal survey of (a lot of) people on the street or proof that a similar idea worked in Japan or data about past movie trends under similar economic conditions, something to give the executive some confidence that this would sell.

Inception may have been a favor to get Nolan to direct Batman 3, but who ever bought the initial pitch bought it for that reason, not because there was some data to indicate that summer movie audiences are smart and curious about things like controlling your dreams (and if he did use that aspect in the pitch, it was ignored). As a result, in order to save face the studio (and more particularly the executive) needed to play down any hope of success (the first rumor). By telling the story that way, the exec and the studio would be protected if the film flopped. The screening rumor most likely came from critics and other studio execs who didn’t want to believe the idea could work. And I’ll bet the third and fourth rumors circulating around the opening weekend came almost exclusively from other studio executives, possibly even some within the same studio, who were simply jealous.

The same concept is true if you’re trying to raise money for your independent production. If your investors can’t see the possibility of a return for their risk, you’d better hope their goal is to have a tax loss, because otherwise they won’t invest in your picture unless they owe you a big favor or encouraged you from the get go and now feel backed into a corner.

You never need to present the risk/reward picture, but you’d better be prepared to do it if you ever hope to see your film produced.

It's the same as it ever was. Bad movies have been around since its inception (heh), but with the Internet, we are just more aware.

The author is right about the audience (us) being held responsible for what's on screen. To cut down on costs, I usually try to see matinees or go to screenings (one of the many advantages of living in NYC).

I don't think things will ever fully bounce back. Technology, tastes, and attention spans have changed too much since the Hollywood renaissance of the 70s film school generation. There's too much clutter out there (I remember a factoid from a college mass persuasion class that said the average American gets hit with 3,000 persuasive messages a day. A day! And that was before smart phones and texting and web 2.0.) Too much competition for our attention. I think people, when given the choice, are going to want to watch things in on-demand format more and more often and forgo the communal theater going experience - which is a shame - because I really love sitting in the dark with strangers and having a shared emotional experience delivered via a huge screen and state-of-the-art sound. But a lot of people are happy watching on a teeny, tiny screen and listening to earbuds.

I had a teacher say recently that the film industry didn't want to make the same mistakes the music industry had, so distributors were in a "holding pattern", like planes circling an airport. When the planes land, I think they'll find people opting out of the theater more and more, which will mean smaller gross profits.

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