All this deal making drama, thats been going in media for a while now hides the fact that Content Supply has vastly overshot Demand to levels that make no sense in any other industry. Cost of tools/production/distribution have all massively dropped over the last 2 decades.
Needs a more sustainable story or oscillations and chaos are going to keep increasing.
I would drown myself in content if it were good and abundant. It's not. It's lackluster and middling.
Content is scarce because it is expensive to produce. The wrong people get put in charge of projects (or tastes/reception is hard to gauge, and experiences hard to engineer). We wind up with a lot of expensive garbage.
There is a dearth of sci fi and fantasy. A few dozen titles get created, and half of it is garbage. I have money to pay to watch something every night. It just doesn't exist and isn't good.
I'd pay to watch original content. Original ideas don't get funded because it's "too risky". Which is a consequence of the big budgets, massive personnel and time investments, etc.
I see a film every other year or so where I'm not questioning the character arcs, the pacing. Where I'm fully enveloped and transfixed. That doesn't happen frequently enough. Where every note is perfect. It's rare and fleeting, and that's sad.
We're in the Precambrian times. Great content is nigh non-existent. There's a whole lot of "acceptable" and "good enough". But rarely anything sublime that steals away your brain for the rest of the day, forcing you to ruminate.
I want to live in a world where content fits my preferences like a glove and is constantly surprising and delighting me. Unlimited intellectual stimulation and adventure. I know that pinnacle can be reached eventually, just not with our current limitations. This scarcity trough.
I agree with the glove fit bit, while at the same time thinking that we're at the next level of siloed bubbles. All aspects of your world, tailored to how you already think, including TV series/movies/etc.
No new ideas.
(Not saying this is your intent, and yes I do indeed watch what I like. I am not immune to the very thing I worry about)
Don't get me wrong - I might have poorly communicated my intent.
I want to be catered to and subverted. I want to see things I'm comfortable with and things that make me question everything I know. Things that make me deeply uncomfortable. The full range of experiences.
I just want it to be great and hit the notes in ways that leave me in awe.
This does happen with current media, but it's exceedingly rare. It's a combination of great writing, fantastic direction, unusual stories, phenomenal acting. The mood, set dec and DP, the pacing and editing. Everything lining up in a stroke of brilliance.
And what's funny is that when it happens, people tend to disagree or have differing opinions about it. It's deeply personal.
I agree. And I don't think you communicated it poorly, it's just that I think it will be more and more difficult to get that full range. Most folk don't want that. Most even prefer siloed.
Yet perhaps I am too jaded on this. There will be lots of niche content...
If the poster just wants sci fi (and especially if that doesn’t include sci fi horror without space ships) I could see them only getting one or two good movies per year.
Me, I’d need two or three more lifetimes to get through my probably-good list of movies and tv, just for single watches… but I’m up for just about any genre.
And there will be more of it. Really of what value is HBO, if generative AI and video generation get better, and better, and better.
In 5 years, compute to AI generate video will be super cheap, both through algo being added to silicon for (C|G|T)PUs, and just general increase in compute. Every day, you'll likely see 1000s of TV series, movies, and shorts added to youtube, all with more complex, intriguing stories than the bottom 1/2 of HBO's mix. And the effects will pass or be on par.
I think this will do for movies and TV series, what the internet did to newspapers and magazines. There's really nothing left there, all the deep talent and investigation is pretty much gone.
There will probably be some real gems come out of this. Yet how will you actually find it, through all the "look at mine!" astroturfing and its kin on every site you visit?
Needs a more sustainable story or oscillations and chaos are going to keep increasing.