Ben Affleck told us what he thinks about the future of the movie industry after the COVID pandemic.
Since the industry has drowned in the uncertainty, a lot of titles have skipped releasing into the cinemas and streaming straight onto the digital services.
Affleck believes that this can set the trend for small budget dramas since people watch them more online than in cinemas.
Here’s what Affleck told to the Entertainment Weekly: “I don’t know what will be the reality post-COVID. Who knows what the theatrical business will be like. What I think has happened is that people have grown accustomed during this time to watch from home.”
Affleck continues by saying, “It benefited The Way Back, for sure (Affleck’s recent sports drama made just $14 million in its two weeks in cinemas before the pandemic pushed it to stream service VOD).
It had just come out so I think the ability to see a new movie at home enabled us to get many more viewers than would have come out to a theatre to pay money to see a sad movie about an alcoholic dealing with the death of his child.”
Affleck believes that, “People have now been acculturated to streaming and watching movies at home in ways they weren’t before, which probably accelerated a trend that was already taking place.”
Being an actor along with a filmmaker Affleck believes in mixing things up. While playing the role of Batman in DC Universe, he grew passionate about being a director. He said, “I think after COVID movies like The Town, movies like Argo, all the movies I made would effectively end up on streamers.
There will probably be like 20 to 25 movies a year that are distributed and they’ll all be big IP movies, whether it’s the type of movies that Disney makes like Aladdin or Star Wars or Avengers, something where you can count on the low-end being half a billion dollars worth of business.”
He further added, “I think it’s going to be very, very difficult for dramas and sort of mid-budget movies like The Town to get theatrical distribution. You’ll either see massive, massive movies getting huge wide-scale distribution or small movies doing little prestige releases in a few theatres but mostly being shown on streamers.
I think that’s for better or worse, and you can draw your own conclusions, but that would be my best guess about the direction of the movie business just based on what I’m seeing now and the experiences I’m having trying to get stuff made.”
