Amazon CEO to Amazon Studios: "WTF?"

There's a bit to unpack with this announcement, but the basics are this - studios have begun thinking that spending $100 million plus is a normal, rational, way to make movies and shows.

A normal moovie or show now uses a huge number of crew and pre-pro people, even more post production CG artists. As in THOUSANDS of total people.

Contrast that with one Stanley Kubrick, who made A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE SHINNING and FULL METAL JACKET with a crew of 16 people and you begin to see that Hollywood has substituted talent with throwing money at the wall.

Let me repeat that - 16 people on his crew to make 3 movies which are among the most famous ever made.

John Carpenter had an even smaller crew for most his movies. My own movies normally have a crew of 4, including myself.

Some of the most creative, beloved and re-watched movies of all time are also the cheapest - NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and its sequels, anything from Hammer or Roger Corman, almost anything the studio system made from the '30's through the '80's - all vastly proportionally lower budgets for films that people liked just fine.

And if they didn't like the movie - something every movie has the risk of - it didn't bankrupt the studio, which is something else that seems to have escaped CEOs thinking.

But of course the other massive part of the problem is that most of the movies and shows which this mountain of money has been spent on is either pure shit, or merely "meh." And when you spend $300,000,000.00 you probably want something better than "meh."

And that's nearly everything Hollywood's put out since the last AVENGERS movie (and arguably including it). All Disney movies, nearly every super hero movie, most action movies - just movie after movie that not only aren't worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but not worth a bag of trash.

As an example, the LORD OF THE RINGS series was OK, but simply put it did not need to be made. No one was clamoring for it. It was not based on multi-million selling book by Tolekien but rather his characters. Despite that, if you did still feel compelled to make it, either Peter Jackson has agreed to make it for you, or you it's over before you spend a penny. Hard stop. The end. That simply, inescapable, logic totally absent from the the decision making process.

Couple that with an ever growing number of people who simply would rather watch shorts on youtube or tiktok then watch even a good movie or show, and the problem will only get worse. Throw in self-censorship (which has essentially stopped any comedy movie from being made), and/or a desire to censor others, and it's a toxic mix of stupid.