They Have All Our Data and Still Can't Pick a Winner

It's hard to believe that with so much content being published in streaming and at the cinema, we are still finding it difficult to watch things we all like as a family. And it's not just because of our age differences and the era we are living in. My wife, Melinda and I, born in the late 70's (don't worry she won't be reading this to care I said that), and our kids all born from 2007 to 2013, do, believe it or not, have similar tastes in film and TV. We really enjoy watching movies together and even TV streaming (it's been years since we watched free-to-air TV - the last thing I remember watching regularly was My Kitchen Rules - and that was when Pete Evans was on it, so you do the math!)

The issue is we find it difficult to find things we all agree on, are good. Some of the stuff coming out of the streamers are high budget, glossy, set-piece heavy spectacles, that seem to be either too formulaic or lacking any depth, that we have on occasion, collectively just sighed and said "I guess that was okay" and in some cases "Wow, that was a pile of shit".

So much so, that when we have dusted off the old, retro series and movies Melinda and I liked as tweens and teenagers, the kids have actually been riveted and watched them all to the very end. Series like "24", "The X Files", "Sopranos" (don't worry - the 13 year old didn't watch that), and films like "Se7en", "The Game", "Cape Fear", "Dead Calm", "Mad Max" - the kids actually went "Wow, these are awesome".

Even at the cinema recently, we have gone to watch a mix of blockbusters and low budget surprises and with mixed results.

Can Spielberg beat unknowns?

The first film of the year I believe to really make a splash when it comes to budget vs box office return was "Iron Lung"...

If you don't know it, it's a horror film made by the YouTuber Markiplier - tens of millions of subscribers - who financed it, wrote it, directed it and starred in it, then rallied his audience to fill cinemas. No critic screenings, no studio machine, just a bloke with a following and a video game adaptation. Made for under $3 million, it pulled close to $50 million worldwide. On paper, a triumph.

Here's the thing though. Was it any good? Audiences scored it around 89%, but critics (like me) landed at 44%, and the common gripe was that it's a short film stretched to breaking point - slow, repetitive, a decent idea that ran out of road long before the two-hour mark. And I'd say both numbers are telling the truth. A devoted fanbase turned up because it was a Markiplier event, not necessarily because it was a great film. Millions of followers and a tidy box office return don't automatically add up to something you'd shove in a mate's hands and say "you have to watch this". For us, my two sons and I, we all hated this film. With a passion. Whilst I respect the audience-building of Markiplier (both my sons knew who he was) and amazing production quality (the set, lighting, acting, sound design, special effects were all top notch), it was missing a plot. Yep, story still matters. But you made $50mill so who am I to judge if that’s the goal?

Now, before you write off the whole YouTube-to-cinema thing (because I nearly did), two other films this year proved the opposite. "Obsession", the debut from another YouTuber, Curry Barker, was made for around $750,000 and shot in 20 days. Focus Features bought it for about $15 million and it's gone on to make over $200 million worldwide, sitting at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes with an A- from audiences. I haven’t seen this yet, but my eldest son, Ollie said it was “Awesome and you should go see it, dad” and another mate said “10 out of 10”. It posted the biggest fourth weekend any horror film has ever had, beating a record "The Blair Witch Project" set back in 1999. Then there's "Backrooms", directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons off the back of his viral web series. A24 made it for about $10 million and it opened to $81 million - the biggest opening in the studio's history, and it made Parsons the youngest director ever to land a number one film. It divided us as a family - some of us thought it was decent but not great, some that it was fun, and others hated it with a capital H.

So it's not the budget. And it's not whether you came from YouTube. It's whether the thing is actually good (and good in your eyes).

Could this be code for "No Eye Deer"?

Which brings me to the other end of the scale. In the middle of all this, Steven Spielberg released "Disclosure Day". Spielberg directing, David Koepp writing, John Williams scoring, Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor starring, a reported $115 million budget with another $80 million on marketing. That's about as much talent and money as you can pour into one film. When we walked into our cinema on Opening Night, there were 28 people in the cinema that had 300 seats. Compare that to when we went to “Backrooms” and we had to book ahead online because the 7pm session was literally sold out! The reviews were good, to be fair - 82%. But it opened to $44 million, under what a film that size needs, and the trades spent the weekend casting it as the old master chasing the Gen Z hits already running the summer. The most commercially successful director alive, playing catch-up to a couple of twenty-somethings who made horror films for pocket change.

And to be fair, it was an average film at best. Again, set pieces were masterfully shot, with some scenes catching me looking to my friend who shouted us the tickets and saying to him in hushed tones “how did he do that?”

(I’m referring to a scene where Spielberg follows O’Connor’s character from behind, then passes through a solid fence several times, all in one shot before having him hop into a car and take off on one of the film’s many chase sequences. My feeling is it was shot in a studio with certain elements added in post or combined with a mix of studio filming and on-location trickery - either way it was awesome to watch, and also at one of the weakest plausibility points in the film. The guy sneaks into a “Fed” car, with maybe 50 “Feds” not being able to see him in plain sight. )

This is a tricky one too, because Disclosure Day has in a way amassed a following of its own too:

1.      Spielberg fans who won’t miss a film of his

2.      The actual UAP hype at the moment in real life.

Even with these two elements which will explain the box office being forgivable for the budget, the story is a bit lame. (In my opinion only.) And some scenes were outright laughable which increase as the film stretches to its rather predictable and less than climactic finale. (Again - my opinion - I know I may be in the minority there.)

Then there's "The Electric State". The Russo brothers - the "Avengers: Endgame" guys - with Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt out front, and a reported $320 million budget that makes it the most expensive film Netflix has ever made. The critics gave it 15%. Fifteen. For all that money, they made something most people had forgotten by the next weekend.

And this is the part that does my head in. These are the companies with more data on us than anyone in history. They know what we watch, when we pause, when we bail. Patrick H. Willems made a cracking video this year (go and watch it) on why streaming blockbusters are so consistently forgettable, and one detail stuck with me - a director said Apple knocked back a stylish opening sequence because their data showed viewers switch off if nothing happens in the first 30 seconds. They're using the data to sand the interesting bits off. And yet their actual breakout, "KPop Demon Hunters", now Netflix's most-watched film ever, was a film they barely pushed and eventually had to drag into cinemas because audiences demanded it.

They have all the information. They still can't pick what we'll love.

Which is why the story that's stuck with me most this year came out of Melbourne, not Hollywood. "The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act", from Glitch Productions, opened here averaging $9,740 a screen in its first week and out-earned "Masters of the Universe" per screen in the very same cinemas. No giant marketing spend. Just an audience they'd been quietly building since 2023. (Kate Separovich tracks this stuff every week in her "Australia In Cinemas" substack newsletter and the numbers don't lie. Please subscribe to her Substack for weekly research. It's where I found out about "The Amazing Digital Circus" figures above.)

That's the bit Hollywood keeps missing. You don't buy an audience at release. You earn one over years. And once it's yours, it turns up - for you, not for whatever the algorithm served up that night.

That’s the point of the platform I’m looking to build with collaborators from the Australian Film Industry - a platform that puts audience first. One of those filmmakers, Pirie Martin, and I are producing a podcast which comes out in late August, and I’ll have more details about how you can follow our journey as we build in public, soon.

However, it poses the same question for us too. If we want to build audience first, how do we ensure our screen content doesn’t become Iron Lung? How do we know objective quality vs subjective quality? And the big one, that I will discuss in a future blog – how do we find the capital to make any of it possible?