I watch a movie every day. As a screenwriter, I'm watching stuff that's in the genre I'm working on to inspire me, and as a human being, I'm watching stuff to be entertained.

Some days, it feels like my entire life is movies, and I love that.

But what would I do if movies just went away?

I ran across this tweet from esteemed film writer Kyle Buchanan about how the two-hour movie could be a thing of the past soon.

It really freaked me out.

This perfect, standardized format is quickly becoming a relic, and as the tweet states, it's an endangered species because the war between theatrical cinema and streaming content is over. And streaming won.

Let's dive in.

Streaming Seems to Have Won the War

With Netflix buying Warner Bros, it feels like we've now seen streaming win the war against theatrical.

Now look, I have tickets to see two movies this weekend, and I don't want to be irrational, but I don't want this stuff to go away. But the way things are going, it feels like movie theaters may just be for big events.

It's just so much easier for most people to sit on their couch and get their entertainment on demand. And cheaper, too!

An event that justifies the cost of tickets, babysitters, and a giant tub of popcorn.

But now that streamers have seemingly won, they want the events to be on their platforms, not in theaters.

Streaming platforms thrive on run time. They want you on the app for as long as possible. A six-episode, six-hour limited series is six times more engaging to their algorithm than a two-hour film. They've trained the audience to expect, and even prefer, the slow-burn character development and expanded plot that a limited series offers.

That means the two-hour movie is now too big to be a tight, punchy experiment, but too small to be a sprawling, multi-part event. It’s the format that is most easily skipped in favor of either the theatrical behemoth or the long-form prestige series.

So will anyone greenlight movies when it's all streaming?

The Future of "The Movie"

I won't lie, that tweet and this idea kept me up all night. I love movies so much, but I can't argue with the logic of why streamers may not. The only hope we really have is that these streamers have nostalgia for this format or at least see some way to monetize it.
Movies would be cheaper than series. So you could make a lot of them to keep people on platforms. And we've seen with KPop Demon Hunters, they're good things to take shots on to see if they can drive people to your platform.
But series can do all that now, too.
Here's the thing: there's something so special about a movie. Those two hours you're locked into one story, going up and down with the beats, watching something contained and immediate.
They're hard to write, hard to make great, hard to market, but when they hit, they hit all your emotions and become a communal experience you get to share with others in a theater.
I don't want that to go away.

Summing It All Up

It does feel like the concerted effort to make more content has resulted in a lot more limited series on apps and streamers. I don't want to live in a world where screenwriters won't be writing movies.

I want stories to hit the big screen and be shared. Even if you watch them at home, I want them to last two hours and leave you enough time to talk about them with the people you love.

But I am also preparing myself for a world where that doesn't happen as much.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

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