Right now, the system is unwinding. The contracts are broken. The old kings—Netflix, Disney, the studio system—are bleeding. And in the chaos, the weird stuff is getting through. A documentary about a paedophile janitor ( The Curious Case of... ) becomes the most watched thing on the planet. A two-hour black-and-white courtroom drama ( Anatomy of a Fall ) wins an Oscar.
In 2023 and 2024, the box office was a tale of two cities. On one hand, you had Barbie and Oppenheimer . "Barbenheimer" was a once-in-a-generation cultural collision—a piece of intellectual property (IP) about a plastic doll directed with arthouse flair, paired with a three-hour biopic about a physicist. Both were original-ish, director-driven, and wildly successful. a27hopsonxxx
Prediction three: The next phase of streaming isn't ad-free or ad-supported. It is you -supported. Spotify’s AI DJ is the prototype. Your Netflix feed will soon be unique to you, assembled by an AI that knows your mood better than your spouse. It will generate a playlist of clips from The Office , a scene from an obscure K-drama, and a recap of the baseball game, all in a seamless scroll. It won't be television. It will be a mirror. The Takeaway We are tired. We are overwhelmed. We have 40,000 hours of new "content" produced every single day, and we are using that bounty to rewatch The Office for the fifth time. Right now, the system is unwinding
But the industry is adapting. The new buzzword is not "content" but "event." Netflix proved the model with Squid Game ; Disney revived it with The Mandalorian ; and now, everyone is chasing the watercooler moment. Shows are no longer dropped all at once. They are being serialized weekly again, not out of nostalgia, but out of desperation. They want you to talk about the show. They want the memes. They want the discourse. Speaking of discourse: we are living through a revolution in who gets to tell stories. And in the chaos, the weird stuff is getting through