>A Pyrrhic victory is a win that costs so much to achieve that it brings no real gain or is equal to a loss. The phrase comes from King Pyrrhus of Epirus. After he beat the Romans in 279 BC, he said "Another such victory and we are lost"I think the past twenty or so years of Hollywood will be remembered as a succession of Pyrrhic victories. The advent of streaming services promised convenience and immediate access to entertainment but ultimately destroyed the monoculture and the home video market. Every blockbuster that grosses a billion dollars costs half as much to produce and market and conditions young audiences to expect as much from all movies. AI emerged and was seen by executives as a way to cut creative talent and reduce costs but the long term consequences will be dire. The convergence of the tech world with the entertainment industry meant more focus on attaining the biggest return on investment, adherence to data-driven decisions for what kind of movies to make, and treating studio mergers as an inevitability. The success of Obsession and the Backrooms led to studios looking for similar IP to produce into movies when the lesson should have been that those projects were largely self-funded. It’s not that people like creepy internet memes, they like original stories and you’ve been gate keeping the access to make them. Ultimately, if these trends continue there will be one movie and tv studio owned by a tech giant and what it produces will be limited to what its owners deem acceptable.
They're making video game movies now because they've burned every other bridge.
