Steven Spielberg has been a vocal critic of the current Hollywood system. The prolific director is worried about the skyrocketing budgets that come with making a modern blockbuster film.
He recently ruffled some feathers when he said that superhero films may soon fade into obscurity the same way Westerns did decades ago.
His most talked about statement, however, came more than two years ago when he told students at the University of Southern California about an ominous future:
"There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground." He also said that a studio "would rather invest $250 million in one film for a real shot at the brass ring than make a whole bunch of really interesting, deeply personal - and even maybe historical - projects that may get lost in the shuffle.
On a recent press tour to promote his new film, the cold war thriller Bridge of Spies, he clarified what he said back then, saying that his original message has since been taken out of context. He told USA Today:
"To clarify, I didn't ever predict the implosion of the film industry at all," he said. "I simply predicted that a number of blockbusters in one summer - those big sort of tent-pole superhero movies - there was going to come a time where two or three or four of them in a row didn't work. That's really all I said. I didn't say the film industry was ever going to end because of them."
Spielberg says that there are some positives to making movies today, noting that smaller productions have just as much chance to shine now:
"Now, these little movies are squeezing in and finding a birth next to these huge Queen Mary-type movies and they're able to find an audience, or enough of an audience to encourage the distributor and the film companies to finance more of them," he said. "These are not just films like Bridge of Spies, but it's independent movies as well."
