Movies and Books Aren't Dead Yet. And I'm Not Either.

I have a weirdly optimistic prediction about the future of entertainment — and my writing career.

The movie Project Hail Mary is a massive hit, and for the first time in my life, it seems like Hollywood might learn the right lesson from a runaway success:

Namely, that movies should be fun.

For too long, Hollywood has been in a rut, mostly creating only two kinds of films:

• Cynical rip-offs that play on people’s fondness for past successes — endless sequels and remakes and the like.

• And pretentious navel-gazers that appeal to the niche viewers who make up movie award committees.

It wasn’t a crazy strategy. Hollywood was using these two methods to break through the “media clutter” of our current age and get attention for their projects.

And for a while, it worked. But then audiences caught on. The movie studios ran smack into the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Something similar happened in New York, where publishers have long engaged in a panicky rush to ape the previous breakout success. The industry also developed an almost comically ridiculous lack of ideological diversity.

But audiences eventually caught on there too. And when you threw in the distractions of social media — and the rising threat of AI — you soon had two creative industries in absolute freefall.

This is why, as a writer, I’ve felt so pessimistic these past few years.

It was already insanely difficult to sell a major movie or book project to Hollywood or New York. If the two industries were suddenly buying half of what they were buying before — and were acting more conservatively than ever! — was there even any point in writing anything new?

It’s impossible not to like the movie Dave (1993).

But lately, I’ve been feeling — what’s the word? Oh, that’s right: optimism.

The entertainment industry has always had a large element of cynicism. After all, movie-making and book publishing are ultimately businesses.

Still, that doesn’t mean that every era is equally cynical.

Or maybe it’s simply a question of strategy — of the Powers That Be figuring out what the audience really wants.

What Hollywood has been doing isn’t working, so I’m making a bold and possibly fanciful prediction:

They’re going to finally start making a lot more movies like Project Hail Mary: fun, original projects with wide appeal — movies that truly engage the emotions and leave the audience feeling good.

Hollywood has prioritized broad “crowd-pleasers” many times in the past, especially in the 50s and early 60s (to compete with the rise of television) and the 80s and 90s (once the studios realized that they could make big bucks from “four-quadrant” blockbusters).

It’s also impossible not to like Some Like It Hot (1959).

And New York publishing used to prioritize books like this too.

In fairness, I’ve been banging on this same drum for a long time now: why don’t they make more movies and books that people actually like? Why does entertainment so often have to be such a dreary slog?

Then again, I think this shift in sensibility might finally be happening, and it’s more than just the success of Project Hail Mary that has me thinking that.

I recently learned that one of my film projects in development — my most personal film project, and also my favorite one — isn’t dead in the water after all.

And it’s an unabashed crowd-pleaser.

I’m also midway through writing another novel, and while I always love whatever I’m working on at the time I’m writing it, this one feels special.

It’s a crowd-pleaser too, which means my subconscious is telling me something.

Since the reelection of Donald Trump, the world has taken an incredibly dark turn. And in these bleak, scary times, I think people really want to feel good.

Here’s what I think most people no longer want to see:

• Anything with an anti-hero. This has long since become a lazy writing cliché anyway.

• Anything dystopian. Why watch or read stuff like this when you’re living through it?

• Anything with a cynical tone that says it’s pointless or impossible to try to solve our problems. Most of us feel hopeless enough as it is.

Yes, yes, there are exceptions to everything. But as a general rule, if Hollywood wants its entertainment to be popular, why not make popular entertainment?

I’m less convinced that New York publishing is going to employ this same strategy — even if it might work there too. Unfortunately, I think they’ve convinced themselves that there are huge swaths of the public that will simply never read novels anymore, including, er, virtually all males.

And Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is one of the best movies ever made.

Unfortunately, whether it’s movies or books, producing quality popular entertainment — the kinds of projects that people still watch and read decades after they’re released — is really, really hard.

This is one big reason why movies like Project Hail Mary have been so few and far between. Something can look effortless, but that doesn’t mean it is.

And incidentally, can we please get over this idea that just because something is popular, it can’t also be smart?

Look, maybe my prediction here is wrong, and Hollywood and New York will hasten their own demise by replacing what isn’t landing now with AI-generated slop.

But I’m still convinced of two things:

This strategy really could work, and some movie studio will at least try it.

And for those of us who plan to keep writing, this is the best way to still find some kind of success.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my other newsletter about my travels at BrentAndMichaelAreGoingPlaces.com. And order my latest book, below.

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