Steven Spielberg on the Movie Industry: 'There's Eventually Going to Be a Big Meltdown'

Recently there's been much debate over the future of movies, theatrical distribution versus streaming, and big budget blockbusters versus smaller indie films. According to Variety, two of Hollywood's greatest champions, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, foresee a movie "meltdown" that will make trips to the movies as expensive as a Broadway show.

"There's eventually going to be a big meltdown," Spielberg said in a panel at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. "There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen of these mega-budgeted movies go crashing into the ground and that's going to change the paradigm again."


Lucas piggy-backed on Spielberg's prediction saying that such a meltdown will lead to a spike in movie ticket prices, raising them as high as "50 bucks or 100 or 150 bucks, like what Broadway costs today."

The two filmmakers, who had a difficult time getting their recent films "Lincoln" and "Red Tails" into theaters, see the current video-on-demand craze as a predictor of the way we'll come to experience new movies. Believing that "quirky" personal films will only be accessible via streaming while studio films will be reserved for the big screens, Lucas added, "What used to be the movie business... will be Internet television."

Then the two directors-turned-oracles got really futuristic with their prophecies. After Spielberg said audiences need to be removed from screens and injected into the experience [of movies and video games], Lucas suggested brain implants. The "Star Wars" director believes that if implants can already control artificial limbs then one day they'll be able to control our dreams.

"You'll just tap into a different part of your brain. You're just going to put a hat on or plug into the computer and create your own world," Lucas said.

You can read more about Lucas and Spielberg's discussion over on Variety.