Hacker Cinema
Gotti
2018 · Film · 106 min
Directed by Kevin Connolly
John Gotti rises to the top of the New York underworld to become the boss of the Gambino crime family. His life takes a tumultuous turn as he faces tragedy, multiple trials and a prison sentence.
3 negative1 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
Ha. I was only saying that in jest, hope I didn't come off too strongly.
I have a IRL best friend who is very against all forms of TV and media while I watch quite a bit of it. We argue strongly about this, so I've trodden this path ha.
Sometimes I'm not in the mood or mindset to read. 99% of my YouTube is makers / documentaries / war footage / local history and maps / etc. For mainstream stuff, just biopics or stories loosely based on real life or old war content (recently: Gotti, Edge of the World, Bruno Manser, Founder, Hacksaw Ridge, the Lebron/Lakers TV show, Detroit war production, some others) and I'm a huge sci-fi fan so I'll watch most scifi fiction as well.
To him, its all just mindless consumption. I 100% agree though about being social and desiging around people rather than a screen, but I don't judge others too much. To each their own.
I really wish that "American Animals" had become some sort of indie darling, just so the world will remember that MoviePass co-distributed a really good film. Maybe "Gotti" will become a midnight showing cult classic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoviePass#MoviePass_Venture_films
Undoubtedly just how bad MoviePass's business model sans cooperation from the theater chains (who would eventually just do their own thing) is partially unique to the film exhibition marketplace -- but I wasn't making a sweeping statement about all businesses or disruption, I was talking about the actual MoviePass business model which would never ever ever ever work without cooperation with the theater chains (or, as I said, studios. But the studios are difficult because of the Paramount Decree).
I don't claim to be an expert at many things and I'm far from the smartest person in the room, but MoviePass hits my sweet spot because it encompasses the two industries I've studied/spent my career/life around, and the math for MoviePass just never works out.
Initially, the goal was to buy discounted tickets or have partnerships with the theater chains. The theater chains balked and refused to work with MoviePass, which led to the hack of using a pre-paid credit card and buying tickets at RETAIL prices. AMC and MoviePass actually did have a partnership at one point (2015) in a few select cities but if anything, all that partnership did was give AMC the data it needed to know how it could create its own service.
MoviePass thought it could leverage the theaters by claiming it was responsible for a large percentage of box office traffic -- but all its data really did was show that people really liked spending $10 a month to see unlimited movies. None of MoviePass's attempts to show that it was a market maker in terms of pushing subscribers towards a certain film worked (it didn't help that the films that studios were willing to advertise via MoviePass were often not very good) and MoviePass's brief sojourn as a film financier/distributor itself basically encompassed Gotti starring John Travolta (a truly bad film that no other major studio would distribute -- it should have gone straight-to-video/streaming/whatever -- which was the original plan. The producers literally bought it back from Lionsgate b/c Lionsgate smartly realized it was not worth spending money on putting in theaters), which was a flop -- and to add insult to injury, a flop whose audience was almost entirely MoviePass subscribers (meaning MoviePass basically paid for the film twice).
Again, I'm not making any larger statements about disruption. But this business, in this industry (which it should be noted, has fairly inflexible pricing and the theater chains themselves are largely only profitable because of concessions), with this ridiculous business plan was never, ever, ever going to work. And even if Regal and AMC had partnered with MoviePass, Regal and AMc would just have taken those lessons and launched their own loyalty subscription services.
Didn't moviepass just show they aren't capable of pushing a movie with their big "Gotti" campaign?