If it only it were so simple as “make better movies”

I would love it if Hollywood put out 100 movies a year that people want to see- but I'm pretty sure they're trying to do that already.

When it comes to how Hollywood can solve its most intractable problems, whether it’s sluggish box office numbers, a lack of new movie stars, low ratings for the Oscars, one piece of advice is fairly ubiquitous: “Make better movies.”

Just in the last few months, that advice has been proposed by everyone from YouTubers to Redditors to Sasha Stone: Hollywood should stop doing what it’s doing currently, and pivot to the bold and revolutionary strategy of making movies that are better, and that more people want to see.

As a piece of advice, it’s a very easy thing to suggest, and a bit of a harder one to actually heed.

And there are a couple of very good reasons for that: Hollywood is already trying the best they can to make good movies that people want to see and make money- in fact, every boss of every studio almost certainly sees doing exactly that as their job. And also, it’s far an exact science, deciding which movies are good, and which will connect with audiences.

The critique is usually paired with the assumption that Hollywood is putting their political agendas ahead of the idea of making money, but when it comes to choosing money over principle, the industry has pretty clearly chosen the former, almost every time, for most of its history.

Over the weekend, Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote the latest of this type of piece, which was given the headline: How Can the Movie Industry Thrive Again? Simple: Make 100 Movies a Year That People Want to See.

I am, of course, absolutely in favorite of Hollywood studios embracing a strategy of making 100 movie a year that people want to see. The problem is, there’s no reason to think that the industry isn’t trying as hard as they can to do exactly that already. To put out 100 movies a year amounts to about two a week, and when it comes to studio releases, that’s about where we’re at right now.