Is Hollywood's Bubble About To Burst?

"What's less plausible: a world where animals talk, or one where Rosario Dawson and Kevin James are romantic partners?" - Zach Handlen on twitter

For over 100 years Hollywood has been churning out implausible stories.

Only the smallest and most credulous of children would tell you that the Death Star, the Kingdom of Oz, or John Ford's West are real. Almost anyone capable of getting themselves to a movie theater knows that the places, people and events onscreen are made-up - they don't really exist.

But the studio monopoly on creating these fantasies may be nearing its end...

And not because the audience has grown tired of the occasional bloated concept film (we're looking at you, Zookeeper)...

As Paul Shuttle observed in a July 7th, 2011 call-to-arms, published online in The Huffingtom Post, "Art and commerce have always been uncomfortable bedfellows, with distributors and theatres colluding to shut out all but an anointed few from the process. For the longest time, Hollywood - home to the so-called 'creative' arts - has aspired to doing just enough for the audience not to leave, but an emerging world of cheap, accessible filmmaking and ubiquitous streaming is revealing that to be a wholly cynical, outmoded philosophy."

According to Paul Shuttle, it isn't the (increasing number of?) bad big-budget films that pose the keenest threat to Hollywood's hegemony, it's that Hollywood can't control the New World of filmmaking and distribution - made possible by a digital revolution: "Whether the studios like it or not, there is a tsunami coming... headed straight for an industry that hoped - just as James Cameron did [with his claims that 3D would save the beleaguered movie business] - that smoke and mirrors would keep you fooled."

Thanks to Sheri Candler for the link to Paul Shuttle's HuffPo post.