Why Did Hollywood Stop Making Comedies? A Statistical Analysis (statsignificant.com)
- Reference: 0178749938
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/08/18/2333256/why-did-hollywood-stop-making-comedies-a-statistical-analysis
- Source link: https://www.statsignificant.com/p/why-did-hollywood-stop-making-comedies
The shift reflects studios prioritizing internationally marketable franchises over domestically-focused comedies, which earn most revenue from US and Canadian audiences. Films like 1984's Beverly Hills Cop ($977 million inflation-adjusted) and Ghostbusters ($882 million) remain unmatched by contemporary releases -- with half of Letterboxd's most popular 2020s "comedies" being either non-comedic films like Saltburn or IP-driven movies like Barbie.
[1] https://www.statsignificant.com/p/why-did-hollywood-stop-making-comedies
Seen South Park lately? (Score:3)
You can do comedy if you don't mind offending half of your potential audience.
Universal Resort used to have a comedy show they'd do during Horror Nights with Bill and Ted. Now, you'd assume a bunch of half-drunk adults up past midnight intent on seeing chainsaws, blood and guts would be hard to offend, but one year they actually had to pull a joke because audiences complained.
You've gotta remember that the entertainment industry is still like any other for-profit industry - they want to earn a return on their investment. Putting out something that potentially makes half your customers angry is bad business (and something the richest man on Earth should've known before he did two sieg heil salutes on live television).
Re: (Score:2)
Have you? Modern South Park is about as funny as a political cartoon.
South Park is the least offensive thing (Score:2)
I think I've ever seen. It's that kind of fake offensive where it's constantly trying to offend everybody off and on so much that it's just obvious bait.
I could see some really dumb midwesterners getting offended if they stumbled across an episode and I can see a lot of fake outrage from the classic think of the children / could it be Satan crowd.
But besides that I can't see anyone really getting offended by South Park in 2025. Hell they wanted edgy in the late '90s.
South Park is at its best whe
Re: (Score:2)
> It's that kind of fake offensive where it's constantly trying to offend everybody off and on so much that it's just obvious bait.
[1]Bait that the current administration swallowed hook, line and sinker. [reddit.com]
> I could see some really dumb midwesterners getting offended if they stumbled across an episode and I can see a lot of fake outrage from the classic think of the children / could it be Satan crowd.
And that's exactly it - they're not watching the show. Alienating half your audience may work when you're producing content for a streaming service where people can just watch something else more to their liking, but we're talking about why Hollywood has cut back on comedy flicks. If you piss off half your audience for a movie, it's going to open to a half-full cinema.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/southpark/comments/1m89zw7/the_white_house_reacted_exactly_as_expected/
Different cultures have different comedic tastes (Score:4, Interesting)
Another factor is probably due to most comedies don't cross across cultures. What the people in a country/culture currently find to be funny tends to be different from what the people in another country find funny. And the modern-day business of Hollywood aims to sell most of their movies in international markets.
Re:Different cultures have different comedic taste (Score:4, Interesting)
This will likely be the most significant reason. After all, comedies are typically much lower budget than an action blockbuster, so even with significantly worse box office performance they can have excellent returns. ...But you're unlikely to cross cultural boundaries with them very often, making your movie regional. Same investment, smaller potential market.
You can't make those movies anymore!!!!!! (Score:3)
If you took the scripts for Beverly Hills Cop or Ghostbusters into a movies studio today they'd say "We can't make these! These are the scripts for Beverly Hills Cop and Ghostbusters, they already made these movies, they're still under copyright."
Comedy is hard and not formulaic. (Score:2)
Hollywood loves formulas. Plug stuff in and get a business success, even if it is not a critical one.
Action movies are easy - get a good special effects guy and tell him to do what he wanted to do before but the tech was not there.
Horror is easy - take something that scares you, translate it into a physical monster and throw in jump scares.
Biopics are easy - take someone famous, show their hard childhood, show them winning, show them dealing with drugs/other problems of winning, show them recovering.
Comedy
Re: (Score:2)
I think thats the nub of it. When studio execs present their slate of films to the theatre chains and shareholders, its the big IP franchises that get them excited. They know Marvel at least *used* to get butts on theatre seats. They know DC has the potential to. They know Jurasic park has been a consitent earner. They *dont* know what "Funny movie about a cafe owner who falls in love with a horse" is going to get anyone turning up.
The irony is the very thing that they know they can sell is the same thing t
Boobs (Score:2)
Back in the day the way you put asses and seats was by putting asses and boobs up on the big screen.
We have internet now so we don't particularly need raunchy comedies and those were the bread and butter of the genre.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody was fapping to those women objectifying bro comedies back in the day, either. They had Playboy for that. What changed is just society's opinion on it - it went from "this is hilarious" to "this is kind of cringe".
How many ... (Score:2)
... ${protected_class} does it take to screw in a light bulb?
That's not funny!
Re: (Score:2)
I'm part of a protected class, but you're gonna need a much bigger bulb if you expect me and my partner to screw inside of it.
Thor: Ragnarok - comedy or action? (Score:2)
Marvel has been adding a lot of humour to their MCU movies, so if you count them as comedies it probably affects the numbers.
It's hard to draw the line and assign movies to one category or another.
Re: (Score:2)
In addition - you need someone that can steal the show (Robin Williams). Writing 80+ minutes of comedy may be the most challenging genre for a writer. If you don't have just the right person delivering the lines, it won't work.
Re:Wokeness (Score:4, Insightful)
Hollywood just needs to go full throttle and not worry about what is acceptable or not in a modern movie. I miss good comedies, the best ones are the one's that offend everyone.
Sanitized for foreign audiences (Score:2)
Comedy does not translate well to other languages and cultures.
Hollywood making films solely based on what will sell enough to foreign markets and take what it can for the domestic box office.
Net result, thin plots, easy to understand dialogue, one dimensional characters and cliche tropes instead of movies.
Re: (Score:2)
> When I watched [1] Airplane! [wikipedia.org] with my kids, we all agreed it was the greatest movie ever made.
> But much of the humor is unwoke and would not be acceptable in a modern movie.
> I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
To the extent that some of the jokes would no longer be acceptable that's just shifting standards. It would be [2]far from the first comedy to fall victim to that [wikipedia.org].
And as you reference with the Shirley joke the bulk of the humour would still be fine today.
The fact is there's still plenty of sitcoms suggesting that humour as a genre is far from dead. The reason there's fewer comedic movies isn't "wokeness", it's demographics.
Modern movies are made to appeal to an international market, and comedy as an art form d
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane!
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jolson#Performing_in_blackface
Re: (Score:2)
> and as you reference with the Shirley joke the bulk of the humour would still be fine today.
Actually, I think part of the difficulty of recognizing all the offensive tropes in that film is being part of the generation that grew up with them being normalized. Of the top of my head, I was just going to say the queer stereotypes and the "jive talk" scene stand out the most as being what I remember most, but then I asked ChatGPT to list all the things younger audiences would find distasteful - it really does end up being the bulk of the gags in the film. Another comedy film that aged like milk is Ca
Re:Wokeness (Score:4, Insightful)
In a world where It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and South Park (both far more racy than Airplane!) are alive and well and shown during prime time TV hours I have a hard time with blaming this all on "woke".
The summary mentions that comedies are out of style because studios are focusing on movies that will be more successful internationally and comedies are not this. Combine that with studio's making less movies now then they used to and you get the perfect recipe for very few comedies.
Re: Wokeness (Score:3)
There is no way a major film studio would greenlight any production (cinema, tv or streaming) that features the kind of stuff Southpark gets away with...
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like Netflix does with its standup comedy specials all the time?
Re: (Score:2)
These are legacy shows that only stay in production due to an existing fanbase. It's an easy bet for the execs. However, if a new show tried to do that kind of humor, well... that safety net is all out the window. Even these shows have gotten much tamer. Have you seen the first season of Always Sunny recently? Holy shit.
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of other examples. How about most of Netflix's standup comedy specials or shows like Bad Thoughts which is the most recent example I can come up with off the top of my head for a scripted show (it came out this year).
I can find good comedy I enjoy everywhere but at the theaters, if it was the conservative's boogey man that is "woke" this problem wouldn't be just with movies.
Re: (Score:2)
> All this proves is that you don't know what woke means.
*smile* Heh. Ok, educate us.