Generation Z were expected to accelerate the death of the movie theater. Instead, they’re reversing it.

Recent reporting from independent theater owners paints a surprising picture. Attendance has rebounded to, and in some places surpassed, levels not seen since before Corona-chan’s visit.

Much of the resurgence has come from younger audiences turning out for films like Project Hail Mary and Obsession. That box office heat is even rubbing off on blockbusters like the new Spider-Man flick and yes, Christopher Nolan’s controversial adaptation of The Odyssey.

The numbers don’t lie. Zoomers are catching new movies in the theater instead of waiting a few weeks for the streaming debut. That sudden turn has caught many industry observers off-guard.

It shouldn’t.

The assumption that convenience always wins has been one of the defining mistakes of the streaming era. Because while convenience may solve certain problems, ease has never been the same as value.

Consider the streaming revolution’s unintended consequences. Movies are now interchangeable. The way streaming platforms are structured, assembly line slop crowds out masterpieces from bygone eras. Streaming a movie is now analogous to turning on the radio while scrubbing the sink, which the second-screening phenomenon demonstrates.

The net effect: Entertainment has degraded from an event into background noise.

But somewhere along the way, Zoomers rediscovered that theaters offer a level of commitment that streaming cannot match.

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But amid the flash and bluster of recent blockbuster movie seasons, Hollywood’s old promotional model effectively folded.

A recent piece on the marketing campaign for Tom Cruise’s latest film revealed that Hollywood studios are replacing traditional critics with online influencers. Instead of courting newspaper reviewers, they are inviting hundreds of social media personalities to exclusive screenings. The underlying logic is that audiences now place greater confidence in familiar internet faces than legacy media tastemakers.

The majority of commenters who see the fall of critics as another victory for influencers misunderstand the full magnitude of what’s happened.

For most of the twentieth century, institutions controlled attention because they controlled distribution. Newspaper and magazine editors and TV network executives decided which reviewers got national audiences. Therefore, they chose the handful of critics who set audience preferences.

The internet has now turned that dynamic on its head. Most people now follow reviewers whose tastes match their own. They discover pop culture commentators through YouTube recommendations, Instagram reels, and TikTok clips.

It used to be that institutions introduced people to influencers. Now, online influencers are institutions.

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The June convocation of the Council of Kairos delved deep into the finer points of writing technique and story distribution. The second matter is where we begin presenting the questions from the AMA:

Question: If you wanted to turn your book into another medium other than an audio book, what would be the most impactful and moderately affordable right now?

Answer: A major but seldom-discussed reason why so many creators pick novels as the initial vehicle for their stories is that books have perhaps the lowest overhead of any commercial medium. The next most affordable is probably graphic novels, which involve production costs one order of magnitude higher than novels instead of two or three.

Bonus: Please enjoy this clip from the stream!

Now on with our questions:

Q: Which media adaptations would you avoid?

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The deep lore of Tolkien. The brutal action of Berserk!

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When a struggling company wants to grow, the go-to approach these days is to buy another struggling company.

You might take it for granted, but that one trend says far more about today’s economy than most job numbers or inflation reports.

The proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. is billed as a necessary effort to compete in an increasingly fragmented industry by forming yet another media giant. Supporters argue that pooling resources will benefit both companies. Skeptics argue that merging two megacorps under pressure just gives you a larger megacorp under pressure.

Yet even that debate misses a more interesting historical trend.

It’s easy to mistake consolidation for innovation. The results can look similar if you squint. After all, both produce a flurry of hype and activity.

The tell is that only one creates new value.

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Here’s the rub: Usually, those authors are right. Maybe they have a scene packed with action, major revelations, and gripping character moments.

And nonetheless, the story somehow feels like it’s standing still.

What that apparent contradiction should tell us is the problem isn’t a lack of action. Instead, it’s a lack of transformation.

Many beginning writers judge a scene according to what events take place in it. Professional editors evaluate the same scene by what is different after it.

What’s the difference?

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Not only is that definition obsolete, it has been for years. What’s changing now is people are finally starting to notice.

This month, the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery sparked another round of debate about the future of Hollywood. Studio execs argue that larger companies are better equipped to compete under rapidly changing conditions. Meanwhile, critics of the merger point out that combining struggling giants could just as well create a bigger struggling giant.

What both sides miss is that their preoccupation with whether Hollywood is too big glosses over the fact that the age of entertainment conglomerates is over.

It’s easy to overlook that the mass market isn’t a necessary constant dictated by economic laws. Instead, universal shared culture resulted from quirks of twentieth-century technology.

When Americans had three television networks, a handful of national magazines, and one local newspaper, practically everyone consumed the same culture. If you wanted to reach millions of people, you only had a few routes, each of which was gated. Whoever controlled those artificial bottlenecks reigned as de facto tastemakers and kingmakers.

It sounds facile to say, but the internet really did change that equation. At first, many assumed the worldwide web would just give us the same institutions, but bigger.

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Now that the experiment has been running long enough to yield some measurable results, the publishing industry is starting to discover the answer.

And to the doomsayer’s surprise, that answer looks to be that A.I. isn’t replacing writers. What it’s doing instead is changing the value proposition for readers.

Last week, two seemingly contradictory stories popped up within days of each other. First, researchers studying more than 14,000 self-published genre novels on Amazon found that books containing 25 percent or more A.I.-generated text have now captured significant market share.

More to the point, the glut of books competing for readers has grown much faster than the money those readers are spending. In other words, each new title is fighting for a smaller slice of the same pie.

Second, the Financial Times reported that more and more publishers are mulling over ways to distinguish books written by people from those produced with generative A.I. Some executives have floated labels like “Human Authored.” The industry expectation is that readers will seek out books bearing the unmistakable marks of human imagination.

At first glance, those developments seem to suggest opposite conclusions. One says A.I. is overwhelming the market. The other touts genuine authorship as the new selling point.

But dig down into both reports, and you soon find they are describing the same phenomenon from two different angles.

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As studios merge and departments shrink, longtime employees are losing their jobs. Studio executives keep promising the latest restructuring will put them back in the black, only for the cycle to start again

It’s tempting to lay all the blame on streaming. But the movie industry’s pivot from theaters to digital distribution is just another symptom of the same underlying disease.

If you look back at Hollywood’s golden age, one fact jumps out: Tinseltown was built by writers, producers, directors, and entrepreneurs competing for audiences’ money and attention.

Absent from that winning equation were bean counters and Harvard MBAs.

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Like many pieces of writing advice, that one contains a grain of truth. Unfortunately, a lot of new authors misunderstand what element of a backstory makes a character memorable.

The result is a cast readers enjoy while they’re reading but struggle to remember after closing the book.

So what causes this problem?

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Some commentators see its success as proof that Modern audiences are hungry for updates to problematic old tales. Others lament that normies have at last been so indoctrinated by Hollywood slop as to have forsaken the Western canon.

Like blind men groping an elephant; or more aptly in this case, marks buying into wrestling promos cut by the heel, both sides are misreading what the situation means. Because the root issue runs much deeper than one movie. And movies in general, for that matte.

Nearly a century ago, Edward Bernays argued that public opinion is far less spontaneous than most people imagine. In his most notorious book, Propaganda, he described modern society as being guided by what he famously called the “invisible government,” a relatively small group of institutions capable of directing public attention on a massive scale.

Whether one accepts Bernays’ conclusions or recoils from them, history has repeatedly demonstrated his central insight:

Public attention seldom distributes itself.

Which must mean, by process of elimination, that it is distributed.

Every newpub author dreams of getting a movie adaptation. But think about what it takes to launch a modern blockbuster. Let’s assume you somehow came up with the resources to turn your book into a major motion picture. Just to promote it, you would still need …

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Yet somehow, many of the products of advanced modern technology are shabbier than ever.

That is the contradiction at the heart of a recent video essay by Quincy Sandbank, who uses a lovingly restored 1991 Mercedes to epitomize the last time manufacturers competed on permanence.

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The old gatekeepers stagger on, but their monopoly has crumbled. Audiences now find books, films, and music through social networks that hardly existed twenty years ago.

Yet many talented creators still act like nothing has changed.

Why?

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Some said that the Kindle had sounded the old guard’s death knell. Others swore by name authors’ breakout crowdfunding success. Most recently, artificial intelligence has taken center stage. Depending on whom you ask, A.I. will either liberate creators or render them obsolete.

But amid the endless debates, somehow everybody missed that not only has the preference cascade already begun, it has reached critical mass.

What we’re witnessing today cannot be called a revolution. More accurately, it’s the aftermath.

The old order survived long enough for most people to assume it would always hold the center of pop culture. By the time its grip on authority began slipping, millions had already found other ways to discover books and the people who create them.

And here’s the kicker: The change took place so gradually that many of us haven’t noticed.

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Shopworn as it is, that advice is correct. Unfortunately, many new writers misunderstand what conflict actually is.

As a result, all of their scenes begin to seem naggingly familiar. The plot technically has energy but loses steam with each turned page. And the reader loses interest.

So if the cause isn’t lack of conflict, what’s the problem?

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But somewhere along the line, the standard talent pool seemed to dry up. The shortage of good ideas and film makers skilled enough to bring them to the screen, had Hollywood on the brink.

Then The Backrooms and Obsession came out of left field and trounced a Star Wars movie. Those indie films’ success was a revelation. One that smacked Hollywood across the face with the realization of where popular storytelling had been hiding …

YouTube.

According to recent reports, Hollywood studios are scrambling to acquire more internet-sourced horror properties like The Mandela Catalogue and Siren Head.

What’s ironic is, the creators behind those projects built enormous audiences long before the studios called. Instead of discovering unknown talent, Hollywood is negotiating with creators who have already proven themselves online.

Hollywood’s current rush to sign YouTubers is reminiscent of the indie film boom of the 1990s. Back then, studios like Miramax signed rising auteurs. But for every Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez, there were ten hopeful directors who got used up and tossed out.

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Their vision of a future without ownership seemed inevitable.

Then the unexpected happened.

Physical media refused to go quietly into the night. Vinyl records continued attracting new buyers. Small bookstores staged an unlikely comeback. And niche film studios are thriving on Blu-ray.

Even Zoomers, a generation raised almost entirely on streaming, have begun collecting movies, records, and physical books in growing numbers.

Many commenters dismiss the physical media trend as nostalgia. But their explanation falls apart under scrutiny. A twenty-year-old buying vinyl records cannot be nostalgic for an era he barely remembers. Nor is a film buff compiling a DVD collection in 2026 trying to relive the 1990s.

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Yet readers still lose interest between those major set piece scenes.

Because the problem usually has little to do with the plot. Instead, it arises from answering questions too quickly.

Curiosity is the skeleton every story hangs on. Readers want to know how the detective will solve the case, if the lovers will reconcile, what waits behind the locked door. Every chapter raises questions the author promises to answer in the next.

Those questions keep readers turning pages. But too many new authors succumb to the temptation to give immediate answers.

What does that mean?

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Space pirates OD on the spice from Dune and wake up on Cthulhu’s couch.

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These past few years, it looked like the plan was working. Streaming services placed thousands of movies a few clicks away. Audiences no longer needed to drive across town, buy a ticket, or plan an evening around a specific showtime. The future seemed obvious. Movie theaters belonged to another era.

Yet recent reporting suggests consumers may be less tractable than Hollywood thought.

Independent theaters across the United States are enjoying a renaissance, and younger audiences are leading the way. Many of the people filling those seats grew up with Netflix, YouTube, and smartphones. If any generation should have embraced streaming completely, it’s Generation Z.

Instead, many Zoomers are choosing to leave the house for their entertainment.

At first glance, the trend seems difficult to explain. Why would a generation raised on instant access willingly choose the slower option? Who wants to pay for a ticket when countless movies are already available at home? And why plan your night around a screening when you can start the show on your schedule, on-demand?

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“Don’t write in third person omniscient. Today’s readers can’t handle it!”

Maybe you’ve heard the deadpub smears againt omniscient narration:

“It’s confusing.”

“It feels old-fashioned.”

“You’ll never sell it.”

Supposedly, the narrative voice that carried The Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Watership Down is now a liability. Because—so oldpub would have us believe—modern readers, particularly younger ones, can’t fathom it.

But the idea that readers can’t comprehend omniscient narration isn’t just false, it’s insultingly false. In fact, you could be forgiven for calling it an instance of industry gaslighting: “Third person omniscient is dead! So lower your standards, water down your prose, do what the market says, and maybe you’ll get scraps from the Big Five’s table.”

But here’s what everybody’s missing: Omniscient narrative voice didn’t die.

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Let’s get the basics out of the way first: The One Ring is not a metaphor. It is neither a stand-in for atomic weapons nor political power, nor is it a commentary on World War II. It is not an allegory for fascism, communism, capitalism, imperialism, or any other –ism.

Tolkien stated the above points explicitly, repeatedly, and with the weariness of a man who knew exactly what he was up against. His tragedy was that of the linguist trying to speak to a civilization that had lost the ability to hear.

Because our society no longer reads; it scans. All day online, we listen to commentary from people who have not read The Lord of the Rings—never mind The Silmarrillion or Tolkien’s letters—and would not understand the material if they had.

Too many people only engage with Tolkien to the extent that they can bend and warp his work to serve as a vessel for their ideology. And so the One Ring, which was written with a precise and non-allegorical meaning, has become a kind of literary Rorschach test; another mirror in the Pop Cult funhouse. Readers; let’s be real here, movie-watchers, see in the Ring whatever they already believe about power, war, or politics.

That’s not just a misreading. It’s a desecration.

Why?

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