Amid the turmoil of the world, the Academy Awards provide an annual distraction — except this year, the film industry is in some turmoil of its own. Box office receipts have been down overall. The movies people are going to see, like “Marty Supreme” and “One Battle After Another,” play perversely with our proliferating anxieties, feeling like cinematic panic attacks. Egregious Oscar snubs still raise our ire. And in the bigger picture, streaming giants like Netflix threaten the viability of the movie theater business, even as the long-simmering sale of Warner Bros. leaves the industry with one fewer stand-alone studio. But at least one studio head sees a promising way forward for both the theatergoing experience and the movies writ large. In a state-of-the-industry essay, Tom Rothman, the chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures, imagines a world in which movies can thrive and theaters can prosper — if the industry as a whole can course-correct after pandemic-era upheavals. The advent of streaming has been described by some as an extinction-level event for the movie business — but then, so was the pandemic (and DVDs and television before that). Movie theaters are still here. They’re even occasionally packed. As Rothman outlines, there’s also a way to ensure they flourish — and if ever there was a weekend to root for the future of the movies, it’s this one.
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