138 days. 3300 hours. 198,000 minutes.
That's approximately how much NEW content has been released by the major studios, streamers, and independent producers using Amazon and Tubi to publicly release their films in THE USA so far THIS YEAR.That's roughly 12 hours and 48 minutes of content released every day.
The average American spends between 4-10 hours online, with an average of 2-4 of those hours watching "tv" or streaming entertainment. For the most avid watchers then, those people who spend 5 hours a day consuming video entertainment, it would take them ~1.8 YEARS to watch everything that's been put out so far this year (it's not even October).
None of this takes into account the tremendous backlog of catalog titles always available or the astonishing 21.6 YEARS worth of content uploaded onto YouTube every 365 days.Given these numbers it's impossible to say that DEMAND for visual entertainment surpasses SUPPLY. Because in reality, SUPPLY far outpaces demand. If another film or show was never created, I'd never make it through what was already available, and probably neither would you!
So where does this leave the makers and creators of this kind of content?
One cynical answer is "nowhere," but I hope that undermines a more universal (even if corny) truth about the human need for storytelling, and our unceasing curiosity about the world and people around us.Despite the endless treasure trove of previously made films and shows, we still want stories that feel rooted in a recognizable experience, one that resonates with our own current set of feelings, thoughts, hopes and fears -- in other words we want stories that feel like they belong to us and not only to some previous generation.... right?!
The longer I've done this and the more aware I've become of the challenges presented above, the more MY reasons for making things have changed. No longer is my goal some undefined and generalized "SUCCESS!" Instead, I focus on finding artists I think are remarkable, whose visions deserve to be seen, and then I work with them to come up with ways we can try and bring those visions to life and into the public sphere, at an appropriate scale so as to create a self-sustaining ecosystem around whatever we've made.Our wins may seem small in comparison to the monetary reward that goes along with a fantasy of global box office domination, but it also means I almost never leave a project disappointed -- because I start with optimism bounded by realistic limitations, rather than fantastical daydreams.
This lets me (and the people I work with) leave projects knowing we brought a deserving artist to an interested audience, at a budget level that makes a return for investors genuinely possible.
It's hard to say how sustainable that will be as things change so fast around us, but at least for now it's well worth it, even in the shadow of the infinite wall of content that's come before and will come after.
Why do you keep making things?