Where Did All the Big-Screen Comedies Go?

“The rise of streamers, more accessible home theaters, and social media have all reshaped audience behavior. As for why studios stopped backing comedies, a lot of it comes down to risk,” he continues. “Comedy doesn’t always translate internationally, which matters more than ever in the global marketplace. And it’s incredibly subjective—what’s hilarious to one person falls flat for another. So when studios are chasing billion-dollar tentpoles, rolling the dice on a $40 million original comedy feels riskier.”

Further, in a post-Marvel, post-streaming era—when audiences have been conditioned to think of cinema-going as something you do once or twice a year, and rarely for anything but the biggest tentpole—you could question if the will generally exists to hit the multiplex for out-and-out comedies. After all, the genre has arguably thrived on streaming platforms like Netflix; according to the platform’s self-reported viewership records, July’s Happy Gilmore 2 enjoyed the biggest US opening weekend for a Netflix movie ever, with 46.7 million views. Many hope that The Naked Gun will be the film to revive the big screen comedy, but its decent $17 million start at the domestic box office hardly blew away expectations. One might wonder whether, had it gone to cinemas, the Adam Sandler sequel would’ve won as many eyeballs.

“Thor: Ragnarok was a bunch of people in a theater laughing together, right?” Schaffer says. “Every Robert Downey Jr. quip [in a Marvel movie] was a comedy moment. So people have experienced it, but the question is, will they spend money just for that part? I don’t know.”

“Personally, I think it’s about reminding people that theatrical comedy is a communal experience,” says Greenbaum. “Laughter is infectious. Watching a great comedy with a packed crowd is still one of the best feelings there is.”

Kyle Buchanan, movie columnist at the New York Times, agrees that the rise of streaming has played a part in the decline of the big screen comedy. “There’s been a recalibration from major studios about what movies they consider to be theatrical, and comedies were, to my mind, the very first cut,” he says. “Studios stopped making them because, in part, they couldn’t get a guaranteed theatrical return in the same way they hoped to get [from] a big action franchise, or a blockbuster.”

But that, Buchanan notes, has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. “If you’re not releasing comedies in the theater then, of course, people will get used to not watching them in the theater,” he says. If you build it, after all, they’ll probably come. “I think it’ll take a few breakout hits to fully restore confidence,” says Greenbaum. “If one or two comedies crush it at the box office, the studios will rush to fill that space… When one connects, we might be looking at a real comedy renaissance.”

Hearteningly, it does feel as though filmgoing habits have shifted—if only ever so slightly—in the last couple of years. Tentpole comic-book films like Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps remain box office behemoths, but have not touched the billion-dollar heights of their most popular Avengers-grade forebears. Sinners, a wholly original melange of horror and drama, made $365 million at the box office worldwide earlier this year. Materialists, Celine Song’s romance featuring Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans and Dakota Johnson—which debuts in the UK this month—tripled its modest $20 million budget worldwide. Blockbusters still reign supreme, but it feels as though they are no longer hogging all of the space.