Leonardo DiCaprio is questioning if audiences still crave the cinema experience as streaming and shifts in viewing habits reshape the future of filmmaking.
The Oscar winner gave his take on the future of movie theaters and the broader film industry in a recent interview with The Sunday Times.
“It’s changing at a lightning speed,” the 51-year-old actor said. “We’re looking at a huge transition. First, documentaries disappeared from cinemas. Now, dramas only get finite time and people wait to see it on streamers. I don’t know. Do people still have the appetite? Or will cinemas become silos—like jazz bars?
“I just hope enough people, who are real visionaries, get opportunities to do unique things in the future that are seen in the cinema,” he continued. “But that remains to be seen.”
To DiCaprio’s point, there’s evidence that audiences are interested in communal theatrical experiences. The wildly viral Barbenheimer phenomenon, driven by the simultaneous releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer in 2023, translated to massive box office receipts for both films.
More recently, the “chicken jockey” trend had moviegoers ready to chuck popcorn and snacks at screenings of A Minecraft Movie in April.
That’s not to mention the success of Netflix’s recent limited theatrical releases, such as KPop Demon Hunters’ sing-a-long screenings that racked up $19 million in its initial August run, per Deadline. According to Variety, the Stranger Things finale was also said to have earned between $25 million to $28 million at the box office.
In a separate interview with Time last month, the One Battle After Another star also said artificial intelligence can be helpful creatively while lacking a core human element.
“It could be an enhancement tool for a young filmmaker to do something we’ve never seen before,” he said at the time. “I think anything that is going to be authentically thought of as art has to come from the human being.”
He referenced AI-generated mashups such as Michael Jackson singing a song by The Weeknd or A Tribe Called Quest track in the style of Al green.
"But then it gets its 15 minutes of fame and it just dissipates into the ether of other internet junk," DiCaprio said. "There’s no anchoring to it. There’s no humanity to it, as brilliant as it is.”