robust release – let alone 20 or 30 that are all excellent and stand the test of time
There’s a good argument to be made that 1999 was indeed the best year for original movies in Hollywood –
especially in our current vacuum of brave new ideas at the movies (of the top 10 grossing films of 2019 so
far, the Jordan Peele horror Us is the only original screenplay not based on an existing intellectual
property). Many thought 1999’s surplus of great original films was the start of a new age for American
cinema. Instead, it’s now increasingly looked back upon as a peak – a high that film will never reach again
now that TV and streaming services like Netflix have replaced movies in the hierarchy of audience’s
preferred pop-cultural platforms.
“With economic forces the way they currently are, studios would now think, ‘why take a risk on a new idea
when I could make another Star Wars?’” says Fritz. “We now make fewer films, and so many great ideas go
straight to TV. So I’d say it’s incredibly unlikely now that we would have a year where we see 20 or 30
interesting original films get a robust release – let alone 20 or 30 that are all excellent and stand the test of
time, like 1999’s have.”
If you broaden your definition to include movies and series made for streaming services, there’s more cause
for cheer, though: a limited series like Chernobyl, Fritz says, “would probably would have been a movie 20
years ago”. Instead, today it became an acclaimed slow-burning TV drama that benefited from having over
six hours to explore every facet of its story. “If you expand your definition to mean original visual narrative
content, whether or not it’s released in a theatre and two hours long or a TV series that’s 10 hours long, then
you could certainly argue that we’ll have another year like 1999.”
Original stories, then, have perhaps not disappeared – just swapped mediums. “I certainly don’t watch
something like Fleabag and go, ‘I wish this was a film,’” says Raftery. But there’s still something to be said
for the cultural conversation and sense of community that film-going in 1999 had and our new age of
consuming content in the privacy of our homes does not. “I do think there’s something so satisfying about
going out for a couple of hours, watching something then getting a drink after and talking about it. Whereas
TV, it’s like: ‘Hey, I’m gonna catch up on that show – let’s talk about in 5 months!’ It just feels like no one is
watching the same thing at the same time.”
Raftery has loved a lot of recent TV and a lot of recent films – he heralds releases like Her Smell, Diane,
Booksmart and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as examples of how cinema can still deliver thrilling original
ideas – but thinks a mindset change needs to happen from both studios and audiences to lead us back to
another year like 1999 for film. “Movies have never been a socialist enterprise but now it feels like it’s about
shareholder value over everything where it used to be about yes, shareholder value, but also making
something to be proud of, putting faith in audiences to want new things,” Raftery explains. “Studios need to
take the risk of making those sort of movies. And audiences have to turn off their TVs and take a risk and go
see a movie.”
This year, rumours of impending sequels, reboots and remakes of some of 1999’s best loved movies have
coincided with these films’ 20th anniversaries. A fourth Matrix film, for instance, is reportedly in
development at Warner Bros with Creed star Michael B Jordan attached. A cinematic universe based on the
Blair Witch Project is being touted by one of its creators. A year known for original content sounds like it’s
about to be mined for rehashes. Movie-making as we knew it in 1999 may be dead, but irony certainly isn’t.