Leonardo DiCaprio compares struggling cinema to “collecting vinyl”
Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio says “getting people to come to the theatres seems like more and more of a challenge” and likens the struggling cinema experience to “collecting vinyl”
Leo says “tide is changing” and cinema is losing the fight(Image: Getty Images for Warner Bros. Pi)
Academy Award legend Leonardo DiCaprio fears cinema is almost dead and has become “like collecting vinyl”.
Ahead of Sunday’s Oscars, where he is nominated for Best Actor again, Leo has been reflecting on why audiences no longer want to go out to experience movies, and he’s fighting back.
Leo said: “It’s going to be a fight, the tide is changing.
“This year seems like one of the most lightning-rod moments in cinema his-tory. We’re up against it-the future of the cinematic experience-more than ever, I feel. Getting people to come to the theatres seems like more and more of a challenge.
“Is it becoming like collecting vinyl? Do we have to decide what categorises the movies we’ll wait for to see on a streamer and what categorises the movies that are worthy enough to see in the theatre?
“It remains to be seen, but people always have that argument constantly about, ‘Oh, well, l’d prefer to watch it at home, and what’s the difference anyway?'”
DiCaprio’s latest nominated movie, One Battle After Another briefly bucked the downward cinema trend last year and became a huge box office hit.
He added: “I guess I’m part of the old school of people that love to be in a communal experience… and just love going to the theatre.”
The former Oscar winner isn’t despondent and does to point to other recent occasions when going to the cinema was back in Vogue.
“That isn’t to say it can’t happen,” he said. “The Barbie-Oppenheimer summer was an amazing thing, and hats off to those two incredible movies, but it certainly seems more and more like the theatrical experience is becoming more and more minimized for original material and completely new, out-of-the-box storytelling.
“And that’s possibly going to be subjugated to streamers now. Whereas the theatrical experience may be for the newer technological wonders that people want to experience in the theatre.”
“I just hope that’s not the case, and I hope that there’s still room for original material going into the future.”
Nevertheless, Leo is confident Hollywood will survive: “When television started, or the advent of radio or DVDs or MP3s or whatever, it’s all going to change.
“But hopefully people still want to see movies.”
Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed One Battle After Another was the first major movie in 60 years to be shot in VistaVision, a high-resolution 35mm motion-picture format introduced by Paramount in 1954 to create wider, sharper, and clearer, less grainy images.
Only three locations worldwide including London’s ODEON Luxe Leicester Square have a projector to play it and Leo reckons experiencing movies with the cleanest, sharpest, most detailed widescreen presentation imaginable could be the future.
He explained: “The VistaVision thing is talking about the endangerment of the cinematic experience, this movie went even more lo-fi, picking up an endangered and nearly extinct cinematic fomat that has god, I don’t know how many cameras, but I think only four projectors. One in LA, one in Boston, one New York and one in London.
“But it was really cool to hear people’s appreciation for being able to see something in a completely different format. We watched it that way in London, and to see that kind of flickering light strobe through the theatre.”
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