It’s Official - Movie Comedies Are DEAD
5. Social Media Has Stolen Cinema's Thunder
A serious paradigm shift that's put a huge dent in the cinematic comedy over the last five years is the enormous popularity of TikTok and other social media platforms.
A recent survey on audience viewing habits found that 47% of Gen Z respondents preferred to watch social media videos over movies or TV, and it's easy to see how that's had an impact on comedy in particular.
When you can watch bite-sized comedy content on TikTok for free, released daily by your favourite personalities no less, why would you stump up the cash to go see a comedy film on the big screen?
This is often cited as one of the big reasons for the demise of the parody movie today - by the time a Scary Movie-type vehicle would be in cinemas now, thousands of TikTok videos have already made the same jokes and arguably done it better.
With so much free competition in the comedy realm, it's easy to see why comedy films have brutally waned in popularity, and conversely why studios are getting twitchier about giving them an expensive big-screen rollout rather than sending them straight to streaming.