George Lucas has pronounced the blockbuster dead

"The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie," said Lucas, a near-billionaire from his feverishly franchised outer-space epics. "Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with 'King Kong.'"

On the other hand, look what happened with Lord of the Rings, or the Matrix. LOTR, in one of its episodes, gets played around my house at least every couple of weeks.

I suspect Lucas is projecting his personal frustration over the lackluster performance of the Star Wars prequels.

The bottom line is that if Hollywood stops producing the extravaganzas in favor of the small films, there simply won't be anymore film industry as we know it. Oh, there will still be some kind of film industry, but just like the big studios passed into history, the current model will be replaced--perhaps with a direct to DVD model.

As it stands, the cost of going to the movie theater is high enough that I don't go casually. When discussing current movies, the code phrase is "wait for the DVD"--another way of saying that its not worth the 8 bucks to see in the theater. What makes a movie worth the eight bucks is the visual spectacle afforded by a giant screen, an amazing sound system and a movie that takes full advantage of current visual effect technology--i.e. a 100-200 million dollar movie.

To watch a couple of cowboys in a pup tent, my home theater would be overkill.

I beg to differ with Mr. Lucas, but I suspect the movie business is going for a polarized model--15 million dollar movies and 200 million dollar movies and nothing in between. Its the 70 million dollar movies that are problematic (Syriana). Not enough pizzazz to get people out to the theaters like a block-buster would, but too expensive to make money on Brokeback Mountain ticket sales.

The exceptions are the star vehicles for Jim Carrey etal. People will go see a movie with Jim Carrey in it, so you better pay him what he wants and be grateful for the spillover.