We Don’t Talk Enough About the Value of the Moviegoing Experience, Says Focus Features Chief Peter Kujawski

variety.com:

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Think the market for adult-focused specialty films is dead? Peter Kujawski, chairman of Focus Features, explains why you’re wrong on the latest episode of Variety podcast “Strictly Business.” As the film biz gathers in Las Vegas this week for CinemaCon, Kujawski, an industry veteran who has headed NBCUniversal’s Focus Features unit since 2016, discusses the state of moviemaking and exhibition and he walks through the key lessons learned from the strike-challenged 2023 box office.

Takeaway No. 1 — originality sells. “The big cultural story of the movies last year was the Barbenheimer effect. Both of those things in their way are unexpected, right?

They’re wholly original in terms of conception and execution,” Kujawski says of last year’s summer juggernauts, Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” and Universal’s “Oppenheimer.” “And they were not only embraced but literally devoured by an audience, right?

I truly believe — and I realize that it may sound self-serving given the chair I sit in — that we might be coming into the very beginning stages of a golden age of movies that are filmmaker driven, with original visions and original voices being the thing that defines the biggest movies of our era.” The kind of movies that Focus is best known for making — specialty titles with mid-range budgets aimed squarely at adults — are seen as an endangered species as far as theatrical releases are concerned.