Everybody’s been talking and writing about the enormous box-office success and staying power of Backrooms and Obsession, two low-budget horror films made by young directors who came to fame for their works on YouTube. Their startling feature film hits are being compared with the tanking of the new He-Man movie, Masters of the Universe, and the sinking profits of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, a franchise spectacle that started strong and faded fast as bad reviews and scornful word-of-mouth warned off viewers.

Straw-clutching think pieces wonder, is this the proof of the long-anticipated studio collapse? Is New Hollywood 2.0 here at last?

Unlikely. But we can dream, can’t we? The protracted death throes of the old system are so depressing to witness it would be a mercy all around to shoot the sad old beast and put it out of its misery. Let the YouTubers take over. There’s something wonderfully unlikely about the transfer of YouTube video material back to the big screen after several decades of small-screen fare (aka “prestige TV”) siphoning off audiences from the cinema.