Studios are now greenlighting “theatrical events” (IP, IMAX, spectacle) while simultaneously funding “streaming intimacy” (original, character-driven, lower stakes). The smart money is on the hybrid: the action movie that pauses for a ten-minute scene where two estranged siblings actually talk about their dead mother ( The Last of Us perfected this).

Why? Because the spectacle arms race has exhausted us. We have seen Chicago get destroyed by aliens seven times. We cannot, however, get enough of watching Jeremy Allen White have a panic attack in a walk-in freezer.

“It’s interactive in the best way,” says cultural critic Marcus Thorne. “You pause the show to argue with your partner: ‘Is Shiv being strategic or just hurt?’ You can’t pause a car chase to debate the physics of a flying truck. The new popular media demands your brain, not just your eyeballs.”