Horror vs. Romance and the lessons Hollywood takes from success

There are two film genres that are having two very different booms currently.

Both of them have vast, voracious audiences. Both of them are flush with tropes and with subversions of those tropes. Both of them have had the kind of success that has led to studios and executives falling over themselves to produce more. But one of them is getting wide cinema release distribution deals and the other is getting fast turnaround releases on the streamers.

A quick look at the top films of the decade so far on Letterboxd gives us Sinners, The Substance, Weapons, Nosferatu, Frankenstein, The Menu, Obsession, Pearl, Nope, Longlegs, Backrooms, X, Companion, Barbarian.

Romance, in the top films, is a more complicated prospect. If you want something straightforward there's Anyone But You – which incidentally grossed more than $200 million at the box office on a budget of $25 million – but that's it. Everything else is twists and subversions, or romance taking second place to something else. Wuthering Heights, Anora, The Drama, Past Lives, Hamnet, Materialists.

There is also horror romance Bones and All.

I find the contrast interesting.