Leonardo DiCaprio Wonders if ‘People Still Have the Appetite’ for Movie Theatres: Will They Become ‘Like Jazz Bars?’

Leonardo DiCaprio is worried about the future of moviegoing. During a recent interview with The Times of London, the “Titanic” star questioned if “people still have the appetite” for movie theatres. He also pondered if cinemas would “become silos – like jazz bars?”

“It’s changing at a lightning speed,” DiCaprio said of the film industry. “We’re looking at a huge transition. First, documentaries disappeared from cinemas. Now, dramas only get finite time and people wait to see it on streamers. I don’t know.”

Whatever happens, DiCaprio said he hopes that filmmakers of the future get their work shown on the big screen.

“I just hope enough people who are real visionaries get opportunities to do unique things in the future that are seen in the cinema,” he added. “But that remains to be seen.”

The Oscar winner is a staunch defender of cinematic integrity. During a recent sitdown with Time, DiCaprio slammed AI in film, saying the technology is incapable of humanity and thus can’t be “authentically” considered art.

“It could be an enhancement tool for a young filmmaker to do something we’ve never seen before,” DiCaprio said of AI. “I think anything that is going to be authentically thought of as art has to come from the human being. Otherwise — haven’t you heard these songs that are mashups that are just absolutely brilliant and you go, ‘Oh my God, this is Michael Jackson doing the Weeknd,’ or ‘This is funk from the A Tribe Called Quest song “Bonita Applebum,” done in, you know, a sort of Al Green soul-song voice, and it’s brilliant.’ And you go, ‘Cool.’ But then it gets its 15 minutes of fame and it just dissipates into the ether of other internet junk. There’s no anchoring to it. There’s no humanity to it, as brilliant as it is.”