A decade or so ago, a new movie by a major director like Clint Eastwood would have been cause for excitement. But in Hollywood's current franchise-heavy, post-pandemic era, , Eastwood's most recent and possibly final film, barely made a splash. The film's distributor, Warner Bros. Discovery, released it on fewer than 50 screens across America before dropping it on Max in early December, giving it such a limited theatrical release that WBD considered not releasing the box office figures at all.

All this would suggest that WBD lost faith in the film, or that it turned out to be an embarrassment that they wanted to bury on streaming. On the contrary, Juror #2 has been widely praised by critics and audiences, earning a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and gaining some word-of-mouth momentum on Max. As of this writing, it's the number one movie on the platform, and has been for some time. In reality, WBD's strange release strategy for the film points more to the state of the Hollywood studio system, and less to its quality. Simply put, Juror #2 is just not the kind of movie that Hollywood studios make very often anymore.

Juror #2 had an ignoble release, but this likely wouldn't have been the case in an earlier era of Hollywood. Beginning with the "New Hollywood" days in the late 1960s, . This trend lasted well into the '90s and early '00s, as movies like 1994's Philadelphia or 2000's Erin Brockovich topped the box office upon release, while also gaining awards recognition.

This trend started to change somewhat as the millennium wore on, with streaming cutting into movie theater profits and big-budget tentpole releases like the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Pirates of the Caribbean series increasingly driving the conversation. But even well into the late 2000s, shaggy mid-budget comedies like Judd Apatow's Knocked Up held their own in the top 10. .

As the 2000s became the 2010s, . By decade's end, the mega-budget superhero film had become the dominant multiplex entertainment, as studios scrambled to find any preexisting IP they could reboot and reintroduce to the world. Legacy sequels, franchises, and adaptations almost exclusively ruled not just the summer movie season, but the whole calendar. Every once in a while, a smaller film like 2011's The Help would break through, but these became increasingly rare.

This trend has only increased in the 2020s. Hollywood is still reeling from the losses of the pandemic and the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes, making them even less likely to put money behind anything that doesn't already have a built-in audience.

All of this is to say that . Directed by one of the most recognizable stars-turned-directors in Hollywood and starring one of the era's most prolific actors, it's the kind of understated, adult drama with a morally ambiguous ending that doesn't offer any easy answers. Jonathan Abrams' script doesn't make Nicholas Hoult's protagonist a completely noble character, but rather a fundamentally decent man that is still willing to act in his own self-interest.

. It doesn't even have a Twelve Angry Men-style plot where one character manages to convince all the others to side with the truth; Hoult's Justin tries to sway his fellow jurors not out of a sense of justice, but rather to allay his own guilt at possibly sending an innocent man to jail.

The fact that the movie is as compelling as it is speaks to Eastwood's unobtrusive skill behind the camera, allowing Abrams' layered script to shine alongside solid performances from the likes of Hoult, Toni Collette, and J.K. Simmons. , but not necessarily one that would spend money at the movie theater to see them.

As the industry continues to evolve and adapt to the changing times and tastes of moviegoers, it seems likely that the movie-watching experience will become more and more fragmented. The simple truth of that bygone era of adult-oriented box office hits is that people didn't have any other choice than to go to the theater to catch a new release, unless they wanted to wait until it came to home video. .

Studios' iron grip over the movie industry has been slipping for years now, as streaming continues to chip away at the theater-going audience year after year. As Hollywood continues to navigate these changes, it's likely that the big studios will continue to focus on the major moneymakers, leaving streamers to cater to the more subdued adult audience. While it would be nice to have the option of seeing movies like Juror #2 on a big screen, the fact that it was the light of day at all is a minor miracle.