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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Discussion about how the perceived risks of original content leads retreads
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 12-26-2019 11:26 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Any movie studio executive could get a loud hint just by listening to the reactions of audiences when a trailer plays for the latest remake, spin-off, reboot, etc. It's often a mix of groans and laughter, peppered with comments like what the fuck and why do they keep doing this?. Audiences are sick of the shit.
What audiences say and what they do are two different things. Studios will stop making those remakes, spinoffs and reboots when people stop seeing them.
The top 10 domestically grossing films are all non-original. Out of the top 20, there's only five that are sort of original: Us, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Once Upon a Time.in Hollywood, Shazam! and Aquaman. Not exactly Lawrence of Arabia or The Conformist.
Top 10 Domestic Films Year-to-date:
Avengers: Endgame: $858 million.
The Lion King: $544 million
Toy Story 4: $434 million
Captain Marvel: $427 million
Frozen II: $399 million
Spider-Man: Far From Home: $391 million
Aladdin: $356 million
Joker: $333 million
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker: $259 million
It: Chapter Two: $212 million
So you're a studio executive. Do you give up those grosses and take a risk on something original? Unfortunately not. The business has become too big and budgets have become so big that no one wants to take a risk. Look at the opening credits of most films: it's like a logo sampler from all the companies providing financing. Originality is left up to the boutique divisions.
Right now, a few of the cable channels and many of the streaming services are putting a ton of money into some interesting and risky ventures. But I predict that within a few years, when they decide they have to start making some really money to satisfy shareholders, they'll become far more risk averse and they'll start making shows from less risky known properties. Now that AT&T owns HBO, it will be interesting to see if they still let HBO spend big budgets on series like "Game of Thrones" and "Westworld" past 2021 or 2022.
When new channels emerged on cable TV, many were originally quite esoteric. A&E truly was an arts channel. Ovation played operas. Discovery played science programs. Now they all play junk.
It will change when theatrical audiences stop attending. In the late 1960's and 70's, audiences got tired of the big Hollywood musicals and other junk it was making and independent filmmakers emerged who did something different: Coppola, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Woody Allen, Lucas, Spielberg and others. And foreign films started to have a bigger impact: Chabrol, Truffaut, Goddard, Malle, Costa-Gavras, Bertolucci, etc. There's less interest in that today because college students are watching the same junk the masses are and the audience to who used to go the art houses in Manhattan and places like it have disappeared.
And as I've probably posted before, there were always series, sequels, prequels and reboots: Hopalong Cassidy, Lassie, Godzilla, James Bond, the Marx Brothers, the Thin Man, Topper, Blondie, Andy Hardy, Dr. Kildare, Abbott & Costello, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Ma and Pa Kettle, Nero Wolfe, Shirley Temple, Bulldog Drummond, The Big Broadcast, Hope-Crosby, Henry Aldrich, the Universal Horror films, the Hammer Studios horror films, etc. There's nothing new about this concept. A studio finds a successful formula and they'll repeat it.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-27-2019 12:55 PM
quote: Martin Brooks
What audiences say and what they do are two different things. Studios will stop making those remakes, spinoffs and reboots when people stop seeing them.
Movie goers have no choice anymore. They are facing a monopoly style market. If they want to watch a movie outside of the home at a commercial movie theater they are stuck with a very limited number of choices provided by the big studios. The customer's only recourse now is to just not visit the theater.
Most people go to commercial theaters to see "BIG" movies. The HDTV at home is considered good enough for the ordinary comedy and drama stuff. That's one aspect how the customers are screwing themselves and enabling so much of this bullshit. If theater customers want to see a "BIG" event movie it's bound to be some kind of sequel, re-make or reboot. The studios aren't taking high dollar risks to make something new. That's why that list of this year's top 10 highest grossing movies are all sequels and re-makes.
Out of the top 50 highest grossing movies worldwide in the 2010's Zootopia (#37), Bohemian Rhapsody (#45) and The Secret Life of Pets (#49) are the only 3 movies in that top 50 list that aren't sequels of some sort or re-makes. All ten of the yearly box office champs this decade (starting with Toy Story 3 and 2010 and Avengers: Endgame this year) were sequels, with one exception, Beauty and the Beast in 2017, which was a re-make. In the 2000's three movies were yearly champs that weren't sequels or re-makes (the first Harry Potter movie, Spiderman and Avatar). The 1990's had seven yearly box office champs that weren't sequels or re-makes (Ghost, Aladdin, Jurassic Park, The Lion King, Independence Day, Titanic and Armageddon). In the 1980's only two yearly box office champs were sequels, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983. All ten yearly box office champs in the 1970's were original non-sequel movies. Of course the 1970's was a period when the movie industry hit hard times and was forced to take big chances on new ideas.
Another area where movie-going customers screw themselves is they don't shop around. They want to go to the theater, but don't go any farther than the limited number of choices playing at the nearest McMultiplex. Too few of them read any reviews, read up on movies currently in release or know of other theaters within a reasonable driving distance.
For those of us who are more discriminating we're starting to see our choices decline. Theaters in big city centers are more likely to play a wider variety of movies, even independent fare. But those theaters are facing a situation where leases are not renewed or the building is sold out from under them to make way for more profitable properties. Both of these situations are an advantage to the major studios since it confines more knowledgeable movie goers to mainstream multiplex theaters, which typically only play major studio titles. Although if enough city center theaters are closed where will they hold premieres in the future? Can't exactly get a "red carpet feeling" from a McMultiplex with 200 seat auditoriums built next door to Home Depot!
quote: Martin Brooks
So you're a studio executive. Do you give up those grosses and take a risk on something original? Unfortunately not. The business has become too big and budgets have become so big that no one wants to take a risk. Look at the opening credits of most films: it's like a logo sampler from all the companies providing financing. Originality is left up to the boutique divisions.
The studio executives would have to be blind and stone deaf to have not heard the news that overall attendance is down this year. That's despite the record haul of Avengers: Endgame and a Star Wars movie ending the year.
If they don't already know this studio executives should realize there is a large and growing percentage of Americans who no longer visit movie theaters. A lot of older Americans, particularly in my "red state" region have a variety of reasons to never visit theaters (it costs too much, movies are commie-liberal-immoral garbage). A bunch of younger adults and teens are very ambivalent about the movie going experience. The point is the movie studios and their global media company parents are completely taking for granted the segment of the population that still visits theaters on any regular basis. Those executives appear to believe those customers will always be there, despite an ever-shrinking theatrical release window and constant stream of regurgitated content.
quote: Martin Brooks
Right now, a few of the cable channels and many of the streaming services are putting a ton of money into some interesting and risky ventures. But I predict that within a few years, when they decide they have to start making some really money to satisfy shareholders, they'll become far more risk averse and they'll start making shows from less risky known properties. Now that AT&T owns HBO, it will be interesting to see if they still let HBO spend big budgets on series like "Game of Thrones" and "Westworld" past 2021 or 2022.
These big companies are going into uncharted territory. We could see a great deal of upheaval in the entertainment industry over this next decade. Commercial movie theaters could be out of business in a few years with this shrinking window crap. Without theaters traditional movie studios would have a tough time justifying a $200 million production budget on just one 2 hour movie. Physical media sales are way down, which could lead to more OEMs getting out of the optical movie disc player market. This shift to making everything about streaming doesn't make too much sense.
Netflix is one company I think could end up being a big loser in all this. They have no parent company with deep pockets. Amazon and Apple can literally use their streaming businesses as a loss leader for selling other products worth a lot more than movies. AT&T, Sony, Comcast, CBS/Viacom and Disney don't have as much financial flexibility. One thing I find interesting is Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and even Apple are putting a much greater emphasis on series TV than 2 hour movies.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 12-29-2019 01:55 AM
One of the problems those days is that almost any big budget movie simply can't be just a movie. It has to be part of some kind of franchise or it at least has to show the promise to become part of one. This is especially true for anything that Disney produces. The movie itself isn't good enough, it needs to sell toys, t-shirts, theme park tickets and licensing fees to McDonald's and Pizza Hut. And it's not like this is really a new trend, Disney has been doing this for years on end.
And with Disney now owning roughly 60% of all Hollywood output, this trend will be getting worse.
Is it surprising that the top 10 list of best grossing movies of this year is composed of non-original productions? It certainly isn't...
It's those movies that get all the attention and all the marketing budget.
Plus... Original content usually tends to be much more of a slow starter than some kind of over-hyped new franchise release. Nowadays, the success of a movie is almost solely measured during the opening weekend. When was the last time a movie was allowed to build an audience? With those razor-thin release cycles, the original content releases are doomed to be the underdog, because they simply can't build a theatrical audience.
What we see now is just the standard operating mode of boring, bug businesses: Maximizing share holders value by milking existing products and product lines, being risk-averse towards new ideas to such extent that it's often better to kill them outright (imagine someone else walking away with that idea and making a killing with it). It's all fine and well, until it isn't. And like Bobby pointed out with Disco, it can go fast.
I was dragged into every Marvel movie by my wife, up until the last Avengers movie. I haven't seen any Marvel movie since. I was fed up with them already quite a while ago, but I went with her, to do her a favor. Now, that's finally settled. The Marvel Disco has done its magic, at least for her.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-29-2019 02:10 PM
Ishtar was a bad movie. It was a failed attempt at spoofing old road movies with stars like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. With better writing, better principal cast members and better directing the movie might have been funny. In the end it was pretty lame. Worst of all it felt very much like a vanity project for Elaine May, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
One of the problems those days is that almost any big budget movie simply can't be just a movie. It has to be part of some kind of franchise or it at least has to show the promise to become part of one. This is especially true for anything that Disney produces. The movie itself isn't good enough, it needs to sell toys, t-shirts, theme park tickets and licensing fees to McDonald's and Pizza Hut. And it's not like this is really a new trend, Disney has been doing this for years on end.
The problem is even worse than that. The big studios want any of their movie projects to perform well on an international level. And they'll tailor the product to do that, like working in positive portrayals of the Chinese government in some movies. Aside from politics, the bigger penalty in trying to make a movie play well everywhere is things like comedy don't translate well. Just add more explosions, spectacle and dumb down the story line. And do happy endings 99.9% of the time.
The big American studios are now making more money overseas than they're making in the US. A bad sequel can fail at the box office in the US, but end up still making money in China and elsewhere. That's leaving American movie-goers stuck with ever more bland content to watch at the McMultiplex. There's more interesting stuff to watch on TV, even if it is produced with much smaller budgets.
Many of the smaller budget, more independent movies aren't even making it to theaters in modest sized markets like mine. They'll play on a modest number of screens in major cities. Most Americans will only have a chance to see those movies when they arrive on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
What we see now is just the standard operating mode of boring, bug businesses: Maximizing share holders value by milking existing products and product lines, being risk-averse towards new ideas to such extent that it's often better to kill them outright (imagine someone else walking away with that idea and making a killing with it). It's all fine and well, until it isn't. And like Bobby pointed out with Disco, it can go fast.
Here's one trend I find interesting or troubling. Back in the late 1990's when the whole DVD-fueled home theater boom happened the massive sales were driven by a lot of original movies. The movie studios put a LOT of effort into many of those early era DVD releases. The original DVD release of Fight Club packed in a lot more goodies and elaborate packaging than any of the Blu-ray releases that followed it. Today when someone buys a movie on Blu-ray they'll open a standard plastic case and often find nothing more than a disc inside. No printed booklets about the movie and very few extras on the disc. Boutique labels like Shout Factory are the only ones putting in any credible effort with their discs. The major studios just don't care about that anymore. Yet, for some reason, they still want that theatrical release over and done ASAP.
Newer movies are so disposable that I personally rarely ever buy movies anymore. Over the past decade I've seen a lot more movies at the theater than I've bought or rented on disc. If the major studios shorten the release window enough to kill theater attendance then Hollywood movies anymore to me will be made for TV movies. The lack of a theatrical release window is NOT going to entice me to suddenly start buying movies on disc again. The studios have to start making movies I can watch multiple times and still find entertaining.
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