When you look only at the top 10 numbers for each year, there definitely seems like less original movies being released in general.
That's one thing that's odd. Using charts of what audiences
watched to prove there are less original films being
made is odd.
What? American Sniper is an adaptation of a book that never saw a film interpretation prior to its recent release. I do not think that a first film adaptation is a case against originality.
Again, it was a popular book that Warner Bros signed and decided they weren't making unless they could get Bradley Cooper to do it. It started with Steven Spielberg as director. This wasn't an emotional product. It was very much in line with Hollywood's style of minimizing risk. American Sniper was not an original script.
It is what we call an Oscar Bait film, released to garner studio prestige. Generally these films are released in December or January, right before Oscar voting, to keep the films fresh in the Academy's minds. See also: Selma and Imitation Game. That's not to say they aren't passionate products, but they run counter to normal major studio development.
Your last point regarding original projects only getting traction when a director has scratched a studios back by working on popcorn flicks is also criminally false. Yes, it does happen but the two can be mutually exclusive. Wes Anderson. Clint Eastwood. Alejandro Inarritu...
I though we were talking about blockbusters here, hence why people keep posting the Top 10 films.
Birdman was made for $18 million. Grand Budapest Hotel is $30 million. (Both were Fox Searchlight) Eastwood's past film was based on a musical: $40 million. Fincher (who did Gone Girl, an adaptation, for $61 million) has already said his next project will be a television season. This is not to say these artistic films don't exist, but many of there's still many adaptations on the lower end of the spectrum. Jumping above a budget of $100 million is unheard of, and even cruising above $20 million tends to require a few past successes for executives to bank on.
Here's Steven Soderbergh:
Well, how does a studio decide what movies get made? One thing they take into consideration is the foreign market, obviously. It’s become very big. So that means, you know, things that travel best are going to be action-adventure, science fiction, fantasy, spectacle, some animation thrown in there. Obviously the bigger the budget, the more people this thing is going to have to appeal to, the more homogenized it’s got to be, the more simplified it’s got to be. So things like cultural specificity and narrative complexity, and, god forbid, ambiguity, those become real obstacles to the success of the film here and abroad.
So then there’s the expense of putting a movie out, which is a big problem. Point of entry for a mainstream, wide-release movie: $30 million. That’s where you start. Now you add another 30 for overseas. Now you’ve got to remember, the exhibitors pay half of the gross, so to make that 60 back you need to gross 120. So you don’t even know what your movie is yet, and you’re already looking at 120. That ended up being part of the reason why the Liberace movie didn’t happen at a studio. We only needed $5 million from a domestic partner, but when you add the cost of putting a movie out, now you’ve got to gross $75 million to get that 35 back, and the feeling amongst the studios was that this material was too “special” to gross $70 million. So the obstacle here isn’t just that special subject matter, but that nobody has figured out how to reduce the cost of putting a movie out. There have been some attempts to analyze it, but one of the mysteries is that this analysis doesn’t really reveal any kind of linear predictive behavior, it’s still mysterious the process whereby people decide if they’re either going to go to a movie or not go to a movie. Sometimes you don’t even know how you reach them. Like on Magic Mike for instance, the movie opened to $38 million, and the tracking said we were going to open to 19. So the tracking was 100% wrong. It’s really nice when the surprise goes in that direction, but it’s hard not to sit there and go how did we miss that? If this is our tracking, how do you miss by that much?
I know one person who works in marketing at a studio suggested, on a modestly budgeted film that had some sort of brand identity and some A-list talent attached, she suggested, “Look, why don’t we not do any tracking at all, and just spend 15 and we’ll just put it out”. They wouldn’t do it. They were afraid it would fail, when they fail doing the other thing all the time.
And the kicker, less studio films:
In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, ten years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard.
Which is to say, the studios generally don't take chances. They minimize risk. That's not to say they don't make original films with original ideas. Of course they do. But on the higher end, the films that get the big money are proven winners, things they can bank on. Interstellar had a box office of $165 million, which is unheard of for an original film. It happened because Nolan had made bank with the Dark Knight Trilogy.
Nolan's career:
Following: $6,000
Memento: $5 million
Insomnia: $46 million (His first studio picture based on the success of Memento, also a remake)
Batman Begins: $150 million
The Prestige: $40 million (Adaptation of a novel)
The Dark Knight: $185 million
Inception: $160 million (Nolan gets to make his own movie after succeeding with two Batman films.)
The Dark Knight Rises: $250 million
Interstellar: $165 million (Nolan's own film again.)
Nolan was so big after The Dark Knight that
studios literally fought to produce Interstellar. And they give him a high amount of freedom relative to his peers. Why? He made them money.
Let's talk about that rarity and Hollywood filmmaking. The current route is an indie film and then getting moved onto a branded project. Josh Trank directs Chronicle ($12 million), he gets moved to direct Fantastic Four. Gareth Edwards directs Monsters ($500,000), he gets moved to direct Godzilla (and Godzilla leads to Star Wars). James Gunn, Slither and Super to Guardian of the Galaxy. Duncan Jones goes from Moon to Warcraft. Peter Jackson did Dead Alive and Heavenly Creatures before landing King Kong and The Lord of the Rings. Again this is the general scope of Hollywood. Minimize risk. Proven property, proven director.
(Some directors work with smaller production companies and distributors to keep their relative independence, like Neill Blomkamp.)
But originality of stories is not what many are arguing for. The concept of originality can be broadened to incorporate entirely new concepts, characters and stories altogether.
And that originality tends to come on the lower-budget end or in high-budget movies from directors that have "made it".
Could those movies have been told had they had different titles? Even then would oeopke's perception have been that they were original movies? Branding is a helluva drug
Could they have been told? Probably. At those budget levels? Probably not. Branding implies safety to Hollywood execs.
Wes Anderson, Alejandro Inarritu, ummm, David O Russell, David Finch....
Looooooow budget. David O. Russell's most expensive film is Three Kings. Remove that, his most expensive films are American Hustle ($40 million) and The Fighter ($20 million). Cheap films that play well. High-end, low-end.
Let's review, ha ha. I was specifically responding to a point MHWilliams made when he asserted that original ideas, not Blockbusters per se, don't get studio push unless a Director agrees to some stipulation that he/she make marketable movies first. He cited Nolan and Batman as an example of what had to be done before Nolan could do Interception. I said no. I cited examples of Director names. You said yes. Now we are hyah.
And you are largely incorrect. You want to get a solid mid-range budget these days? You have to be a name director (previous success required) and have a property behind you. Gone are the days where you can be like David Fincher and jump directly into a studio film (Alien 3 in his case.)
1) Do you think that audiences are open to new stories being told using old brands?
Yes.
2) Do you think studios are open to using old brands to incite people to hear their new stories or to make easy money? If the latter, could this be why people hate this film for being (symbokically) "Hollywood " as it were.
Very much yes. As I said, minimizing risk.
I think audiences see "intent". Like, we got that RoboCop, GB, whatever, back then were "toy" movies but there was still fun to be had and layers to be explored in some instances when you had a lead actor who brought in a gravitas to the plate. There was also a sense of awe because the experience was fresh, even if not particularly deep.
But this squanders the "intent" of the directing and writing team. Insomnia was a remake, but Nolan did heavy rewrites to the script to make it "his" film.
