A quick look at the top of 2013’s U.S. box office suggests the creative juices have stopped flowing in Hollywood. Delving deeper back shows this is a worsening trend which began years ago.
“Over the last decade, the entertainment industry has figured out that geeks exist. Hollywood, advertising teams and TV are targeting fan cultures,” said Scott Preston, director of the media, arts and cultures program at UNB.
Seven of this year’s top 10 grossing movies were sequels, prequels, spin-offs or remakes of other movies, which for simplicity’s sake will be called “non-original” movies in this article.
Hollywood has become reluctant to spend big money on new ideas. Out of the 28 $200 million-plus budget films of this decade, only five introduce new protagonists to the big screen, last year’s John Carter, The Green Lantern and Prince of Persia movies of 2010, 2009’s Avatar, and His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass from 2007.
Even at that, Green Lantern had appearances on TV and comic books long before his film debut. Prince of Persia was based on a video game series which has been around for over 25 years.
“An enormous amount of money is put into trying to tell or retell stories with characters that we already know and not enough money is put into giving filmmakers opportunities to tell original stories and create original characters,” said Preston.
“I think it poses, more-so than ever to a young filmmaker, the question of which of the two paths you go down. One path is trying to get into the industry and the other path is remaining independent, where there is more freedom and more different things being made.”
In the past 10 years, there have been 165 movies produced with budgets of over $100 million, 73 of them are ‘non-original’. Above the $150-million price point, 81 movies have been produced, 47 of them are not the protagonist’s first foray into film.
“I’m trying to think of the qualities that make a good movie and not one of them is money. I don’t like these big-budget movies because of all the special effects and stuff which take away from the story. Money doesn’t make a movie bad, but it certainly doesn’t make it a good movie either,” said Kalib De Merchant, a huge film and television fan.
The amount of money and marketing put into these recycled ideas suggests film executives are looking to keep it this way. At the end of the day, this appears an issue of supply and not demand.
With expectations raising for big-budget movies to make big profits, movie executives are taking the safe bet.
“The blockbuster game has changed. They’ve upped the ante so much that they have to be very very careful where they’re going to spend their next $200 million,” said Preston.
