“Hollywood storms the West Wing with two movies”
Over the years, I have talked quite often about one of the fundamental tenets of the Hollywood entertainment business: similar but different [as I did here]. That is the suits are most comfortable acquiring, developing, producing and distributing projects that are similar to previous movies and TV shows, but different enough that they’re… well… different enough. What does that mean? I doubt there are any rules about this, but the goal is clear enough: different enough that consumers feel like it’s worth the time and effort to drag their fannies off the couch, then schlep to the local theater. Too similar, folks may simply say, “Eh… I’ll wait and catch it on cable.”
There’s an interesting wrinkle tied to the whole similar but different mentality and to understand it, you have get the subtext: Fear. Similar means not original, not distinctive, not something that could bomb and cause me my job.
So if everyone on that side of the desk is more afraid of making a bad decision rather than rushing headlong toward a good decision, what can happen is this: Studio A buys a project about Topic X. Studio B says, “Hm, if Studio A sees something commercially viable with Topic X, maybe we should be looking for a similar but different project.”
Cue the LA Times:
When veteran filmmaker Roland Emmerich was first offered the chance to direct a movie about terrorists taking over the White House, he couldn’t believe his luck.
“It’s such a good idea,” Emmerich, the money-minting director of movies such as “2012,” said last week at a Culver City editing facility, where he has been holed up polishing his new film, “White House Down.” “I was surprised no one had done it before.”
It turns out someone has. Just before.
Emmerich’s movie, about a wannabe Secret Service agent with a Messiah complex who serendipitously ends up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. during a fiery terrorist attack, will come out June 28. That’s barely three months after the release Friday of Antoine Fuqua’s “Olympus Has Fallen” — about a wannabe Secret Service agent with a Messiah complex who serendipitously ends up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. during a fiery terrorist attack.
“Olympus” and “White House” provide the latest and in some ways strangest example of what happens when a pair of film-industry heavyweights decide to stubbornly stay the course. They also demonstrate how, more than a decade after 9/11, Hollywood is eager to get back to doing what it does best — taking famous landmarks and blowing them to smithereens.
The question is: How much of that destruction will Americans want to see?
You think? Actually two similar but different movies being produced at the same time is small time. If you really want to see Hollywood in this full-blown mania, you have to go the whole body switching phenomenon of 1988–1989 in which five SBD movies [insert joke here] came out within a year of each other:
Will the bets by Millennium (Olympus Has Fallen) and Sony (White House Down) pay off?
“Olympus” has been tracking strongly ahead of its release, suggesting a hit, which could prompt audiences to see Sony’s June film as, essentially, the “other White House movie.”
Even if “Olympus” performs poorly, it could spell worrisome news for Sony, suggesting there isn’t the audience for West Wing shootouts that the studio had hoped.
On the other hand, “White House Down” has some arrows in its quiver. As a summer film from a director with a proven track record and one of the industry’s largest studios, the movie will have more built-in awareness and marketing firepower. And “White House’s” budget, estimated to be at least $150 million, is more than twice that of “Olympus,” ensuring big special effects.
If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on Channing Tatum. I wish both movies well. But honestly, who the hell knows what’s going to happen?
Any takeaway for screenwriters? Just this: Similar but different is going nowhere. The bottom bottom line with anyone who green lights a movie is it has to hit their comfort level… as much as any multimillion dollar project can have a comfort level. And that will almost always translate into something that is similar to a successful precedent.
Here is a trailer for Olympus Has Fallen
Here is a first look at White House Down:
For more of the LAT article, go here.
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