Jon Favreau: Summer 2011 will be a ‘bloodbath’ for Hollywood
From Hero Complex:
Jon Favreau has seen Hollywood’s future — at least as far as summer 2011 — and it looks a lot like “Saving Private Ryan.” “It’s Omaha Beach, it’s going to be a bloodbath,” the filmmaker said of next year’s crush of big special-effects films, remakes and sequels. “There’s never been a summer like this next summer. It’s going to be bloody [for filmmakers and the studios]. As we were sticking thumb tacks in a calendar we realized that this is going to be looked back upon as Omaha Beach.”
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Favreau’s track record and the cast make “Cowboys and Aliens” a movie to pay attention to, but Favreau knows he is going up against some titans of the popcorn sector. “Do you know the list? It’s pretty staggering,” Favreau said. It is a deep roster: There’s the huge finale of the ”Harry Potter” franchise, Johnny Depp’s return to his signature role with a new “Pirates of the Caribbean” installment from Disney and a third “Transformers” film, which is Michael Bay’s follow-up to the 2009 mecha-movie that pulled in more than $836 million worldwide.
Then there’s the masked-man crowd, with four major superhero films: ”Green Lantern” starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by “Casino Royale’s” Martin Campbell ; “Thor” and ”Captain America: The First Avenger,” two promising projects from the ever-expanding Marvel Studios universe; and director Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class,” which will take the prequel route to Fox’s mutant-hero epic. Also arriving are proven animation powerhouses, such as Pixar’s “Cars 2” and the DreamWorks sequel to ”Kung Fu Panda,” as well as a new “Winnie the Pooh” feature film that goes old-school bear with hand-drawn animation. “The Smurfs 3D” will seek out the youngest moviegoers, as will Robert Rodriguez’s return to kid fare, “Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World.”
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Favreau said it’s great for moviegoers, but it looks like a steel-cage match for filmmakers and studio executives. “There’s not a weekend where there won’t be teeth on the floor. The audience wins but it’s going to be rough for people making these movies. Then there was the big rush to 3D, so you have all of these people fighting for a limited number of screens and to get the 3D done, since most of these are hybrids or conversions, so this is a technology that is still in the relatively early stages and there’s going to be a lot of blood pressures going up in the months ahead.”
Why don’t studios spread the wealth? The simple reason is that the summer months mean big box-office; young people are out of school and willing to make repeat visits to their favorite new silver-screen adventure. More than that, Favreau said, there is a deep anxiety in Hollywood that home-video retail is headed for a cliff.
Theater screens are a zero-sum game: only x amount of screens for a, b, c, d, etc films. If a movie opens weakly in the summer, it can be gone from prime run within 2 weeks. Enormous pressure on filmmakers and studio marketing departments.
I’ll put together a list of releases for 2011 soon.
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