Patrick Goldstein: “Why does Hollywood’s heat of the summer box office feel so ice cold?”
So when confronted by a dismal Memorial Day weekend at the box office, last week there was this:
“There very well could be some burnout with moviegoers, who are looking for something new and fresh,” a top studio exec lamented Tuesday.
The phenomenon has a name: “sequelitis.” But then the very next day, we had this:
Summer 2010 always looked soft from a distance. Why? Because of a lack of sequels [emphasis added]. No Spider-Man, Batman, Transformers, Bourne, or Harry Potter. But Pixar and The Karate Kid and Adam Sandler and Tom Cruise and Twilight and Angelina Jolie and a reboot of Predator and hopeful franchises The Last Airbender and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice are all on the way, amongst 3 more sequels, 2 remakes, Chris Nolan, Julia Roberts, Sly Stallone, and a Will Ferrell/Adam McKay comedy.
Too many sequels. Not enough sequels. Oy.
Fortunately LA Times “The Big Picture” blogger Patrick Goldstein sheds some light instead of heat with this column:
So why the cold shoulder from audiences? This is the time of year when all we hear about are the remakes and sequels and rebooted franchises coming off the studio assembly lines. But the real problem with this summer’s box office is that it hasn’t spawned a really good original movie, since it’s the original movies — like last year’s “The Hangover,” “Up” and “The Proposal” — that bring a broader swath of eager new moviegoers into the theaters [emphasis added]. In fact, the movies from the first week of June in 2009 and 2008 that would’ve finished ahead of “Shrek” were all original films — “Up” and “The Hangover” from 2009, “Kung Fu Panda” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” from 2008.
Ask any box-office expert: If all you had were sequels and remakes, you could pretty easily chart the flow of moviegoers into the theaters. Even though some films would over-perform and some would fail to meet expectations, the end results would be pretty predictable. It’s the original films that are the wild cards. Year after year, from “Star Wars” to “The Blair Witch Project,” from “The Sixth Sense” to “The Passion of the Christ,” from “The Matrix” to “Twilight,” they are the surprise hits that really drive the business.
Original movies create a palpable sense of verve and excitement that not only propel themselves to box office glory, but expand the audience for films that follow in their wake. A strikingly original film — and there is no better example than “Avatar,” which almost singlehandedly launched the 3-D revolution earlier this year — works its magic by injecting good vibes into our moviegoing collective subconscious. Whether its a groundbreaker like “Avatar” or simply a feel-good surprise like “The Blind Side,” the buzz generated by an original film can essentially persuade reluctant moviegoers to make an extra trip to the multiplex instead of staying home and watching TV.
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So why the cold shoulder from audiences? This is the time of year when all we hear about are the remakes and sequels and rebooted franchises coming off the studio assembly lines. But the real problem with this summer’s box office is that it hasn’t spawned a really good original movie, since it’s the original movies — like last year’s “The Hangover,” “Up” and “The Proposal” — that bring a broader swath of eager new moviegoers into the theaters. In fact, the movies from the first week of June in 2009 and 2008 that would’ve finished ahead of “Shrek” were all original films — “Up” and “The Hangover” from 2009, “Kung Fu Panda” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” from 2008.
Ask any box-office expert: If all you had were sequels and remakes, you could pretty easily chart the flow of moviegoers into the theaters. Even though some films would over-perform and some would fail to meet expectations, the end results would be pretty predictable. It’s the original films that are the wild cards. Year after year, from “Star Wars” to “The Blair Witch Project,” from “The Sixth Sense” to “The Passion of the Christ,” from “The Matrix” to “Twilight,” they are the surprise hits that really drive the business.
Original movies create a palpable sense of verve and excitement that not only propel themselves to box office glory, but expand the audience for films that follow in their wake. A strikingly original film — and there is no better example than “Avatar,” which almost singlehandedly launched the 3-D revolution earlier this year — works its magic by injecting good vibes into our moviegoing collective subconscious. Whether its a groundbreaker like “Avatar” or simply a feel-good surprise like “The Blind Side,” the buzz generated by an original film can essentially persuade reluctant moviegoers to make an extra trip to the multiplex instead of staying home and watching TV.
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But what really counts here isn’t so much sticker shock as the shock of the new. Even in the summer, when we’re accustomed to expect a never-ending deluge of reworked ideas and retro-fitted story lines, it turns out that it’s the movie that delivers something startlingly new that reminds audiences why they started going to the movies in the first place.
I’m tempted to just go, “What he said,” but there’s one small problem with the thesis per last summer and it’s called Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which did $402M domestic and another $434M international.
But because I have so much respect for Goldstein, a longtime favorite observer of the movie business, and because I’m pumped to see Inception, quite interested in seeing Knight & Day, and absolutely looking forward to Dinner for Schmucks, I can live with the thesis that what Hwood needs is more original movies.
Besides it’s much easier to get motivated to write a spec script with that frame of mind, isn’t it?