“Premature Sequelization: Sequel culture runs amok. And this time it’s personal.”
Fresh on the heels of the news that there are at least 86 movies in various stages of development, pre-production, and production in Hollywood, comes this:
Time was, months or even years might pass before a studio decided it was interested in a sequel to a popular film. But these days, the culture of franchises in Hollywood is such that studios are taking flyers on follow-ups months before the first film gets released. Pretty soon they’ll be committing to a sequel before they even decide to make the original.
The news Wednesday that Disney has already commissioned the writers of the summer movie “Tron Legacy” to write a second (and possibly third) film in the rebooted franchise is only the latest example. Last year Warner Bros. created a stir when it seemed to move forward with a “Hangover” sequel two months before the film was released. Then came Sherlock Holmes, which signed new writers to tackle a second Conan Doyle-derived tale as many as three months before the holiday film hit theaters. And a few weeks ago we reported on producers and executives bringing back the writers of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” for another go-round before the first movie came out.
In some ways, there’s a logic to what studios are trying to do. Companies shell out millions on development anyway; if executives think they have a hit on their hands, they may as well put a marker on an existing property. There’s also a timing issue: Hits are scarce and investors want results quickly, so better to maximize every bit of available time.
Key item: “investors want results quickly.” I can not emphasize enough how this is a massive paradigm shift from even 20 years ago. As I noted in a previous post:
As recently as the late 80s, the conventional wisdom was that a sequel would do 50% of the business that the original movie did. Therefore the studios would budget a cut-rate product — in terms of prod costs and marketing — before giving a greenlight to the project. Nowadays oftentimes the first movie basically tees up the franchise for subsequent sequels that do better business than the original.
Now Tron: Legacy is getting a greenlit sequel weeks before the original comes out. Smart business, no downside, right?
But developing a sequel months before a movie comes out sends a questionable, if not hubristic, message to audiences — “We’re thinking about cramming another movie down your throat, and before you’ve even told us if you’ve liked the first one.”
And what about the screenwriters? Great opportunity to write a sequel to a [presumably] hit movie, but if the studios look at sequels as reliable moneymakers, a screenwriter has the weight of those anticipated revenues hanging over their head with every creative choice they put down on paper. Moreover if the sequel is simply one in an expected series of more sequels, any conversation with a studio exec has this big fat subtext: “You better not screw up this franchise!” Not to mention one central story issue: How to make the sequel more of its own movie rather than a remake of a previous movie.
But hey, that’s why they pay screenwriters the big bucks, right?
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