Reader Question: Do Hollywood studios set out to make horrible movies?

A reader question from Mahmoud:

Do Studios set out to make horrible movies?

We are all here in your great forum take lessons everyday that inspires us to write better and to set the bar up high.

Read scripts, write pages. Rewrite, get feedback. The only way out is through,etc…

All these mantras if followed with spirit and determination, will definitely lead to success.

But sometimes I see some studios movies that are just unbelievably horrible. I can’t help but thinking, who the hell green-lit this piece of crap??

It’s more confusing when a crappy script gets a very high budget. Extremely bedeviling when these crappy scripts are made by what we can call born filmmakers. Like M.Night Shyamalan or Roland Joffe, etc.

Studios claim they spend a lot of money in script doctoring. For instance, a script like A-Team was doctored by a whole team of writers. I really thought it was plain flat. Is that doctoring? Or it just a title that’s put with the balance sheet’s expenses?

Do these great writing mantras exist in Hollywoodland?

Okay, let’s have a show of hands: How many people think that Hollywood studios really don’t care if they make crappy films or not?

Wow. That many of you!

Look, I sympathize. When I go to a movie that’s just been released and it’s bad, it’s embarrassing. Even if I have nothing to do with it, a stinker film is still a reflection on the industry as a whole.

As competitive as Hollywood is, and apart from studios battling with each other re acquisitions, talent, release dates, and what not, nobody wants a movie to fail. Everybody who works in the industry wants the studios to make successful movies so they can pour some of those profits back into acquisition, development, and production budgets.

When a movie fails, it’s like the reverse of Clarence the angel in It’s A Wonderful Life: Instead of “every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings,” in Hollywood it’s “when a movie red ink does sling, an executive loses their bling.”

So I hate to disappoint you, but no, the studios do not set out to make horrible movies. Yes, they will make dumb movies, trashy movies, gross movies, and the like, but it makes zero sense for a studio to set out to make a piece-of-crap film because they are in the business of making money.

And that’s the thing: Every movie that gets produced means that a team of studio executives and eventually the head of production was involved in developing and green lighting that project. Believe it or not, it’s much harder nowadays to get a move made. So what you’re seeing in theaters represents an even higher level of assessment standards than in previous decades.

There are dozens of arguments about why bad movies sometimes emerge from Hollywood. One line of reasoning is that the studios are all part of huge multinational corporations that have no background in making movies. Yes, movies are not widgets, they do actually — at least in part — involve some elements of creativity. But the parent companies are smart enough to hire movie people to run their film divisions.

I’d say there are probably four dynamics that do come into play in terms of why some bad movies get green lit and produced.

* Many people in the business don’t have a very good understanding of story. They may like a project’s concept, genre, talent, and budget, and green light it on that basis without grasping the fact that the story needs work.

* Even if they do understand that the story may be — in their estimation — a bit weak, they may fall in love with the package and green light a project on that basis.

* This last point can be affected by the fact that all the studios have to cover huge fixed expenses. So sometimes a studio may green light a less than solid movie, hoping they can market the hell out of it, just to funnel potential revenue through their distribution system,

* Finally there’s the Cy Young syndrome. He was the pitcher in baseball history with 511 victories. He also lost 316 games. Sometimes a studio is just going to lose by making a lousy movie.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that so many movies are written by multiple sets of writers. In an ideal world, every movie would represent the vision of the original writer. Unless of course the original writers vision sucked. And there lies the rub: Who knows what sucks or not when it comes to story?

The only outfit you can say with any authority that does know what sucks or not is Pixar, who have produced 11 movies, each of which opened at #1, and that’s in large part because they are obsessed with crafting a great story. But all of their movies are have multiple writing credits, which basically sends the original writer’s vision idea into the dumpster.

So to sum up:

Sucky movies bad.

Good movies good.

Hollywood: Do they know the difference? Some times, yes. Some times, no.

If you have any suggestions to help out, I’m sure your ideas would be welcome.

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