“Why remakes are killing the movie business”

Two articles. First a new Vulture series from agent turned manager turned producer Gavin Polone:

The total box office is down 4 percent from 2010 so far this year, but the film industry should pay closer attention to a far more revealing and damning number: 2011 looks to have the lowest number of actual tickets sold since 1996, according to Nash Information Services. The only reasons the drop in overall grosses has been held to single digits are 3-D surcharges and general ticket-price raising, because make no mistake, the film audience is shrinking dangerously. Most people I talk to say they aren’t going to theaters because “there isn’t anything to see.” When I probe deeper I learn that they actually mean, “Everything seems like something I’ve already seen.” The marketplace has been stocked with an ever-growing collection of rereleases, sequels, and remakes, thanks to an entertainment industry that suffers from a condition I’ve named corporatephagia. This is the entertainment industry version of a behavior evidenced by my dog, Joey, that’s called corprophagia: He decides that a meal he has previously enjoyed can be appreciated again once it has been processed through his system and emerged out of the opposite end from which it entered.

As I know from personal experience, film executives — most of whom use terms like content, brands, and franchise when talking of potential film projects — are directed by their bosses to mine the studio’s libraries for remakes. On numerous occasions, I’ve been told by grasping and desperate execs to take a look at their catalogue and come back to them with ideas on how to remake something. The motivation for studios to focus on their own film libraries for ideas is that they’re the greatest hard asset they possess: The last few studios to change hands (Miramax, MGM, and DreamWorks) were priced solely on the value of their libraries, with no credit given for their actual moviemaking infrastructure. Since home video revenue has cratered during the past few years, deriving revenue from those older titles through other means than selling ancillary viewings is imperative if the studios don’t want to write down the value of their assets. When a studio remakes one of its own forgotten or fading films, it implicitly boosts its value, which then in turn helps boost the studio’s total worth. And that’s how we end up with remakes of The Omen, The Poseidon Adventure, The Women, The Stepfather, Halloween, The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, Race to Witch Mountain, The A-Team, Fame, Fright Night, Conan the Barbarian, Land of the Lost, The Mechanic, Arthur, The Green Hornet, and now, Straw Dogs. Sure, not all of those releases were commercially unsuccessful, but it doesn’t mean they were good. After paying for a ticket to those films, many viewers were left with the same feeling I get when my dog Joey tries to lick me after partaking in his self-generated snack. (Are there any of my potential employers whom I haven’t pissed off with that last sentence?)

Clearly Hollywood movie studios are tracking these numbers and we may expect they will be devising a whole new approach to their business model to respond to this downward trend, right?

Uh, no. Another article from Vulture:

A summer of sequels and reboots just passed, and it’s time to look ahead … to another year full of sequels and reboots! A quick analysis by Vulture of next year’s releases shows that one in three films will be either a remake, reboot, rerelease, sequel, or prequel. As one might expect, the summer will be especially rich in déjà vu: Half the films in both June and July carry the DNA of films past — which sounds like a lot until you get to August, when two thirds of the movies do.

No genre is safe from freeze-drying: Action will get Journey (to the Center of the Earth) 2, Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance, and Die Hard 5. Horror will get Underworld Awakening and The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes. Not content with $1.8 billion in worldwide grosses from weepy tweens, Paramount will rerelease Titanic, this time in glorious, wallet-shrinking 3-D! Sequels? You like sequels? How about The Expendables 2, Madagascar 3, Step Up 4, or Scary Movie 5? Didn’t care for Relativity’s March remake of Snow White? Give it another chance in June, when Universal releases Snow White and the Huntsman!

Phew! Glad to see some things never change…

For the Polone piece, go here.

For the really depressing second article, go here.

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