Movie studios are increasingly relying on established franchises and intellectual properties (IPs) for profit, with a focus on big-budget blockbusters rather than original content. And that is a really bad thing.
They said the age of heroes would never come again," says Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman wonderingly in 2017's Justice League, referring to the rise of metahumans (DC's in-universe term for superheroes) like herself, Superman, the Flash, and so on. It has indeed come in our world, and I cannot wait for it to be over. No, we are not beset by (that we know of) by intergalactic warlords like Steppenwolf or Darkseid and there aren't any spandex-clad creatures flying or swinging through our cities, shooting laser beams from their eyes or web from gadgets and whatnot. What I do see is, as a movie buff, a cinematic landscape overrun by superhero movies, movies based on established IPs, sequels, prequels, and remakes.
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There is some indication that your typical moviegoer may be worn out by the inundation of cinema halls by these kinds of movies over the last decade and a half. There is a new hunger for original content in the air. But movie studios may be slow to catch up, which would surprise absolutely no one.
From Disney to Warner Bros Discovery, movie studios are falling back to old, tried-and-tested intellectual properties (IPs). After removing Bob Chapek as CEO, Disney announced "restructuring" which inevitably meant layoffs. 7,000 employees (3 per cent of its workforce) lost their jobs. Bob Iger, who had also led the company through its most profitable tenure from 2005 to 2020, was brought in from retirement and he quickly made it clear that his priority is profit. Earlier, in his original tenure he had expanded aggressively by acquiring valuable (in terms of popular appeal and expected returns) IPs like Pixar, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Marvel Entertainment. Now, he means to cash in on all that IP goodness to earn moolah and bring the company back on track.
The company recently announced Toy Story 5, Frozen 3, and Zootopia 2. The MCU juggernaut will not stop until remains profitable for the company. And judging purely by the box office numbers, the movies in the cinematic universe remain moneymaking and this may be just a brief lull after the mega extravaganzas that were the last two Avengers movies.
He instated James Gunn and his producing partner Peter Safran as co-heads of DC Studios, a successor to DC Films. This approach might actually do some good to DC movies, but it might be too little, too late.
To be fair, all that isn't new. Ever since Steven Spielberg invented the modern blockbuster with 1975's Jaws, crowd-pleasers have dominated the box office charts. But things have never been so heavily skewed towards franchises and sequels as they are now. In the past, successful movies would often inspire sequels or spin-offs, but they were not the only game in town. There was still room for original stories to be told, and they could often find success on their own merits.
With each new instalment of a successful franchise, the stakes are higher, and the budgets become larger. This creates a cycle of dependence, where studios feel the need to keep churning out sequels and prequels to meet the demand for more content from fans. There are people I know who get nonplussed while watching Marvel movies unless they come across a mention or connection or reference or Easter egg to another character or movie within the MCU every fifteen minutes or so. It is all unchallenging fluff that is not suited for the discerning movie buff.
The trend may be seeing an encouraging reversal, but for the most part, movies based on original ideas are becoming rare, and it is now unheard of an original movie not backed by a major director or star being financed by any of the big studios. A24 is one exception as it is one indie studio that has done a unique thing of turning itself into a brand, a place, where you can watch weird, exciting, and auteur-driven movies.
But as I said, A24 is an exception to the rule. So why do big studios rarely put their weight behind original stuff? One major factor is the current business model of the film industry, which seriously needs an overhaul. It places a premium on big-budget blockbusters and franchises that have a proven track record of success. As a result, studios are more likely to invest in sequels, remakes, and adaptations of popular books, comics, or video games rather than taking risks on untested ideas.
The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios (also known metonymously as Hollywood) along with some independent films, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is classical Hollywood cinema, which developed from 1910 to 1962 and is still typical of most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema,[5] American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. As of 2017[update], it produced the third-largest number of films of any national cinema, after India and China, with more than 600 English-language films released on average every year.[6] While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. Because of this, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema,[7] and has produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood often outsources production to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful and most ticket-selling movies in the world.[8][9]
Many of Hollywood's highest-grossing movies have generated more box-office revenue and ticket sales outside the United States than films made elsewhere. The United States is a leading pioneer in motion picture engineering and technology.
In New York, the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, which was built during the silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields. The Edison Studios were located in the Bronx. Chelsea, Manhattan, was also frequently used. Other Eastern cities, most notably Chicago and Cleveland, also served as early centers for film production.[20][21] In the West, California was already quickly emerging as a major film production center. In Colorado, Denver was home to the Art-O-Graf film company, and Walt Disney's early Laugh-O-Gram animation studio was based in Kansas City, Missouri. Picture City, Florida, was a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, the idea collapsed and Picture City returned to its original name of Hobe Sound. An attempt to establish a film production center in Detroit also proved unsuccessful.[22]
Classical Hollywood cinema, or the Golden Age of Hollywood, is defined as a technical and narrative style characteristic of American cinema from 1913 to 1962, during which thousands of movies were issued from the Hollywood studios. The Classical style began to emerge in 1913, was accelerated in 1917 after the U.S. entered World War I, and finally solidified when the film The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, ending the silent film era and increasing box-office profits for film industry by introducing sound to feature films.
The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Only Angels Have Wings, Ninotchka and Midnight. Among the other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be classics: Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, the original King Kong, Mutiny on the Bounty, Top Hat, City Lights, Red River, The Lady from Shanghai, Rear Window, On the Waterfront, Rebel Without a Cause, Some Like It Hot, and The Manchurian Candidate.
Martin Scorsese has warned that cinema as an art form is "being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced" to "content" and called blockbusters' overemphasis on box-office returns "repulsive".[92][93] Quentin Tarantino opined that the 2020s were one of the "worst" eras "in Hollywood history" on a podcast interview.[94][95] During a masterclass at the 2023 Sarajevo Film Festival, Charlie Kaufman criticized mainstream blockbusters, stating that "[a]t this point, the only thing that makes money is garbage" and encouraged industry professionals to "make movies outside of the studio system as much as possible".[96][97] James Gray noted in an interview with Deadline, "When you make movies that only make a ton of money and only one kind of movie, you begin to get a large segment of the population out of the habit of going to the movies", which causes viewership to decrease, though clarified that he has "no problem with a comic book movie". As a solution to the lack of "investment in the broad-based engagement with the product", he suggests that studios "be willing to lose money for a couple of years on art film divisions, and in the end they will be happier."[98]
Hollywood producers generally seek to comply with the Chinese government's censorship requirements in a bid to access the country's restricted and lucrative cinema market,[108] with the second-largest box office in the world as of 2016. This includes prioritizing sympathetic portrayals of Chinese characters in movies, such as changing the villains in Red Dawn from Chinese to North Koreans.[108] Due to many topics forbidden in China, such as Dalai Lama and Winnie-the-Pooh being involved in the South Park's episode "Band in China", South Park was entirely banned in China after the episode's broadcast.[109] The 2018 film Christopher Robin, the new Winnie-the-Pooh movie, was denied a Chinese release.[109]
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