And we’re far from out of the woods. The vast majority of films coming in the rest of summer are sequels or based on brands. Some are safer than others —“Suicide Squad,” “Finding Dory” and “The Conjuring 2” all feel like hits, and we assume that any baby-men boycott of “Ghostbusters” will have a negligible effect. But most other upcoming franchise films feel shaky otherwise.
The vultures have been circling “Warcraft” for a while, and tracking indicates it’s heading for a disastrous $25 million opening, though the film could do well enough internationally to save face. “Independence Day: Resurgence” has not yet seemed to recapture the simple marketing of its predecessor, and few seem to be truly excited about “Star Trek Beyond” and “Jason Bourne,” which have been giving off an air of been-there-done-that. And it’s hard to see circumstances in which “The Legend Of Tarzan” or “Ben Hur” will not be colossal disasters, given that no human being seems to have expressed a desire to see them.
To be fair, it’s not like original movies are necessarily performing any better —“The Nice Guys” and “Money Monster” are the kind of films that everyone claims they want to see more of, but few turn up to see in theaters. Competition from peak TV, streaming services, YouTube and video games makes this a tough time for the movies in general.
But the idea that, as veteran producer Lynda Obst told the Financial Times, “in Hollywood, familiarity breeds success, not contempt” is starting to look like it’s built on shaky ground. Clearly, there are certain franchises that audiences have a continuing appetite for — the ‘James Bond‘ series, which reinvents itself every few years, or Marvel, which has the better-at-this-than-anyone Kevin Feige at the helm. The studio thinking for several years has been that a franchise or IP —any franchise or IP— is a safer bet than original material, but a ‘Winter’s War’ or ‘Looking Glass’ or “Neighbors 2” or “Ted 2” or “Allegiant” shows that’s not the case. These are films that are losing significant sums —and sequels are invariably costlier than originals— and which only exist because an executive decided there should be a franchise, without thinking if anyone actually wanted to see one.
A hit doesn’t necessarily make a franchise make. “Alice In Wonderland” was a massive success, which came from a confluence of a well-loved book, a star who hadn’t yet outlasted his goodwill (the events of Johnny Depp‘s personal life in the past week may have had an adverse effect on sequel’s opening), and most crucially, by filling the post-“Avatar” hunger for 3D films. The reason people turned up for “Snow White And The Huntsman” came from the first part of that title, not the second. People loved “Neighbors” and “Ted,” but their sequels never convinced audiences that they weren’t just getting the same thing again. And by the time the third “Divergent” arrived, audiences were simply burned out on YA dystopia, especially ones as generic as that series.
The film industry is built on the uneasy alliance of art and commerce. It’s so expensive to make a film that you almost always have to have some kind of audience in mind, and yet the process is so arduous and unpredictable that attempts to make a film by committee invariably go wrong, or are ultimately rejected by audiences. It means that risk is indivisibly a part of filmmaking as either an art or as business. And any attempts to reduce risk is likely doomed to failure, because there are simply too many factors to control.
Realistically, there’s not going to be an overnight change: movie studios being owned by multinational corporations means there’s too much at stake to not continually pump out franchises. But one of the reasons that TV is luring away so many viewers right now is that it’s still a place where distinctive, diverse voices and original ideas can find a home. By feeding audiences the same stuff over and over again and by chasing brands without considering whether that brand deserves to be a film, studio executives risk further driving audiences away, rather than winning them back.
