Next month, we’ll get another big Christopher Nolan blockbuster in the form of “The Odyssey,” and the veteran filmmaker is trying to share some advice with Hollywood studios on how they can turn the tide on drawing more audiences to theaters after big event movies haven’t had the same impact they used to before COVID and a new generation of adult/teenage moviegoers have spun the trends that lead to major box office earners in directions that studios haven’t exactly caught-on to.
Nolan told The New York Times (via Variety) that studios “playing it safe” with their blockbusters “doesn’t work,” and audiences are desperately “looking for something new,” making the same movies over and over or not expanding their ideas is only harming themselves.
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“If you’re really interested in movies and the history of movies, the one thing you see absolutely is that you have to take risks to succeed. The biggest risk of all is to play it safe,” Nolan said. “That’s what, consistently in mainstream movies, doesn’t work. The audience is looking for something new.”
This is coming from the man behind a billion-dollar box office hit that turned an R-rated period atomic bomb drama into an event film, as “Oppenheimer” became a rare Best Picture Oscar winner that also happened to amass a HUGE audience (to the tune of $975.8 million). To say Nolan mostly grasps what an audience will want to pay to see, and with projects like “Inception” and “Tenet,” he obviously isn’t afraid to make those big swings and risks he’s talking about (to varied results, mind you, but he’s making them).
We’ve seen a recent push in the direction of original and creative horror movies doing extremely well with things like “Sinners,” “Weapons,” “Backrooms,” and “Obsession.” Again, audience trends are always in flux, but thinking that just churning out endless superhero (or other conventional or generic) movies and you’ll be able to print money seems to be a notion that is quickly eroding.
That said, Christopher Nolan looks to tread in the swords and sandals genre after previously exiting “Troy” in the 2000s to make “Batman Begins,” as “The Odyssey” (an R-rated pic budgeted at $250 million) heads to theaters on July 17 with an impressive cast led by Matt Damon. Others appearing in the Greek epic include Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Himesh Patel, Mia Goth, Elliot Page, John Leguizamo, Corey Hawkins, Ryan Hurst, Lupita Nyong’o, Logan Marshall-Green, Will Yun Lee, Samantha Morton, and rapper Travis Scott.
They’ve also recently bucked the Hollywood trend of influencer screenings, which bodes well for Christopher Nolan and Universal’s confidence in the movie not needing the extra promotional boost on social media to get asses in seats, and we cannot wait to see how critics and audiences take in the project next month.
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