In the opening sequence of Robert Altman’s 1991 Hollywood satire “The Player,” a high-powered studio executive (Tim Robbins) comes into the office to field some pitches. A series of screenwriters use their precious seconds to sell him on potential pictures, all with very specific shorthand: they’re all possible Julia Roberts or Bruce Willis vehicles, and they’re all reminiscent of a previous hit, if not a direct descendant of one. “It’s ‘Out of Africa’ meets ‘Pretty Woman,’” goes one pitch, while another is summarized as “’Ghost‘ meets ‘Manchurian Candidate,’” and so on.
But the most memorable prospect comes from Buck Henry, who’s there to pitch “The Graduate, Part II.” “Ben and Elaine are married, still,” the screenwriter explains, living in “a big old spooky house up in Northern California somewhere, and Mrs. Robinson lives with them,” and has had a stroke. “Is this gonna be funny?” asks the exec. “It’s gonna be dark, and funny, and weird, and with a stroke,” Henry promises.
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That sequence already stung when “The Player” hit theaters, hard on the heels of a decade in which mainstream moviemaking fully morphed into content packaging, and producers, studio heads, and agents replaced directors as the industry’s true auteurs. But in the nearly three decades since, the industry and those who flip its green lights have supercharged this philosophy; after all, one of last year’s biggest financial successes and Oscar winners was, in effect, “‘Batman’ meets ‘Taxi Driver.’”
Put simply, budgets and profitability expectations have rocketed so high that, in order to justify the expense, studios require some assurance, the semblance of a guarantee in an industry where everything is a gamble. And thus, much of what they produce are sequels, or remakes, reboots, spin-offs, or adaptations. A few years back, the industry shorthand seeped into the broader discourse, as film and television became more focused on the acquisition and exploitation of Intellectual Property, or, for short, I.P.
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But there’s an inherent danger to this philosophy: eventually, they’re going to run out of things to remake/adapt/etc. And thus, we’re veering into “The Graduate, Part II” territory, as studios and filmmakers seek to re-monetize properties that do not, to put it mildly, have the same cultural reach as Marvel or “Star Wars,” but carry the leftover impression of respectability and class. Call it the age of Prestige I.P. (intellectual property).
We have FX’s new limited series expansion of the Powell and Pressburger classic “Black Narcissus,” starring Gemma Arterton; Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series “Ratched,” an origin story for the villain of Milos Forman’s 1975 Oscar winner “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”; HBO’s forthcoming limited series remake of Ingmar Bergman’s series-turned-film “Scenes From a Marriage,” with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain; HBOMax and Amblin’s long-percolating series adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”; Ben Affleck’s recently announced film adaptation of Sam Wasson’s non-fiction book “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood,” chronicling the making of Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic (in other words, a movie based on a book about making a movie); and two dueling projects – one a Paramount+ limited series starring Armie Hammer and one a Barry Levinson-directed film – about the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather.”
So how did we land here? It’s no longer a surprise to note that non-original works dominate the culture; every single one of last year’s ten highest-grossing movies was based on something else, and further, only two films in the top twenty (“Us” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) were not adaptations. But this isn’t particularly newsworthy – only one of the top 10 of 2015 was an original property, and only two of the top 10 of 2010 hit that mark.
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Film historian Mark Harris is something of an expert on Hollywood and I.P.; back in 2014, he wrote a celebrated Grantland essay called “The Birdcage,” in which he mused, “MGM’s old, gloriously lofty motto was ‘Ars Gratia Artis’; today, the only thing written in invisible ink on every studio gate is ‘More of What Works,’ a credo that would be right at home at the entrance to any manufacturing plant.”
Suffice it to say, the landscape has not changed in the past six years. “For one thing, I think that’s inextricably tied to consolidation,” he says, “and since I wrote that piece, 20th Century Fox has basically gone. Paramount seems to be sort of half-functioning as a studio and half functioning as a supplier for Netflix. So we’re dealing with fewer and bigger studios that are ever more devoted to branded product.”
So, why do we see this mini-trend? “I have to say, my instinct is, in some ways, I kind of love it,” laughs Mark Harris. “Like, the idea that anyone would thank that a 1974 Ingmar Bergman movie was, like, valuable I.P. that should be exploited – great. As opposed to somebody saying, Well, isn’t it time for the third ‘Josie and the Pussycats’ reboot, you know, you want to go for Bergman or ‘Chinatown?’ Great.
“More seriously, I would say that since the 1930s. Hollywood has always attracted anything that has proved itself, even a little bit, in any other medium. I mean, novels that they buy to adapt are existing I.P. Plays are existing I.P. So a little bit of it feels to me a function of the fact that money people would always rather take a gamble on anything that someone else has thought was worthwhile than on something that is created out of whole cloth.”
Perhaps that explains these projects, which spring from critically lauded but ultimately (at the moment, at least) niche media. In terms of cultural penetration, magnificent though it may be, “Scenes from a Marriage” isn’t “Spider-Man,” and Ingmar Bergman isn’t Stan Lee. That audience isn’t clamoring for a gritty new take on that material – nor are they likely, if we’re being honest, to give it a fair shake. And who on earth thinks they can one-up Bergman anyway? It sounds like a suicide mission. Just do what countless films and filmmakers (like, again, “Joker’s” Todd Phillips) have done for years: steal shamelessly, give credit in your promotional interviews, and look cultured without actually disappointing or alienating anyone.
And as for all those making-of movies… look, no one loves “Chinatown” and “The Godfather” more than I do. But anyone who thinks there’s a large enough audience fascinated by the nuts and bolts of their production to justify the cost of pricy period costumes, sets, music, etc. – well, that’s a little something known as “high on your own supply.” (They clearly didn’t check the receipts on “Hitchcock.”)
But we also shouldn’t discount the impact that the COVID shutdown has had, and will continue to have on the industry. If studios have (at least through recent history) preferred familiarity and packages, the precariousness of the entertainment industry, in general, and theatrical exhibition, in particular, if and when things “return to normal,” means that the already extant desire for the known will likely escalate, multifold.
And with only so much room on the runway – both in production and release – the sure things will certainly take precedent. But history also teaches us that awareness should not be overestimated. Earlier this decade, Disney and Warner Brothers (respectively) spent big on their would-be blockbuster adaptations of “The Lone Ranger” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” with investments that were perhaps a bit overinflated for films based on a 1930s radio serial and a 1960s television series – and audiences steered clear. Vague familiarity does not equal urgency, particularly when movie tickets and streaming subscriptions come into play. If those projects couldn’t capitalize on their source material’s fading familiarity, why would a New Hollywood LARP exercise fare any better?
It’s also worth asking how many of these projects are concrete, and how many are theoretical. The pace of deal-making and project announcement does not seem to have slowed considerably over the past few months, even though we have no idea if and when any of these films and series could happen; it feels like bottlenecks are being created, and commitments are being made that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to meet. If you were a savvy agent, and wanted to keep your client’s name in the trades during a production slowdown, what better way than to attach them to a classy prestige project, rooted in a Hollywood classic.
This is pure conjecture, of course. Harris has a more optimistic theory. In the 1970s, he notes, “a lot of studio people were coming out of film school. And then, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, things changed, and a lot of people started coming out of business school – and that’s when all of this began. I think – on a much smaller level – what we’re seeing now is the rise, to a moderate degree of power, of the first generation of movie people who have come out of Criterion school, people who grew up with Criterion as the canon. And I wonder if things like ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ and ‘Rashomon’ are the very first sign, a little bit, of the Criterion-ization of a certain kind of movie thinking.”
I hope Harris is right, because otherwise, the takeaway here is decidedly more grim: that it’s easier to make a movie or series that lionizes and origin-stories the work of artists like Bergman, Forman, Kurosawa, and Coppola than it is to discover and nurture new ones (or, in the case of Coppola, to hire him again). It begins to feel less like art than cosplay – the shrugging surrender of an industry that knows it can no longer aim this high, but likes to remember, and celebrate, when it could.
