The Service Also Picks Up New Pilots From ‘Master Of None,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Creators
The so-called “Rotten Tomatoes effect” came into question again this weekend thanks to an fascinating New York Times article that stirred up the ongoing debate once more about the film review aggregator and how it impacts movie going culture. Studios currently hate Rotten Tomatoes, but it got me to thinking about several of the complex factors at hand.
READ MORE: Wong Kar-Wai To Direct 18 Part Online Drama Series
Aside from Hollywood making a lot of bad movies that savvy audiences are already suspect of, there’s the onslaught of PeakTV. And perhaps the ongoing migration of top-shelf filmmakers to television has at least some minor part to play in the growing quality of the small screen and the increasing mediocrity of the big screen focused on sequels, prequels, reboots and the kind of junk that audiences tiring of. These costly movies either connect and make massive amounts of money, or tank and lose bucket loads. There’s no margin for error for the studios and its apparently the only gamble in town they like to take.
I digress, the latest auteur moving into television is Asian master Wong Kar-Wai, known for unimpeachable foreign film classics like, “In the Mood for Love,” “Chungking Express” and most recently, the kung-fu art film, “The Grandmaster.”
READ MORE: The Essentials: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai
Setting up a movie at a studio these days is difficult since their remit is aimed at tentpoles, leveraging intellectual properties into some franchise, and or just pleasing 4-quadrant movies aimed at everyone. Studios are always trying to attract the most flies, whatever the long term cost of disposable movies that leave no lasting impact.
Squeezed to the margins, indie studios are less and less able to carry the weight of ambition projects, so where does an artist like Wong Kar-Wai take his ideas? Welcoming, cash-flush streaming services like Netflix and or, like in this case, Amazon Studios who have nurtured and cultivated a filmmaker friendly relationship and home for auteurs like James Gray, Jim Jarmusch, Terry Gilliam, Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater and more.
Wong Kar-Wai’s project set up at Amazon, is “Tong Wars,” a drama co-created from “Homicide” originator Paul Attanasio and as its title suggests, is set against the Tong Wars of 19th century San Francisco which featured a variety of inter-gang, organized crime grievances and violent disputes over, drug and prostitution territories.
Amazon has also ordered a straight-to-series comedy starring “Saturday Night Live” alumni Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph, from the makers of “Master Of None” (Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard). Amazon has also given green lights to “Upload,” a single-camera comedy pilot from “The Office” creator Greg Daniels, and “Making Friends,” from the team of “How I Met Your Mother” plus Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Point Grey and Sony TV. The latter will be mark Amazon’s first multi-camera pilot, so perhaps this is the studio encroaching on more mainstream sensibilities found on network TV.
With movies often centered on super hero stories not aimed at adults, perhaps these are all more reasons to stay at home instead of schlepping it out to a movie theater. Is the theatrical experience better? Yes, but maybe studio should try and find a way to bring the smarter, mid-budgeted movie back to screens before all its talents, creators and actors head to TV taking audiences who would rather watch, say “True Detective” or “The Crown,” over “The Dark Tower” with them.
This isn’t the first foray into television for Wong Kar-Wai, he’s developing an extremely expensive 18-part online drama for Chinese television (no details released yet; though its possible this Amazon series is the same one) and he’s also developing a project with Annapurna Pictures. Hey, I prefer the theatrical experience and I like Marvel too, but if I had the choice between that and a series by Wong Kar-Wai I can watch at home… [Variety/Deadline]
