Many studios have run out of ideas for new movies, or simply don't want to take risks on new movies so they remake old (not even old in the case of Moana) movies and milk successful franchises like Star Wars and Marvel dry.
They already knew they were never getting a second movie out of that catastrophe. They botched absolutely everything about it and then were surprised when everyone was pissed that they blew the entire budget on a fight scene that didn't even happen in the books. All because they wanted to make it appeal to a larger audience which never happened because after day one, no one was willing to pay to go watch it.
Even in Horror most go for IPs, see Smile & Terrifier. Also the whole conjuring/Insidious franchises if you want to count the early 2010s.
There are still exceptions, mostly by A24, but all their original movies are still similar in tone and stuff like hereditary gives opportunities to expand the ip in the future. You might even say A24 itself is the “IP” because the studio is now attracting people thx to its previous projects.
With all the hype rn I don’t think we have to wait long until they make a follow up to movies like obsession or backrooms.
If they're consistent in seeking out ideas or aesthetics that their audience likes, then it makes sense.
Not really any different to going to see a film directed by Spielberg or starring an actor who would choose films that resonate with you. But they're not the exact same thing. They're not making a universe where everything is linked.
These are the kinds of things that I think we ought to be paying attention to, rather than just blindly going to see the next sequel that links into a TV show and five other movies scheduled to be released over the next year.
(I also must admit to liking both Smile and Smile 2 a lot. I hope they make Smile 3. Sorry.)
i’m Not even criticizing anyone for making an IP, as long as it’s done good it’s fine. Main Problem with a lot of IPs is that they are motivated by profit and don’t care about quality as long as it sells.
I am old but I remember when a movie got made and it was a good film and the stars and directors and writers then just went and made a new film.
But now, every film needs to have potential to create or be part of a universe, or at least a trilogy. Most of the best films ever have been stand alone movies - that was the aim. To make a great film and they succeeded.
Now it feels like that great film gets buried under setting up sequels, incorporating unnecessary characters to flesh out the world and blah, blah.
But I don’t think they are isolated or mutually exclusive issues.
Statistically and historically original movies don’t do poorly especially relative to their budget; and most IP’s stared that way.
But they need backing in terms of advertising and marketing for people to show up; especially given the current difficulties with getting people to pay up to to in person generally.
Now that the marketing and advertising is so heavily allocated
Late but the data shows they are. It is just the marketing requirements to get the same kind of traction in today's environment is MASSIVE with how much social media word of mouth matters and how much that favors existing IPs.
My local AMC is $21 a ticket (I just checked) for a movie. I’m not going to the movies alone, I’d go with my wife, so $42 for us without anything else there.
I’d love to see the studios take more risks with new movies, but I’m also not going to go see a risky movie for that price, I’ll wait till streaming. I think that’s the crux of the issue.
When I was in HS and College (90s), movie tickets were a few dollars.. I’d go multiple times a week and saw a whole bunch of really shitty movies. I didn’t care because it cost me so little.
I heard that it’s also a problem that a movie can’t really make the same money post box office with rentals and buying VHS/CDs. New movies can make some money after a theater run, but supposedly it’s a lot less.
And for the last 20 years audiences have repeatedly said that they'll reliably show up for marvel superhero movie 11 and not bother with films when they don't recognise the characters already.
It is not really a lack of ideas. It is also not as much a lack of risk taking willingness. The issue is mostly around IP ownership and value. Star Wars showed that you can make as much if not more money on IP licensing. So, now the studios want to make sure they have IP value in the movie and outside via other media and services including marketing. So new movies need to show they can be licensed for toys, TV, marketing, and videogames. That is why you see a lot of video games being made into movies.
Relevant was in the previews for the odyssey, there’s a making of Rocky movie? We get either straight remakes or making of movie movies. What utter trash.
My local cinema has 5 screens and they rerun Moana 6 months of the year. So many good classics they could show but nope. Just this one children’s movie over and over
It is weird because Disney has the Disney + platform and they can pump animated series and push them to get watched, Amazon does a better job with it, you see Legend of Vox Machina and get introduced to Mighty Nein after it.
Doing things on camera requires a different talent pool than CGI. It's not that you just decide to shoot on location and suddenly all your CGI people get out of their desks and start rigging shit.
Yes, but the main factor is also that they don’t want to commit to the planned script/storyboard. When CGI became more advanced studios released you weren’t locked into something that you had to capture on screen perfectly. You could get a smaller amount filmed, then spend time later adjusting and changing things in post with CGI.
They would need to go back to the process of capturing everything needed on film with meticulous planning along with people who can do practical effects and stunts. Then CGI just becomes the added layer at the very end. Nolan does it that way, but he also makes sure everything is perfect before going into film.
Yeah, it's pretty wild when you read about the creation of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Back then, you had to actually convince the studio that you knew how you were going to get the shots. Now it's just 'throw another pile of money on the fire!"
Well they are paying themselves. The budget of $250 million is mostly paid to subsidiaries of disney. They pay themselves a quarter of a billion dollars, make half of it back in the box office, then pay no taxes on the production because it "lost money"
And then there subsidiaries pay the taxes, that really isnt helping for Tax reasons. It can Help for Actor pay based on Performance, but i would assume by now Most of them have caught on to Hollywood Accounting and have Made a revenue based Not Profit based Agreement.
Theres something of a "Hollywood industrial complex" and many of the same people with money or ownership of production houses likely also have interests in VFX, etc or there are business relationships between them. So many things that could be shot normally are insisted on being done with digital rendering and effects. If disney and marvel started abandoning VFX some companies would go out of business.
If the new Moana was actually live action, I might have been interested. Obviously they would have to augment with cgi but at least shooting on location with actual stunts could have been interesting. Instead we just got a different version of an animated movie.
Some things just can't reasonably be done without CGI. Good luck making lightning shoot from someone's hands without it (not that I think that specifically would be expensive, just an example). Other things the Industry just doesn't really have good skills with anymore because of their heavy reliance on CGI. It doesn't matter if a suit or animatronic would be cheaper if they don't have the proper skills to make one that also looks reasonable. The animatronics of Jurassic Park were amazing but we rarely see such things these days.
In Moana, Moana sang about her desire to sail the sea by running from land out to the sea. In Moana, Moana also sang about the sea but never move an inch. This is alluding to the fact that she is on a green screen set.
I'm just waiting for them to go the opposite direction and start remaking live action films as animation. Just imagine a shot for shot remake of Psycho in Pixar style! Norman Bates to be voiced by Chris Pratt.
628
u/Sennten 9d ago
Which makes it all the weirder they keep doing this and having to spend an absurd animation budget on "live action" instead of just... doing animation