IP Something Something Something

This is the first time I've ever been upset at the movie industry.

I think we’re going to look back at the early 2020s as a pivotal crossroads, a last gasp of sorts, for moviemaking.

As the summer blockbusters come and go, one thing is for certain: No one wants to see your shitty retreads and scraps. Earlier this week, CNBC dropped an article entitled “The 2023 movie box office will need a strong second half after an inconsistent first six months” as whatever studios have tried thus far is very much NOT working. Ticket sales are down 21% and dependable hits like DC, Marvel, Fast & Furious and Transformers are coming in with disastrous to middling box office returns.

Now, no one wants to read about how much money a bunch of west coast bigwigs are attaining, but the returns are critical because they signify what can get greenlit in the future and what Hollywood thinks its audience wants. And, unfortunately, despite the intellectual property movies coming in weak, Hollywood has a brand new idea. Something crazy it can’t not work. And that idea is … DIFFERENT intellectual property.

One would think that superhero fare like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Flash and Shazam! Fury of the Gods tanking would lead to a newfangled understanding, but at the same time, IP-fests like Super Mario Bros. Movie and Scream VI are doing great business so the big-time shift is to just fewer superhero movies and an increase in other old content that can be remade for new generations. Barbie, a movie that as you all know I’m very excited for, is unfortunately going to be a bellwether on whether or not this will work. Mattel, the toy company that owns Barbie, seems to already be betting that it’ll do gangbusters.

Touring the facility, the Mattel Design Center, has become a rite of passage for Hollywood types who are considering transforming one of the company’s products into a movie—a list that now includes such names as J. J. Abrams (Hot Wheels) and Vin Diesel (Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots) …

Daniel Kaluuya, for example, has agreed to produce a feature about Barney, the purple dinosaur. Thirteen more films have been publicly announced, including movies about He-Man and Polly Pocket; forty-five are in development. (Some of the projects have an ouroboros quality. Tom Hanks is supposed to star in “Major Matt Mason,” which will be based on an astronaut action figure that has been largely forgotten, except for the fact that it helped inspire Buzz Lightyear—one of the protagonists of Pixar’s “Toy Story” franchise.) -New Yorker

Of course, there’s a Bob the Builder script in the works, along with one on Uno. It’s all a bunch of nothing, which would be fine and all if it didn’t cost us some tremendous directors, writers and actors.

Perhaps the scariest part of this entire endeavor is that those in the industry are lost for years at a time working on this ultimately meaningless nothing, losing countless opportunities to make art. I’ve already bitched enough about Netflix trapping Greta Gerwig in the Narnia universe and Barry Jenkins becoming the shepherd for Lion King live-action prequels. I don’t think it’s all nonsense—Gerwig’s Barbie as a strong example—but it’s tough to be optimistic about an industry that creates strong voices like Gerwig and Phoebe Waller-Bridge to then shunt them aside for Mattel IP-athons, Indiana Jones remakes, Star Wars robots and Tomb Raider deep-dives.

“Is it a great thing that our great creative actors and filmmakers live in a world where you can only take giant swings around consumer content and mass-produced products?” he said. “I don’t know. But it is the business. So, if that’s what people will consume, then let’s make it more interesting, more complicated.” He wondered aloud whether such directors as Hal Ashby and Sydney Pollack would be making movies with Mattel if they were alive today: “It’s a super-interesting question. It’s also an argument that we’ve lost already.” -New Yorker

The problem with the above quote is that I don’t think it’s wrong. Making something individualistic and from a germ of an idea necessitates a certain amount of cache that young filmmakers don’t have the ability to build up. Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson can write and direct a Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood or Licorice Pizza because they’ve proven that they can make movies sing with smaller budgets. There are no small to mid-tier budgets anymore, so you kind of have to make a tiny, indie project or a Jurassic Park sequel.

There is some hope in movies that break out like last year’s word-of-mouth (and eventual Oscar) hit Everything Everywhere All at Once or recent smallish (compared to the behemoths) triumphs like Asteroid City or Past Lives, however how long until we see Wes Anderson make an I Spy movie? I hope we never do, but if that’s all the industry is, who are we to judge a filmmaker for making a monetary choice?

Look at the two above screenshots from Box Office Mojo and tell me we don’t have a problem. The only non-sequels we have in the 2023 top 10 feature Mario and Ariel. Compare that to 1993, which has a mix of legal thrillers, studio comedies, rom-coms and book adaptations, and you can clearly see the demarcation between eras.

What we have now is a massive churning out of blockbuster content that is made for hundreds of millions and hopefully produces hundreds of millions. This requires a sort of lowest common denominator approach and international presence that makes any movie less sophisticated so as to reach every quadrant. It’s lame. There used to be trust in the audience and belief that they would go to the movies if the movie was good. That’s far from the truth now, and we’re all the worse for it.

Everything in theaters is trying to be a home run, but maybe we take a step back and hit a single or two. Make a movie for $40 million and get $100 million in return. Not everything has to break a billion. It’s honestly just part of the same problems that forced the WGA (and hopefully SAG-AFTRA) to strike.

Or better yet, don’t even think about the bottom line when it comes to the arts. If it’s good and interesting and resonant, it will find its audience. I’m not against blockbusters. I’m just against killing everything so as to only make the blockbusteriest blockbuster ever blockbustered every month or so.

I hope we grow and start making movies with ideas behind them again, but reading that there’s an "A24-type," "daring" Barney movie starring Daniel Kaluuya on the horizon makes me want to pack everything up, change my name and move to the middle of the woods.