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| They had 3 opportunities to learn from this and pushed forward anyway |
With the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic destined to be a status-quo altering event in more ways than one, it almost feels dirty to discuss its effect on something so frivolous as the entertainment industry. That said, I'm ultimately an analyst, scholar and perpetually fascinated consumer of media that can't stop thinking about what this industry will do if it has to tank a potential 10-11 figure loss in revenue.
The human cost of this tragedy is a complex issue carrying its own weight and questions to be discussed and debated by far more suitable minds than I. Today, however, I want to look at something that the entertainment industry can substantially benefit from in days coming that will require frugality and innovative thinking for the benefit of the very products that keep it afloat.
Roughly a month ago, I resurrected my series of direct to video B-movie reviews, "Fromage Fridays," taking a look at the micro budget indie comedy "The Velocipastor" and the low budgeted direct-to-video fantasy adventure sequel/prequel "Dragonheart: Vengeance."
The latter of these films got me to reminiscing about "Dragonheart" in particular and how the movie was a childhood favorite of mine; a charming fantasy adventure film about the virtues of chivalry and how moral redemption is never beyond reach if you're willing to reach for it blended with the tropes of a buddy, regaling the friendship between a washed up knight and the most charming dragon of all time.
The movie was made for roughly $60 million and while its primitive CGI has certainly not aged spectacularly, its a solid, fun, diverting romp whose charm lies in its simplicity and if made today would probably have a bloated budget in the low to mid $100 million range, piling on everything but the kitchen sink.
Don't take my word for it. Instead, let's take a look at Universal's grand plans to use a simple horror movie series rebooted into a breezy "Indiana Jones-esque" adventure series to launch a creature feature themed cinematic universe that even Tom Cruise couldn't save.
"The Mummy (2017)" is a cynical business model for generating more movies based on existing assets before being a story. Compare to "The Mummy (1999)" and its immediate sequel which begin and end as narratives that just happen to build on one another cleverly but without foresight, with a spin-off narrative for the "Scorpion King" that didn't need to be fleshed out in order for the films it spun-off from to matter or make sense.
For the cost of 1 "Mummy (2017)," Universal could have made both of first 2 Brendan Fraser films, which in and of themselves, grossed enough money to afford 2 more productions of their own equal budgets. This isn't a grand mystery. The numbers are there. Even with inflation factored in, this series was never made to support a mega-franchise and they slapped the label on it anyway.
Meanwhile, the 2020 R-rated low budget horror film about a man that's invisible serving as an intimately executed allegory for anxiety and lethally abusive relationships made more money with a theatrical run truncated by global health pandemic.
In setting their sites for the billion dollar club year after year, studios are turning these blockbusters into an amorphous pile of lavish yet unimpressive production more concerned with showing off money than actually doing something with it. Even when the product is actually good.
"Detective Pikachu," "Alita: Battle Angel," and "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" are 3 of my favorite examples of great mid-budget films released last year. Rough around the edges but ambitious and flawed but almost charmingly so, they had a real sense of artistry and uniqueness to them that stood out from the crowd while just being fun romps in their own right... which is what I'd love to say in praise of them were it not for the fact that their production price tags run over half a billion dollars with the intention of producing sequels to follow.
Those charms that caused their box office revenues to crawl just ever so slightly past breaking even to avoid the label of flop without actually being box office success comes with the added irony that not only are all 3 films based on source materials from a culture that has a certain production style that famously eschews photo realism in favor of storytelling supported aesthetic design and theatricality for atmospheric effect, one of them is part of a series that is a flat out codifier for it.
Don't think for one second that my love of these movies doesn't still stand. I'm merely positing that in addition to not potentially warranting the budgets that they were granted, perhaps those budgets were ultimately a hindrance to the level of success that they actually needed to find.
I've got infinite wells of gratitude for the world that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has invented but my 2 favorite non-essential properties to its metanarrative are quickly becoming the "Ant-Man" movies and the "Daredevil" tv show and I'd put both of those entities above several of the more established series, including "Thor," "Guardians of the Galaxy," and the MCU "Spider-Man" just because their lower stakes and different tones give them personality that money and franchise building doesn't replicate.
There's room for blockbusters and franchise building, whether done well or downright stupidly, with entertaining merits to be had across the spectrum of quality but if bumping a handful of tentpole releases for a year can cause this level of financial damage while movies of lesser yet substantial budgets are getting released to VOD where they're almost indistinguishable from premium original content on streaming services to begin with, perhaps the next wave of releases for the new decade can pull back from selling tickets to feature designed to sell future installments and instead just focus on making the installments we receive something worth going to the theater for.
I understand that not every film benefits from the theater exepeience but if it's a model you insist on pushing, perhaps I shouldn't be digging up Netflix and Amazon Prime exclusives that would have been better suited to it than the corporate filller comedies shilled out to pad the schdule between stillborn franchise starters.
To put the button on that I'll leave a reminder that last year, several studios screwed over Don Mancini, creator of the "Chucky" franchise, by exploiting their rights to the "Child's Play" name to release a mediocre in name only remake of the titular film peddling modern tropes of technophobia and "Stranger Things" inspired childhood adventure camaraderie. The best estimated profit I could find for it was $20 million, if we really wanted to be generous.
Its overall box office gross was roughly under $50 million. The critically well-regarded, in continuity, and Don Mancini helmed "Cult of Chucky," was made on a fraction of that film's $10 million budget and would have been even more successful with half of the box office gross.
Spend smarter executives. Leave the ambition to the artists.
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