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Remake fail?

Posted on by of Go Into The Story

From Film School Rejects:

Using only the raw, quivering data, Conan and Straw Dogs were the only films to lose money. However, we all know that there’s more to the story than just these numbers; this is the polite version of the data. It doesn’t take into consideration the overhead for advertising and the like, or the revenue split between different producing partners. Because of that, Arthur, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Fright Night, and The Mechanic are all undoubtedly money-losers.

The only real winner is Footloose, and its victory is a well-deserved yet moderate one. In a pack of remakes, it alone came out victorious.

Here are the numbers:

Movie (Budget not including advertising) – Total Worldwide Gross

Source: Box Office Mojo

Arthur ($40m) – $45.7m

Conan the Barbarian ($90m) – $48.7

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark ($25m) – $31.5m

Footloose ($24m) – $62.5m

Fright Night ($30m) – $37m

The Mechanic ($40m) – $50m

Straw Dogs ($25m) – $10.3m

Does this mean the end of remakes? Hell no. In a town where job security = play it safe, we will always have remakes. And as the Coen brothers displayed with True Grit, that is not necessarily a bad thing. But let’s pay special attention to the performance of remakes this year as this could be the proverbial canary in the coal mine about moviegoers expressing their disdain for the overly familiar and wanting something new and different in the way of film entertainment.

For the rest of the Film School Rejects article, go here.

UPDATE: @jddobkin tweeted that the article didn’t include The Thing remake, but of course it’s a prequel. Maybe prequels have a strong remake whiff, yes? Worldwide B.O.: $27.4M, Production Budget: $38M. Numbers via BOM.

‘Similar But Different’ (Part 3: Playing the game)

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It may not be pretty, but screenwriters — professional and aspiring — have to deal with it: Hollywood’s default business model of ‘similar but different.’

* Movie studios want projects that are similar to movies that have been hits. Per their logic, this is a safe way to approach script acquisition and development — If something was successful before, it can be again — and increase the odds the ‘new’ project will make a profit — Marketing efforts will benefit from pre-awareness among consumers.

* Movie studios want projects that are different enough from movies that have been hits. When they toss out a phrase like a “fresh take,” they don’t mean wholly original, rather they want a story that offers a spin on something that has been produced before.

I’m not saying this is a good state of affairs. Nor am I saying it’s necessarily a bad state of affairs. I’m just saying it is the state of affairs.

In the first two posts in this series — here and here — we looked at this phenomenon from a studio, filmmaker and consumer perspective, each a contributing factor to the preponderance of remakes, prequels, sequels, and heavily similar movies.

Today we bring it all down to the screenwriter. And the simple fact is you have a choice:

You can play the game. Or not play the game.

You may look at the status quo of the Hollywood movie business and decide you simply can not work within the ‘similar but different’ framework. You want to write original stories, cutting edge scripts, movies not just filmed product.

If this is who you are and what you are about, two things:

First you absolutely have the right to write whatever stories you want. Indeed I’m sure all of us who visit this blog applaud your courage and creativity. God knows we need visionaries and unique voices creating distinctive films.

Second if you go this route, eventually Hollywood may seek you out if you create a successful niche for yourself, but on the whole that approach is not the studios’ first resort. Rather they want screenwriters and filmmakers who work within the confines of ‘similar but different.’ In other words, screenwriters who can play the game.

What is the game?

It’s coming up with similar but different stories.

It’s providing your take on writing assignments that is — shock! — similar but different.

It’s trafficking daily in a world of ideas and story concepts that fit comfortably within the broad perimeters of stories that have been written and produced before.

You must understand that almost every single professional screenwriter including A-listers, make their living writing these type of projects.

For example, Sony asks Aaron Sorkin to write a Steve Jobs movie which you can be sure the studio is thinking is similar but different to another Sorkin film, The Social Network.

Warner Bros. hires Ben Affleck to write a movie version of “The Stand” that is a remake of a TV mini-series.

Name any A-list screenwriter or filmmaker and I guarantee you they have worked on at least one and more likely many more similar but different projects..

Here’s the thing: There is no inherent reason why a similar but different movie has to be bad. Indeed they can be great. Look at some of this year’s quality hit movies: Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Bridesmaids, The Help, Rango, Contagion, Moneyball.

Why do some of these similar but different films succeed aesthetically while others just feel like knock-offs? I would suggest that it’s because the filmmakers looked below the surface of remake and retro sensibilities to some familiar, powerful dynamics that exist in all stories which we can mine to craft compelling narratives: archetypes.

That’s the subject of tomorrow’s post in this series.

‘Similar But Different’ (Part 2: Retro)

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With several remakes currently in movie theaters (e.g., The Thing, Footloose, The Three Musketeers) and a confluence of interesting articles of late, I decided it would be valuable to revisit a familiar subject that has a definite impact on a screenwriter’s life: Hollywood’s default business approach of ‘similar but different.’ Yesterday I spotlighted this this 24 Frames [LAT] article by Steve Zeitchik that delved into the whole 80s remake phenomenon. We explored two ideas:

* On the business side, remakes are popular in Hollywood because they are the perfect version of ‘similar but different,’ perhaps the safest way to create a product that carries with it strong consumer pre-awareness.

* On the filmmaking side, remakes are an acknowledgment that all stories have been told before, so why not retell the good ones.

Today I want to highlight a recent article by LAT’s columnist Patrick Goldstein. The title suggests one thing — “Is Hollywood’s mania for remakes spinning out of control?” However if we dig into the piece, we confront a powerful dynamic that seems to be at work in contemporary culture which would also help to explain the enduring power of remakes.

Some excerpts from Goldstein’s article:

“Everything old is new again,” the expression goes, but in pop culture these days, it seems more fitting to say everything new is old again. This weekend is an apt example: Paramount Pictures opened “Footloose,” a remake of the cheesy 1984 dance movie, and it’s battling for the box-office crown against “The Thing,” a new version of the 1982 John Carpenter horror film from Universal Studios.

I guess it was inevitable that we’d have a weekend where both of the big new releases were remakes. (Next week brings another: “The Three Musketeers.”) Whether you’re writing about Hollywood, pop music, TV or theater, the prefix “re” gets a serious workout on your keypad, since every other new project seems to be a remake, reboot, revival, reissue, relaunch, reunion, restaging, reimagining or reenactment.

Goldstein had a sit-down with Matthijs Van Heijningen, the 43-year-old director of “The Thing.”

Van Heijningen spent his teen years gorging himself on Kafka novels and groundbreaking American movies, notably “The Godfather” series, “Blade Runner,” “The Exorcist” and “Jaws.” At 17, he said, he sneaked into Carpenter’s “The Thing” (itself a remake) and was impressed, being a Kafka fan, by what he calls “its nihilism and sense of doom.”

The movie resonated with him so much that when Van Heijningen was looking to make his feature debut here, he found himself eager to revisit the film. The whole mania for remakes tends to revolve around commercial motives — it’s usually easier to sell something that is familiar to audiences — so it’s hardly a surprise to discover that there was an element of careerism in Van Heijningen’s decision to pursue the film.

“It is slightly strategical to do something that’s familiar,” he told me. “But I thought I could give the movie some of my own flavor as a filmmaker. It’s a lot like making a commercial. There’s already a story, created to sell a product. So as a director, you just have to find a way to express your own ideas inside of that framework.”

—-

Van Heijningen has a shrewd grasp of showbiz history. In the 1970s, with the studio system in a state of collapse, a generation of New Hollywood filmmakers seized power, inspiring a decade of auteur-driven artistry. But by the 1990s, Hollywood was once again firmly in the grasp of media behemoths. Intent on bringing order and sustainability to their often-chaotic studio subsidiaries, they began systematically developing the kind of film franchises and remakes that were easily marketable and offered predictable profit potential.

Here we see the merging of the two points we explored yesterday: Hollywood’s ‘similar but different’ credo, filmmakers attempting to find an aesthetic justification to retell a story that’s already been told. But later in the article, Goldstein cites another dynamic which suggests that the real energy behind remakes may not be studios or filmmakers — but consumers themselves:

Why are we so culturally backward-looking today, especially when our technology — our iPhones, iPads and computer graphics — leaps forward at such a dizzying pace? If anyone has a good theory about this deceleration of pop culture, it’s Simon Reynolds, whose recent book, “Retromania,” is about how pop music has gone from being an exploratory art to a form of cultural archaeology.

He argues that retro has become a structural feature of pop culture, acting as an inevitable down phase to an earlier manic burst of creativity. Though he’s speaking in terms of music, many critics might apply that logic to film or TV as well. “Like a boom-time economy, the more fertile and dynamic a genre is, the more it sets itself up for the musical-cultural equivalent of recession: retro,” Reynolds writes. “The sheer creativity of its surge years (the sixties, seventies and parts of the eighties) inevitably made it increasingly irresistible to be re-creative.”

But today’s retromania is also tied to the way young consumers experience pop culture. When I was a kid, I wanted nothing to do with my parents’ music or movies. I needed to carve out my own cultural identity. Today’s kids, thanks to the easy access to Netflix and YouTube, make far less of a distinction between what is old and what is new. With a century of culture just a click away on any computer, young consumers have become the ultimate archivists, just as willing to embrace familiarity as innovation.

What if remakes are primarily a response to a retro consciousness permeating contemporary culture? “Young consumers have become the ultimate archivists, just as willing to embrace familiarity as innovation.”

What if old is the ‘new’ new?

Given the business, aesthetic and consumer state of affairs that suggest ‘similar but different’ is going nowhere soon, what is a screenwriter to do? It’s easy for a professional screenwriter when asked by an aspiring writer, “What should I write,” to go to the default answer: “Be yourself, write something original.” Frankly I wince whenever I hear that, not at the spirit of the answer, but at the absolute lack of help that advice offers as it stands in complete opposition to nearly everything the Hollywood movie business is about.

The reality is this. A screenwriter has two choices: To play the game or not play the game. That is the subject of Part 3 of this series.

For more of Patrick Goldstein’s article, go here.

‘Similar But Different’ (Part 1: Remakes)

Posted on by of Go Into The Story

Perhaps you are sick of me talking about how Hollywood approaches moves and TV with the business ethos of ‘similar but different,’ a subject I have explored here, here, here, and here among many other posts.

Hey, I am sympathetic to you. However since now more than ever Hollywood is relying on similar but different, I’m going to hammer on the subject for the next three days. More after the jump.

We start with this recent LAT article: “‘Footloose:’ The ’80′s are dead. Long live the ’80′s.” Despite the inauspicious B.O. performances of Footloose, Fright Night, Conan, The A-Team and Arthur, Hollywood keeps dipping into the 80s well:

Seasons, like paychecks and Republican presidential front-runners, come and go. But some things remain constant. Like ’80s remakes. And, specifically, their power to make us yawn.

[Last] weekend saw the moviegoing public shrug off two more retreads, a revival of a 1984 Kevin Bacon classic and a prequel of a 1982 John Carpenter cult hit. “Footloose,” that Bacon revival, pulled in $16.1 million — not a terrible number, but considering how heavily the movie was marketed, not exactly auspicious, either. Results for “The Thing” looked more grisly — the movie eked out only $8.7 million.

The films join a long list of ’80s reboots that have yielded lackluster results: “Fright Night,” “Conan,” “The A-Team,” “Arthur.”

So if 80s movie remakes may not be faring all that well at the box office, why does Hollywood keep going to that well? Safe to say the big reason is ‘similar but different.’ A remake is the perfect execution of that concept: It is the same movie, only done with a different cast and a revised script to reflect contemporary sensibilities and freshen up the story.

At the core of ‘similar but different’ is a belief: All stories have been told before. More from the LAT article:

In “Drive,” the well-reviewed art-house piece that has established a loyal fan base, Nicolas Winding Refn channels the spirit of “Miami Vice” and other pastel-colored entertainment. Throwback action movies such as “The Expendables’ and “Fast Five,” meanwhile, have turned into the biggest hits of the last couple of years. “Footloose” may have struggled, but its spiritual descendants, the “Step Up” films, has blossomed into one of the hottest teen franchises of the last few years.

And this summer J.J Abrams looked to the movies of the 1980s, like “Stand by Me” and “The Goonies,” in creating his coming-of-age adventure “Super 8.” The film went on to become a huge global hit.

There are good reasons we’re looking back to the movies of several decades ago: There were some storytelling values to that period, for one thing, and there are only have so many stories to tell.

Even a contemporary director such as Jason Reitman, one of the more original-minded filmmakers out there, said he felt the ghosts of decades past when he gets behind the camera. “In a strange way, I always feel like I’m doing a remake,” he told 24 Frames in an interview last week. “I mean, ‘Thank You for Smoking’ was ‘Jerry Maguire’ if Jerry sold cigarettes.”

So even if the B.O. results aren’t overwhelming, there is a default attitude deeply entrenched in Hollywood that will persist in remaking 80s movies… then over the next few years 90s movies… and so on.

That attitude? Similar but different.

You don’t have to like it. You do have to understand it.

[Another reason remakes are so popular, as manager-producer Gavin Polone notes here, is that movies are "the greatest hard asset they [studios] possess,” so a remake not only generates its own revenues through box office receipts and ancillary streams, it can also increase the value of the original film, a case of double-dipping.]

Tomorrow: Another LAT article and Part 2 of this mini-series.