Studios Blame Everyone But Themselves For Movies That Suck

batguy said:

IIRC it has been demonstrated by researchers that creativity goes down when you ask kids to make art that they think is popular, rather than make whatever they want.

I don't think art & business are diametrically opposed either. But predictable mass-market success and creativity do have a strained relationship at best.




I don't think the first POTC movie was where it started. IMO it seemed to creep up over time around the turn of the century.

In the late 1990s the sheer number of movies hitting theaters seemed to be ramping up year after year. I mean not only the little Tarantino ripoffs & horror flicks, but also the number of decent-sized movies with recognizable stars that would have been expected to last a while in theaters. The amount of net-total money that the studios were throwing at theaters (like counting total biomass rather than number of individual life forms) seemed to be on a steady increase.

For a while they were trying to sell stuff based on the star-power of actors but eventually that wasn't working well enough anymore. Putting Al Pacino or Brad Pitt or Harrison Ford on the headline wasn't guaranteeing butts in the seats like it used to. They switched to sequels/reboots/etc as their next attempt to find a predictable formula. There was a lot of bottled-up ideas for "big" movies that SFX limitations had kept out of production in previous eras. Going BIG was where it's at, and that has largely been true ever since.

Cable TV had also been showing a lot of older TV shows to younger audiences in the 1980s/90s. I think that primed the pump for a lot of theatrical remakes of old TV show that would not have happened in previous eras. That helped feed the idea that remaking existing stuff was a low-risk investment.

The LOTR trilogy was a remarkable incident of betting on three huge movies to succeed before seeing the box office take of the first one. That only seems like a safe risk in hindsight. They didn't even do The Hobbit first, they jumped right into the big three. That was the same era when studios thought blowing a hundred million bucks on Travolta's Battlefield Earth or Kevin Costner's post-apocalyptic messes were good ideas.

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I remember that time in the 90's - there's a whine fest from the studios about no one going and blaming cam-corder piracy and stuff like that. Only for someone to do the research and find that the number of movies coming out had increased significantly. Seems as if they thought that if 5 flicks a year netted them 500M that 15 should net them 1.5B no question asked. Instead they started stepping on each others feat left and right. It took a while, but the number eventually came back down.

I don't think POTC was the first 'franchise' either. It didn't seem to be a must until much more recently. Frankly, it was after Marvel succeeded that people decided 'we have to have one of those, too'. Obviously the first real ones were SW and ST. But both were largely abandoned before the so-called explosion. SW returned prior to the explosion actually. And they tried to push JJ trek afterwards. If want a 'universe', find it organically. If you force it (see DC or GB) it doesn't work out very well. I mean, talk about thinking you're owed a universe - there were all these plans and everything sony had for ghostbusters.....FFS, maybe concentrate on getting a good, solid, first project out the door before you start expanding it???

Just too much copying of the other guy. That worked? OK, we have to copy it. I mean, the head of DC literally said post Avengers 'we have to find a way to cash in on this now'. Just the wrong way to go about it IMO.

As for older TV shows, honestly, if they did a good job it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal. As I said before, they're screwing up the original with the reboot and then complaining when it bombs. Well, no @#$% it bombed, you changed the essence of what made it good to begin with. I mean, what's next? Turn Remington Steele into a new movie starring Melissa McCarthy and Jim Carrey and directed by Paul Feig? The casting is an epic fail of what the series was even about - but all they seem to do is turn these things into slapstick comedies. If you wanna redo a TV, keep a drama a drama, keep mystery mystery. WATCH THE SHOW, figure out what made it last and what made it good and focus on that. All they care about is a title that puts butts in the seats week 1. If it sucks, who cares. It seems as if 'suck' never ever figures into why a movie fail when asking a studio. Ishtar? Ishtar was great - if it wasn't for piracy we'd have raked it in and won oscars!

You make an epic bomb, own up to it. Anything short of that makes these articles fall on deaf ears 100% of the time.

Dear Studio exec: You know why no one saw baywatch? Because no one wanted a comedy version of Baywatch, or, frankly, was asking for a true to the original Baywatch movie. There was an OBVIOUS reason it was popular when it was popular and it's much easier to get today than spending 20 bucks at the movies.

cboath said:

I

You make an epic bomb, own up to it. Anything short of that makes these articles fall on deaf ears 100% of the time.

Dear Studio exec: You know why no one saw baywatch? Because no one wanted a comedy version of Baywatch, or, frankly, was asking for a true to the original Baywatch movie. There was an OBVIOUS reason it was popular when it was popular and it's much easier to get today than spending 20 bucks at the movies.

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Much easier to blame other people than yourself that everything else is wrong but you.


One of the ideas I like in the UK is naming things 'series' instead of seasons. I wonder if this cuts down on the reboot problem over there that we have over here?

95% of the time, people change things so much they are In Name Only and might as well be a new property. and then they wonder why things don't make money.

I don't think the Baywatch remake was a bad idea. A bunch of stars like that on a beach in a comic tone . . it could have worked fine.

But it was a bad idea to think the Baywatch name was an asset. They could have named it something else and the box office would hardly have been any different.



The old Baywatch show was more than just T&A alone. It's a myth that T&A will sell anything. T&A can potentially boost almost any project but it's not a whole project by itself.

Baywatch's other assets were some tolerably likable actors & characters and a certain overall feel. The remake made no attempt to carry over any of that.

batguy said:

I don't think the Baywatch remake was a bad idea. A bunch of stars like that on a beach in a comic tone . . it could have worked fine.

But it was a bad idea to think the Baywatch name was an asset. They could have named it something else and the box office would hardly have been any different.



The old Baywatch show was more than just T&A alone. It's a myth that T&A will sell anything. T&A can potentially boost almost any project but it's not a whole project by itself.

Baywatch's other assets were some tolerably likable actors & characters and a certain overall feel. The remake made no attempt to carry over any of that.

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Which is exactly the point. There's no point in doing a remake if you're ignoring (intentionally it seems) what made it good/popular in the first place.

batguy said:

I don't think the Baywatch remake was a bad idea. A bunch of stars like that on a beach in a comic tone . . it could have worked fine.

But it was a bad idea to think the Baywatch name was an asset. They could have named it something else and the box office would hardly have been any different.



The old Baywatch show was more than just T&A alone. It's a myth that T&A will sell anything. T&A can potentially boost almost any project but it's not a whole project by itself.

Baywatch's other assets were some tolerably likable actors & characters and a certain overall feel. The remake made no attempt to carry over any of that.

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yep, bingo.


But, try telling that to executives that keep telling people to 'sex things up' and you get souless zombies.


Oh, and I'll take alexandra paul over cj anderson any day ;o).

I only use RT to poo poo a movie the wife wants to go see. Nine times out of 10 her Rom/Com pick is in the toilet and I point it out for her. Then I suggest a fun movie.

"No, honey, RT says this Meryl Streep movie is in the toilet. But MONSTER TRUCKS has a huge audience rating…" Yep, I can see how that works...

I remember the 90s. When there were 2-3 killer asteroid films all at one time. And then there were 2-3 volcano-goes-boom movies all at once. It was facepalm time.

Paul Tatara wrote an epic piece for cnn.com about it when Godzilla came out. God, I loved his reviews and columns. Apparently the editors didn't so he had a short, highly potent run of reviewing for a major news site. He was one of those people who, if Hollywood had collectively listened to him, might've improved the industry.


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cboath said:

I don't think POTC was the first 'franchise' either. It didn't seem to be a must until much more recently. Frankly, it was after Marvel succeeded that people decided 'we have to have one of those, too'. Obviously the first real ones were SW and ST.

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Star Wars wasn't the first. The earliest "franchise" I can think of would be the Frankenstein movies from the 30's. "Frankenstein", "Bride of Frankenstein", and "Son of Frankenstein".

Going back to something I said earlier about profit margins and growth, I did a search for the earnings on Baywatch and found it cost $60 M and so far has made $67 M. It's made a profit. So not a flop. The studio just expected a blockbuster with huge profits.

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It takes more than 1x the budget to make a big Hollywood movie profitable. Between the distributors' & theaters' cuts and the advertising budgets, they usually want more like 3x the original budget to call something a success.

cboath said:

Which is exactly the point. There's no point in doing a remake if you're ignoring (intentionally it seems) what made it good/popular in the first place.

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But what made Baywatch popular back when it came out was T&A, at least thats what I thought, I was a kid when it came out. Now T&A arent popular anymore, at least youre not allowed to do so as much. Notice how most of the trailers are showing off the Rock and Zack Effron more than the girls? At least the trailer I have seen. They could have called it anything else and I bet it would have done better. But people didnt see it JUST cause it was called Baywatch, and that used to be known for scantily clad women.

batguy said:

It takes more than 1x the budget to make a big Hollywood movie profitable. Between the distributors' & theaters' cuts and the advertising budgets, they usually want more like 3x the original budget to call something a success.

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When BvS came out, they said that studios tend to split the theatre take down the middle with theatres. Marketing isn't part of the 60M figure either. In the case of BvS, it was 250M to make and reportedly nearly 200M advertising - so the logic was they needed to bring in 900M to break even. So in the case of Baywatch, 60 to make, at least 60 in advertising is 120M, so 240ish to break even. 240 doesn't seem like to tall a task, but only a flaming moron lets things balloon out of control to where you need to rake in a billion before you see a profit. I don't know how those numbers work when there's more than 1 studio involved either. Theoretically it should be the same. But still. That also gets skewed if you have contract where an actor or actors get a cut of the take/profit/whatever.

The smart thing (never happen) would be for stars to be paid a base salary, but not get the big bucks until the movie hits profitability....pay for performance, like the rest of the friggin world. Doesn't matter how much they sucked, or if the movie tanks, they got theirs. That's not right. Pay them a base, and then bonuses for every ten million it does over the profit line. Something along those lines.

Hollywood is too interested in preaching to us . The Global cooling/Global warming/Climate change stuff. Along with every SJW's wetdream. They will actually lose money if they think they can gain a few more converts to their various pet causes. They know that family friendly films make more bang for the buck by far, but would rather shove profane, childish garbage at you. They are perhaps, the most self destructive industry, out there. Even when they have an almost sure thing like Star Wars and Star Trek, they can't resist twisting and tinkering with it, till it is no longer palatable to its primary audience. I would feel for them, but I have been converted to a watch at home viewer. I wait for the Dvd/Bluray discount bin at the Wally World. Or even better the free view on somebody elses HBO, ;-) Can't wait to get a projector and 120 inch screen and a popcorn machine. Nobody can kick my seat, or talk over the movie. Or at least when my brother in law does it I can take him out side for a beat down, LOL. The whole theater experience is dead for me. Too expensive and aggravating. They just don't make movies that are worth it, any more. Now you kids get the Hell off my lawn ! ;-)

The smart thing (never happen) would be for stars to be paid a base salary, but not get the big bucks until the movie hits profitability....pay for performance, like the rest of the friggin world. Doesn't matter how much they sucked, or if the movie tanks, they got theirs. That's not right. Pay them a base, and then bonuses for every ten million it does over the profit line. Something along those lines.

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The studios are too good at rigging the accounting math and making movies appear to be failures when they aren't. It is very common. Stars get their salary taken out of the movie's gross take rather than its net profit just to make sure they get any salary at all.

bwayne64 said:

Hollywood is too interested in preaching to us . The Global cooling/Global warming/Climate change stuff. Along with every SJW's wetdream. They will actually lose money if they think they can gain a few more converts to their various pet causes. They know that family friendly films make more bang for the buck by far, but would rather shove profane, childish garbage at you. They are perhaps, the most self destructive industry, out there. Even when they have an almost sure thing like Star Wars and Star Trek, they can't resist twisting and tinkering with it, till it is no longer palatable to its primary audience. I would feel for them, but I have been converted to a watch at home viewer. I wait for the Dvd/Bluray discount bin at the Wally World. Or even better the free view on somebody elses HBO, ;-) Can't wait to get a projector and 120 inch screen and a popcorn machine. Nobody can kick my seat, or talk over the movie. Or at least when my brother in law does it I can take him out side for a beat down, LOL. The whole theater experience is dead for me. Too expensive and aggravating. They just don't make movies that are worth it, any more. Now you kids get the Hell off my lawn ! ;-)

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The last part of this definitely resonates with me. When movie prices were so high (around 14 bucks, non 3d, non luxury) and the facilities werent up to par, or the people were punks and there wasnt any ushers or anything, I would definitely wait to watch stuff at home because of it. Its a shame too because I love going to the movies but the theaters dont combat jerks that wont shut up, constantly on their phone etc. Now my local theater is 8 bucks so its not as bad now, and they have ushers in the theaters. Its such a pleasant expierinence, Ill definitely see more movies because of it.

bwayne64 said:

Hollywood is too interested in preaching to us . The Global cooling/Global warming/Climate change stuff. Along with every SJW's wetdream. They will actually lose money if they think they can gain a few more converts to their various pet causes. They know that family friendly films make more bang for the buck by far, but would rather shove profane, childish garbage at you. They are perhaps, the most self destructive industry, out there. Even when they have an almost sure thing like Star Wars and Star Trek, they can't resist twisting and tinkering with it, till it is no longer palatable to its primary audience. I would feel for them, but I have been converted to a watch at home viewer. I wait for the Dvd/Bluray discount bin at the Wally World. Or even better the free view on somebody elses HBO, ;-) Can't wait to get a projector and 120 inch screen and a popcorn machine. Nobody can kick my seat, or talk over the movie. Or at least when my brother in law does it I can take him out side for a beat down, LOL. The whole theater experience is dead for me. Too expensive and aggravating. They just don't make movies that are worth it, any more. Now you kids get the Hell off my lawn ! ;-)

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You're assuming that the studios are actively trying to sell to their "core market." I would argue that, in the case of the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises...they aren't. They're looking to expand their market and create a new core. They still want the film to appeal to the long-time fans, but the long-time fans are a more sure bet just based on the brand name alone than are new people who have never watched or gotten into the franchise.

And it's worked, too. The "Not your daddy's Star Trek" approach has made those films successful. I have friends who never were into the old school Trek stuff, not TOS, not TNG, maybe they'd seen Wrath of Khan, but that's it. They know Trek from cultural osmosis, not from direct experience, really. But they got into the new films and really enjoy them. And, to be fair, as generic summer space action blockbusters, they're fine. Perfectly acceptable. They just don't really have anything that was truly distinctive about the Trek franchise to them that is deeper than the thickness of an iPhone case. And that's really how I see them: generic blockbusters with a Trek iPhone case slapped overtop. But like I said, it worked.

As for TFA, honestly, much as I might have wanted originally for the franchise to go in a completely different direction, of course they were always going to take the film, tweak it a bit, and otherwise leave it very familiar. And of course they were going to make it not just about white dude heroes. Like I said, they're trying to expand their market. And, again, it worked. I, for one, am ecstatic about it. I love the fact that there are heroes for me and heroes for my daughter now, all in the same franchise. I love that the franchise isn't afraid to go a little darker in its depiction of its universe, and has broken away from the strictly "kiddie"-themed approach of other material in its past. So far, I think the stories are interesting and fun, and represent a good relaunch of the franchise as a whole. I just also hope they take the opportunity to continue broadening the franchise's scope and the kinds of stories it tells. I don't see that as "SJW" preachiness, either. I see that as making movies accessible to everyone.

Snikt said:

The last part of this definitely resonates with me. When movie prices were so high (around 14 bucks, non 3d, non luxury) and the facilities werent up to par, or the people were punks and there wasnt any ushers or anything, I would definitely wait to watch stuff at home because of it. Its a shame too because I love going to the movies but the theaters dont combat jerks that wont shut up, constantly on their phone etc. Now my local theater is 8 bucks so its not as bad now, and they have ushers in the theaters. Its such a pleasant expierinence, Ill definitely see more movies because of it.

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My advice: shell out for the "dinner theater" experience. I stopped going to movies at regular theaters. I now only go to the local Studio Movie Grill, where I can order a meal, have a beer or liquor while I watch, be waited on by friendly yet unobtrusive staff, and know that if someone is being a real pain in the ass, they'll be kicked out. Bonus: no one has been a pain in the ass since I started seeing movies at this theater. You know why? Right. Because the people who are a pain in the ass are too cheap to pay for that experience, or are too busy eating their meal and watching the film to be texting and shouting at each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-LOlxfF-gU
Music for me getting onto my soapbox

The problem is the entire filmmaking industry and studio system it broken beyond repair. The hype-inflated budgets mean almost every tentpole movie needs to break a billion or it's considered a loss. What most people don't realize is when you see a "budget" listed somewhere, you aren't really seeing the budget. Take the cinematic suppository that was Feig's Ghostbusters for example. Reportedly this was budgeted at $144 million, which was brought down from an original budget of $169 million. What you see there is the production budget. What you don't see is how much of the budget went to P&A (Print and Advertising) Usually, the budget for P&A is equal to if not more than the production budget. That's why these ****ing movies are so hyped up, they literally need to make twice their budget back just to break even. Compounding this is the fact that budgets are so astronomically high nowadays. Studios decided to say "**** it" and go all or nothing with these tentpoles. Better to make a huge budget blockbuster and hope it makes a billion dollars than make a bunch of small, profitable films.

Another problem is how insulated the writing side of Hollywood is becoming, for features at least. More and more of these franchises are moving towards TV-style Writers rooms made up of already established screenwriters. This makes is harder for new talent to get any kind of chance. Why risk a movie with an untested writer when you can throw a bunch of Damon Lindelofs and Roberto Orcis in a room throwing crap around until something sticks? Look in the past, and genre and franchise movies used to be where new talent could get a chance before moving on to something original. Like Renny Harlin starting with the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Can you imagine a ****ing franchise today employing a completely unknown director for a huge franchise and actually giving them creative freedom?

I can bet you're probably thinking, what about guys like Gareth Edwards and Colin Tomorrowland? They started with low-budget movies and made the jump to huge franchises? If you think these guys had any real say over what was going on, then I'm sorry to tell you Santa isn't real. Movies like Godzilla, Jurassic World, and TFA are films made by committee and focus group. That's why all these ****ing movies look the same now. All the monsters are nondescript grey aliens. Superheroes all battle CGI armies of grey robots or aliens in almost every movie now. Think about it like this, does anyone go to cons dressed as a ****ing Chitauri, or an Ultron sentry? Ever seen anyone cosplay as any of the new aliens in the Star Trek reboots? Probably not. It's all down to design. People STILL dress as Stormtroopers, who occupied the same cannon-fodder army role that we see in so many big budget movies nowadays. They weren't anything more than another disposable army, but they looked cool. They looked different.

Problem is, and almost everything I'm talking about refers to this, different is risky. Risky is bad in the eyes of studios.

ForbiddenOnion What a great post, I appreciate your insight man. No offense to you, but it kind of bummed me out thats how it really is. I mean, I know, because it shows in the flims, but man. What a bummer. I still dont get how the marketing costs so much. I know I dont have cable anymore, but man. Some of these movies that have spent millions of dollars on marketing, I have barely even seen. I dont get it.

What do you think needs to happen in order for it to change?

ForbiddenOnion said:

Why risk a movie with an untested writer when you can throw a bunch of Damon Lindelof's and Roberto Orci's in a room throwing crap around until something sticks?

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It's tough to say because there isn't really a single answer. The quick reactionary answer would be that more big budget movies need to bomb, and bomb hard. Like King Arthur. Studios MIGHT see enough bombs as a sign of a shift in audience tastes and start backing away from the huge budgets. But, at the same time, bombs might be attributed to the individual filmmaker and not the stories or characters themselves. Look at Spider-Man, rebooted twice in less than 20 years because Sony and Marvel know the character is profitable and popular. Doesn't matter if the movies sucked, they can blame that Marc Webb or whichever poor schmuck they give the job to.

Another thing is for more filmmakers to say no to franchises. Look at Jordan Peele, his passion project was a sleeper hit and now everyone is knocking on his door to do some kind of franchise movie. And yet, he is sticking to his guns and turned them down. That's a level of integrity you don't anymore. Not that I can blame a guy like Gareth Edwards for doing Godzilla and Star Wars. I myself would gladly sell out and write a franchise movie given the chance. But for Peele to turn that down, that could be something that will affect future filmmakers. Some of them might be less willing to do a tentpole and the studios might, MIGHT be willing to let them do more personal projects just to have them under their roof. Who cares if so-and-so isn't doing a DC movie, at least hes doing a Warner Bros movie. But who knows? I'm just a humble basement dwelling screenwriter.

The long and short of it is the only thing that will really create change is for audiences to stop seeing these ****ing terrible trash movies. Let the studios know you don't wanna see pandering bull****.