Should Hollywood take more risks with the projects they fund?

[legendarymatt92]

An interesting question asked by the member chris_sc77 in the Cloud Atlas thread, does Hollywood take enough financial risks with the projects that they bring to the screen now? Should they be funding more challenging and original ideas, rather than sticking to superheroes and Hobbits?

Might be an interesting debate, depending on your view of Hollywood as a whole. I know it's been touched on in various threads and couldn't find a dedicated one for it.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Would i like them to take more risks? Sure i would, but financially It does not make much sense. Cloud Atlus has a $100 million budget and i just don't see it making that back. That movie looks like a hell of a risk.

[NARMAK]

The question is more linked to commiting to more original ideas that aren't financially intensive to fund that anything tbh. In that way, they can easily recoup the investment and should it be successful spend a bit more on the sequel should it need it.

I think theirs a distinct lack of originally well done idea due to box office syndrome. By that i mean studios continually looking for a cash cow with each venture and trying to turn it into a franchise.

I would hope they modify their approach somewhat to try more 'risky' projects on a sensible financial investment and actually change their mindset to be happy with a good slew of movies with healthy profits rather than extremely big megabucks to enter the top 10 BO like they all seem to do.

Would certainly perk a lot of latent talent some directors have and bring freshblood in, but like fields such as law etc, it's not what you know, but who you know and who will 'allow' you to do something.

Hollywood is an extremely small and elitist group at it's core which is why generic 'cash cow' and unoriginal ideas get the go ahead to stay 'safe'. They're just too damn connected. Much like Murdoch can literally destroy an individual or groups life via his media empire. They just wield too much damn power. Oh yean and the Y-rays from space will fry your brains, Maaan!

Last bit was a joke, but the closed knit elitist attitude part isn't.

[AmrlKJaneway]

Yes, and there should be less movies too, that go for longer.

Saturday mornings at the cinema should be serials. 45min-hour pieces that continue on, maybe every couple of months or so. One titled "DC", one titled "Marvel, and many more.

Movies themselves should be longer, more thought out, and far more special to see at the big screen. I'm talking arranged seating, intermission and meals.

All of this filmed in IMAX. Fifty or so serials a year, fifty or so movies, repeated through the week, with classic films filling the gaps. 90 minute Comedy and Horror pieces go strait to video.

Sounds far fetched? Maybe my mind is in the past, but man it sounds fun to me!

[legendarymatt92]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

[Show spoiler]The question is more linked to commiting to more original ideas that aren't financially intensive to fund that anything tbh. In that way, they can easily recoup the investment and should it be successful spend a bit more on the sequel should it need it.

I think theirs a distinct lack of originally well done idea due to box office syndrome. By that i mean studios continually looking for a cash cow with each venture and trying to turn it into a franchise.

I would hope they modify their approach somewhat to try more 'risky' projects on a sensible financial investment and actually change their mindset to be happy with a good slew of movies with healthy profits rather than extremely big megabucks to enter the top 10 BO like they all seem to do.

Would certainly perk a lot of latent talent some directors have and bring freshblood in, but like fields such as law etc, it's not what you know, but who you know and who will 'allow' you to do something.

Hollywood is an extremely small and elitist group at it's core which is why generic 'cash cow' and unoriginal ideas get the go ahead to stay 'safe'. They're just too damn connected. Much like Murdoch can literally destroy an individual or groups life via his media empire. They just wield too much damn power. Oh yean and the Y-rays from space will fry your brains, Maaan!

Last bit was a joke, but the closed knit elitist attitude part isn't.

I know what you're saying and I completely agree - Hollywood has been the way it is now since its beginnings and it will probably never change. It only makes the films that it thinks is in fashion and it doesn't matter at all what the audience really want - that said, most of them, like sheep, will simply watch whatever crappy remake or sequel they put out. As an industry that prides itself on delivering what the movie-goers want, Hollywood is very hypocritical and won't spend money on anything unless it's a guaranteed success. I think that if Cloud Atlas manages to make some substantial profit -- somehow -- then we might be in a situation where certain film companies start to consider changing what ideas they fund, allowing more abstract or obscure projects to come through eventually. It's just a shame that, when the majority of people would like change, they'll never do it.

[legendarymatt92]

Originally Posted by ArmyOfDarknessAW

Would i like them to take more risks? Sure i would, but financially It does not make much sense. Cloud Atlus has a $100 million budget and i just don't see it making that back. That movie looks like a hell of a risk.

The Wachowkis had to find $100 million of that money before the idea was even considered, apparantly. All Hollywood put in was the $20 million that secured them the rights to North America, which was a hell of a bargain, and probably added a bit more on for some "extensive" marketing tactics. It doesn't make sense financially, no, but maybe if they took more risks and produced more original ideas, more people would visit the cinema and, in the long run, the film companies would make more money?

Originally Posted by AmrlKJaneway

Yes, and there should be less movies too, that go for longer.

Saturday mornings at the cinema should be serials. 45min-hour pieces that continue on, maybe every couple of months or so. One titled "DC", one titled "Marvel, and many more.

Movies themselves should be longer, more thought out, and far more special to see at the big screen. I'm talking arranged seating, intermission and meals.

All of this filmed in IMAX. Fifty or so serials a year, fifty or so movies, repeated through the week, with classic films filling the gaps. 90 minute Comedy and Horror pieces go strait to video.

Sounds far fetched? Maybe my mind is in the past, but man it sounds fun to me!

I quite like the sound of that - it gives the movies more time to be made special and perfect, instead of rushed production schedules and half-finished ideas on the screen. I especially like the idea of intermissions and food, almost like a trip to the opera or something -- mind you, why shouldn't it be like that? Cinema is no less special or exciting than something like that, so why shouldn't movie-goers have luxury treatment? Love it.

[NARMAK]

I think the issue sometimes isn't even with funding being given for certain movies, but just not being given a chance to gain the right sort of exposure because you're not in the little 'group'.

I like the Kickstarter idea they're doing for 'The Goon' and i hope it works out because i would absolutely love to see a business like that take off and be successfull and be down to the faith of fans.

I think with stuff like YouTube, we as people can be shown movie showcases more commonly and then send funding to projects we think should work but again, there's just issues there you'd need to sort through as well.

Still, i think we're coming to the on-set of a more independent means of letting independent and original movies actually be made and released. The internet has revolutionised many things, but unfortunately hasn't cracked Hollywood movies the way we're hoping....YET!

I am hopeful though that very soon, there will be a way of putting together ideas that are funded directly by people that are just J6P and want to see something different that Hollywood won't greenlight despite it being a fantastic idea.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by ArmyOfDarknessAW

Would i like them to take more risks? Sure i would, but financially It does not make much sense. Cloud Atlus has a $100 million budget and i just don't see it making that back. That movie looks like a hell of a risk.

God, I hope Cloud Atlas doesn't bomb. Either way, I'll be there opening weekend. I generally support all ambitious projects.

[NARMAK]

Originally Posted by legendarymatt92

[Show spoiler]The Wachowkis had to find $100 million of that money before the idea was even considered, apparantly. All Hollywood put in was the $20 million that secured them the rights to North America, which was a hell of a bargain, and probably added a bit more on for some "extensive" marketing tactics. It doesn't make sense financially, no, but maybe if they took more risks and produced more original ideas, more people would visit the cinema and, in the long run, the film companies would make more money?

[Show spoiler]I quite like the sound of that - it gives the movies more time to be made special and perfect, instead of rushed production schedules and half-finished ideas on the screen

. I especially like the idea of intermissions and food, almost like a trip to the opera or something -- mind you, why shouldn't it be like that? Cinema is no less special or exciting than something like that, so why shouldn't movie-goers have luxury treatment? Love it.

We've come to associate how we watch movies in the cinema as the norm and deeply entrenched in the culture now for many years just as the theatre experience has its specific way of doing things, so it would be a very hard sell to cinema chains to change what essentially works very well.

Theres a two fold problem with cinemas imo. One is the piracy issue which does stop quite a lot of people coming to see most films because they're not 'mus see' movies that need to be viewed in the cinemas like the big blockbusters, so perhaps having high quality movies that are original and engaging may entice them, but then you run into the issue of ticket pricing and how it's increased in price, while people are having less disposable income to justify going. I suppose this is where unlimited movie contracts like we have in the UK for Cineworld work really well. They also grant a 10% discount on concessions, but that's also another area that's already overpriced to bolster profits or revenue in order to make up the shortfall that may occur if a movie doesn't do well, as a cinema has already paid out to get accesst to the prints etc to show, so the moneys sunk essentially.

It's all a very highly complex issue in reality to sort out in terms of changing the experience, so the changes have to stay within conventions. E.g. the higher marketing Cineworld do of the Unlimited card is brilliant and to be fair, the price increases have been reasonable compared to the increase in ticket prices.

Discount on concessions is also great, but i think the issue then becomes on movie side as we're originally meant to discuss, so i'm back to it after my rant

I still think the internet is going to bring about a more practical solution to solving this issue rather than directly originate from Hollywood itself. Times a changing man. Got the power to ourselves now!

[octagon]

Originally Posted by legendarymatt92

An interesting question asked by the member chris_sc77 in the Cloud Atlas thread, does Hollywood take enough financial risks with the projects that they bring to the screen now? Should they be funding more challenging and original ideas, rather than sticking to superheroes and Hobbits?

Might be an interesting debate, depending on your view of Hollywood as a whole. I know it's been touched on in various threads and couldn't find a dedicated one for it.

My initial response to this is 'oh hell yes' but I'm not so sure the benefits would outweight all of the potential costs.

Studios are corporate entities through and through and nothing can change that. Corporations tend to be conservative particularly with regard to public image. That's not really unreasonable and even it were it's not likely to change anyway.

So do we really want entities that are sensitive (sometimes hypersensitive) to public sentiment holding the purse strings for more of the films being made?

I dunno....

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by legendarymatt92

An interesting question asked by the member chris_sc77 in the Cloud Atlas thread, does Hollywood take enough financial risks with the projects that they bring to the screen now? Should they be funding more challenging and original ideas, rather than sticking to superheroes and Hobbits?.

Superheroes--assuming we're talking about Avengers, and not goofy mis-filmed DC heroes--and Hobbits have a built-in audience, that have been waiting not so much to see them, as to see them finally etched a place in pop-culture history the right way, so they can show the disk to their kids.
Both, incidentally, were MADE by studios with avenging decades of cultural misunderstanding in mind, for posterity, and the fans have only been too happy to take one for the team.

As for Clod Atlas (that was originally a typo, but I kept it ), you've got to remember that auteur directors are a strange and neurotic lot--And that for every "risk" we'd like to imagine studios wanting to take in bravely subsidizing, there's always that Lana Wachowski, Ridley "Prometheus" Scott or Roland "Anonymous" Emmerich whose own personal/artistic life redefines "risk", to the point we motion for the guys with the butterfly nets to stand by just in case.
In the end, studios are businesses of profit, and the last reaction they want to get from the audience is a mass reaction of "Coo-coo, coo-coo... ". No studio can write off THAT risk by the end of the quarter.
There's "risk" as in climbing a mountain, and there's "risk" as in taking all the sharp objects out of the room when your weird grandpa comes over for Thanksgiving and starts talking about the war.

[AmrlKJaneway]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

We've come to associate how we watch movies in the cinema as the norm and deeply entrenched in the culture now for many years just as the theatre experience has its specific way of doing things, so it would be a very hard sell to cinema chains to change what essentially works very well.

Theres a two fold problem with cinemas imo. One is the piracy issue which does stop quite a lot of people coming to see most films because they're not 'mus see' movies that need to be viewed in the cinemas like the big blockbusters, so perhaps having high quality movies that are original and engaging may entice them, but then you run into the issue of ticket pricing and how it's increased in price, while people are having less disposable income to justify going. I suppose this is where unlimited movie contracts like we have in the UK for Cineworld work really well. They also grant a 10% discount on concessions, but that's also another area that's already overpriced to bolster profits or revenue in order to make up the shortfall that may occur if a movie doesn't do well, as a cinema has already paid out to get accesst to the prints etc to show, so the moneys sunk essentially.

It's all a very highly complex issue in reality to sort out in terms of changing the experience, so the changes have to stay within conventions. E.g. the higher marketing Cineworld do of the Unlimited card is brilliant and to be fair, the price increases have been reasonable compared to the increase in ticket prices.

Discount on concessions is also great, but i think the issue then becomes on movie side as we're originally meant to discuss, so i'm back to it after my rant

I still think the internet is going to bring about a more practical solution to solving this issue rather than directly originate from Hollywood itself. Times a changing man. Got the power to ourselves now!

When it comes to piracy, this is one of the reasons I mentioned the IMAX format, even though I didn't fully explain it.

Piracy aside, there's also a lot of folks (like me) who will even wait for the Blu. With my projector running, surround sound, comfortable seating and my wife's cooking the home theatre experience equals, and in some ways EXCEEDS the cinema experience.

But home will NEVER equal IMAX. Even without the other ideas I mentioned (arranged seating, food, intermission, higher quality movies), movies shot with IMAX sequences are amazing and can drag the most agoraphobic of us out of the house for a night.

I plan on seeing two movies next year. Star Trek at the IMAX, because I'm an obsessed trekkie, and Man of Steel with my wife cause my folks get me a Deluxe Class ticket for my birthday each year. Everything else will wait for home, and cinemas need to do something special to drag me out of the house.

Okay, I'll probably take my boy to the superhero films and Star Wars, cause everyone deserves to see Star Wars on the big screen, but that's still a lot less than the thirty-forty cinema trips a year I used to do in my youth!

[Col. Zombie]

Originally Posted by ArmyOfDarknessAW

Cloud Atlus has a $100 million budget and i just don't see it making that back.

Surely they will make that back.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by Col. Zombie

Surely they will make that back.

I'm sure in the long run with Blu-ray sales and foreign taken into account, but i don't see domestic being more then $40 million. I know several people including myself who are lost when watching the trailer. I'm sure the movie is good and i plan to see it, but the trailer does not scream mass appeal to me.

[legendarymatt92]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

[Show spoiler]We've come to associate how we watch movies in the cinema as the norm and deeply entrenched in the culture now for many years just as the theatre experience has its specific way of doing things, so it would be a very hard sell to cinema chains to change what essentially works very well.

Theres a two fold problem with cinemas imo. One is the piracy issue which does stop quite a lot of people coming to see most films because they're not 'mus see' movies that need to be viewed in the cinemas like the big blockbusters, so perhaps having high quality movies that are original and engaging may entice them, but then you run into the issue of ticket pricing and how it's increased in price, while people are having less disposable income to justify going. I suppose this is where unlimited movie contracts like we have in the UK for Cineworld work really well. They also grant a 10% discount on concessions, but that's also another area that's already overpriced to bolster profits or revenue in order to make up the shortfall that may occur if a movie doesn't do well, as a cinema has already paid out to get accesst to the prints etc to show, so the moneys sunk essentially.

It's all a very highly complex issue in reality to sort out in terms of changing the experience, so the changes have to stay within conventions. E.g. the higher marketing Cineworld do of the Unlimited card is brilliant and to be fair, the price increases have been reasonable compared to the increase in ticket prices.

Discount on concessions is also great, but i think the issue then becomes on movie side as we're originally meant to discuss, so i'm back to it after my rant

I still think the internet is going to bring about a more practical solution to solving this issue rather than directly originate from Hollywood itself. Times a changing man. Got the power to ourselves now! :cool

:

Cinemas has only really been around in the form we know it for fifty or so years -- before that, it was much more like what (member) wanted. There were serials and news shorts before the film began and sometimes even after, and there would be days dedicated to short cartoons and whatnot. Even short documentaries about the war effort could be feature length presentations on their own. Just because the cinemas have introduced us to a way that suits us all now - we only see what we want to, and don't have to sit through anything that we're not interested in - doesn't mean that it couldn't change in the future. I don't think it ever will, simply due to the costs, but it's a nice thought. We're a culture that provides the basic level of detail to everything.

As for the whole Internet thing, I completely agree - for the first time in cinematic history, the masses have the chance to create their own industry to watch and share films they've made themselves. Soon there will be some landmark event which creates an alternative way of making films but, the question is, do we really want it to change?

[legendarymatt92]

Originally Posted by EricJ

Superheroes--assuming we're talking about Avengers, and not goofy mis-filmed DC heroes--and Hobbits have a built-in audience, that have been waiting not so much to see them, as to see them finally etched a place in pop-culture history the right way, so they can show the disk to their kids.
Both, incidentally, were MADE by studios with avenging decades of cultural misunderstanding in mind, for posterity, and the fans have only been too happy to take one for the team.

As for Clod Atlas (that was originally a typo, but I kept it ), you've got to remember that auteur directors are a strange and neurotic lot--And that for every "risk" we'd like to imagine studios wanting to take in bravely subsidizing, there's always that Lana Wachowski, Ridley "Prometheus" Scott or Roland "Anonymous" Emmerich whose own personal/artistic life redefines "risk", to the point we motion for the guys with the butterfly nets to stand by just in case.
In the end, studios are businesses of profit, and the last reaction they want to get from the audience is a mass reaction of "Coo-coo, coo-coo... ". No studio can write off THAT risk by the end of the quarter.
There's "risk" as in climbing a mountain, and there's "risk" as in taking all the sharp objects out of the room when your weird grandpa comes over for Thanksgiving and starts talking about the war.

Hollywood has definitely fallen into a routine whereby they only create projects that are guaranteed to gain something back. At the moment, all the audiences apparantly want to see are more superheroes and more J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations (don't get me wrong, both of those are great franchises and I really enjoy the films, yet it just feels stale when they keep re-releasing all the same ideas over and over again).

We definitely see more risk from those directors who have gained so much respect they can craft their artistic visions, but it's still only what Hollywood want to put on the screen to maximise profit - hence director's cut re-releases on home media formats. Even with the huge names, film studios still play it safe...and that begs the question: will they ever let directors have complete creative control ever again?

[Moefiz]

I would love to see Hollywood take more risk but they are comfortable with what they have now Superheros, Hobbits and documentary style Horror..its guarantee cash return at the box office, they wont change that formula...for now..until the next big thing come along.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by legendarymatt92

Hollywood has definitely fallen into a routine whereby they only create projects that are guaranteed to gain something back. At the moment, all the audiences apparantly want to see are more superheroes and more J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations (don't get me wrong, both of those are great franchises and I really enjoy the films, yet it just feels stale when they keep re-releasing all the same ideas over and over again).

The Avengers and The Hobbit were both made by independent production companies who had personally invested reasons for wanting to see those movies made, which, not so coincidentally, were the same reasons those who were first in line for them wanted to see them made--
If The Rest Of Hollywood keeps going back to the movies that Core Fans Demanded, like the Harry Potter series, it's largely because studios today are more desperate that the movies they want to make--big action movies to stroke the point-negotiating egos of their stars, whenever Angelina Jolie or Liam Neeson felt like running around with a gun and looking cool and intense--we DON'T.

Studio execs don't get out much, you see, and only understand us common folk through their own idiosyncratic understanding of the numbers, while trying to leave some safe corporate back door for themselves where they can still make a movie about Liam Neeson or Denzel Washington wanting to run around with a gun that week.
It's a cliche' to say "Audience proven popularity", but studios are in a more desperately clingy position nowadays to say "Haha, we got one, we got one; quick, figure it out! "

[doctorD]

I think they need to stop with the re-makes and start looking into more original movies. There are plenty creative writers out there but unfortunately, we've been getting overloaded the last few years with remakes. I love going to the theater to see movies but right now, the only thing I'm spending my money to see are mostly Superhero and some sci-fi stuff.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by doctorD

I think they need to stop with the re-makes and start looking into more original movies. There are plenty creative writers out there but unfortunately, we've been getting overloaded the last few years with remakes.

Said it at the time, and it's still true:
The reason we're getting floods of remakes--horror remakes, general 80's remakes, and now TV remakes like "Hawaii Five-O" and "Beauty & the Beast"--is that our generation is starting to realize that all of pop-culture entertainment is starting to cannibalize itself out of existence.

Ten years ago, PBS examined the Massacre of '01 (the summer when we barely had a hit, despite studios believing they had "big guns" in Tomb Raider and Planet of the Apes) with a documentary called "The Monster That Ate Hollywood"--the "monster" being parent corporations--and added "Soon, there was nothing for the monster to eat anymore."
It's become a vicious spiral, in TV, for example: Cable channels stopped showing old properties, which their corporate masters were holding from each other for spite--So they could market new original programming to create a house-brand for their corporate masters to sell; they wanted cheap reality shows that could be ground out quickly without union writers or actors, people stopped watching TV because of them, and now networks believe they don't have to treat TV as a special product, and grind it out as specially isolated-target bulk Demographic Fodder without fanfare or presentation.
Now picture a viewer thinking "Remember when you were a kid, and it was Thursday night, and the Hawaii Five-O theme would come on at 9 o'clock?"

Our current generation wants to go to movies on a Friday night, because they grew up believing that that's what their parents did in the 80's, but when they get there, they find there's nothing to see, and it's too expensive to go on impulse:
The corporatization of hometown theaters into mall chains have made overheads so high that movies have to be chosen carefully, which means we don't just pack up to see whatever quickie title comes out in the off seasons, which means theaters make less money, which means more overhead, etc., etc...
When I was in high school, our local theater was just down the road, had three independently-owned screens, and it was the local haunt for everybody in town on Friday night to see Back to the Future for $5, whether they were planning to or not.
That's the experience the new generation wants, but they can't understand what it's like to go to a movie for no reason and enjoy it--They just historically figure it must've been sometime back before Jurassic Park turned everything CGI and corporate, and that the last time somebody did have fun at the movies, Robocop or Footloose was playing.
We live in a generation where we wish we'd never heard of the Monster That Ate Everything.