When people talk about the film industry,
most of them imagine Hollywood. But are Hollywood films really that great? One
example I want to talk about is World War Z (2013) with its huge Hollywood
budget. At first they paid US$ 1 million to receive the rights to Max Brooks’
apocalyptic novel, “World War Z” (2006). The budget for the film was originally
at US$ 150 million, and then it began to balloon from anywhere from US$ 210-250
million. Throughout filming there has been delays, an expensive 40min reshoot
and no clear ending for the film when it started shooting. Not only was the
rising budget a concern, the director, Marc Forster had only created one action
film prier to this (James Bond Quantum of Solace, 2008), which received a lot
of backlash from the fans and critics.
Part of the main reasons why there was so much
hype for this film was because of it being based on Max Brooks’ novel, which in
itself already had a fan base. However, the film had made major changes to the
plot which letdown and disappointed the fans. Brad Pitt himself admits that the
story was changed more than originally intended. Brad Pitt’s theater appeal
is also fading, it’s almost like he’s too famous and the audience sees him as
himself rather than the character he is playing. People just aren’t that
excited to see him star in films anymore.
"If the filmmakers have abandoned logic for the sake of
cool visuals, an essential aspect of this potential franchise will be
short-changed, and the movie may not do as well," says Jeff Gomez.
Overall, World War Z has many issues to its creation:
- · Expensive, increasing budget
- · Strayed away from the originally plot from the book, disappointing fans
- · A director who doesn’t have a lot of experience of shooting action films
- · Started shooting the film while the script/plotline hasn’t been finished
- · Lead actor who isn’t as popular anymore
This sort of pattern is quite common
within Hollywood films aiming for a blockbuster. Which to Steven Spielberg and
George Lucas, they predict that the film industry is going to implode. They say
that Hollywood is making more and more massive-budget general-interest
blockbusters every year and because of this, cinemas are losing regular
moviegoers to the Internet and TV. This is creating a bland selection of
blockbuster films as the industry is losing their focus.
“They’re going for the gold,” said
Lucas. “But that isn’t going to work forever. And as a result they’re getting
narrower and narrower in their focus. People are going to get tired of it.
They’re not going to know how to do anything else.”
Spielberg has noted that because of the
increasing amounts of entertainment forms that they are all competing for
attention and that studios would rather spend US$ 250 million on one film than
creating several original, quirky and personal projects. They predict that the
movie-theater industry will become a place where only huge blockbuster films
are shown for longer periods of time, on huge screens and the tickets will cost
a considerable amount more. Becoming almost like a theater or Broadway
experience. This is already underway as two days
before World War Z was released; Paramount announced that it was selling US$ 50
tickets for viewers which will give you one ticket, a limited edition poster, a
HD copy of the film when its released and a small popcorn. This could mainly be
because Paramount knew it needed to do incredibly well to break even from the
huge budget, which selling highly increased tickets before the official release
could help. Overall, according to Paramount World War Z created a gross profit
of US$ 500 million worldwide – so it must of worked.
Increasingly, Hollywood is creating films that have been adapted
from an existing source such as a sequel, prequel, book etc. Mainly this is
because you will know who your audience will be as there will be a pre-existing
fan base as well as the story, the characters and the world would have already
been developed; saving time and money on script writers. Rarely are Hollywood
films classed as original films, and even when they are, they have a very
comparable plot to other media such as Avatar is class as an original film
because it has no prequel, it’s not adapted from a book etc. However, many
critics have compared the plot to Dances With Wolves.
Below is some bullet points taken from an article examining 100
of the highest grossing Hollywood films from 2005-2014 in terms of originality,
budget, source and profit:
•
39% of top movies released 2005-14 were truly original,
i.e. not an adaptation, sequel, spin-off, remake, or other such derivative
work
•
The biggest ten movies of each year are rarely truly
original (15% of the time, 2005-14).
•
In both 2013 and 2014, none of top ten grossing movies
were original.
•
The highest grossing, truly original movies of the past
decade were (in order) Avatar, Up, Cars, Inception, The Hangover and
Gravity.
•
The average budget for films based on
existing material was $70.8 million, whereas ‘truly original’ films had an
average budget of just $46.4 million.
•
The most common source for adaptation is a fictional novel
or short story (19.7% of top movies)
• Almost 70% of romantic comedies are original.
As you can see, Hollywood is creating a pattern of creating their
films and is almost becoming lazy by sourcing already existing material to
create an enormous profit. Hollywood is losing their workmanship in terms of
creating films, and I wonder if the UK film industry is following in their footsteps.
I want to research into the UK film industry and compare what I have found.
This research is helping me understand film making on a huge scale and in terms
of characters and creature designs a lot of films are being made from source
material where they already have a fan base. As I want to create something new,
it’ll be interesting how new designs of creatures are perceived by an audience.
Below are links to articles I have read in reference to this blog post:
Below are links to articles I have read in reference to this blog post:
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