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The solution is painfully obvious for anyone who isn't actually involved in milking every last red cent out of media: make movies people actually want to see, a
by finack 2y ago
The solution is painfully obvious for anyone who isn't actually involved in milking every last red cent out of media: make movies people actually want to see, and not just shameless cash grabs recycling everything from 1980 onward. Of course, now every suit expects every movie to gross a billion dollars, so that's not going to happen. It's a fun dream, though.
- saintkaye 2y agoLiterally all the numbers say the opposite. There is a ton of ink on the topic, but the core problem is that executives get fired for failures more frequently than they get expanded upside for hits.
- ksenzee 2y ago“Executives get fired” makes it sound like being fired is a natural consequence of a box office failure. Who is firing the executives in such a way that they incentivize mediocre performance? Maybe they should quit doing that?
- saintkaye 2y agoThis should help: https://x.com/TheMonologist/status/1795505661591040064 https://x.com/TheMonologist/status/1795505661591040064
- tdeck 2y agoI can't remember where now, but I read that these reboot cash grabs are largely aimed at overseas markets like China which make up the majority of film earnings nowadays.
- ethbr1 2y agoThere's a reason science fiction was popular in the Soviet Union...
- actionfromafar 2y agoPlease elaborate. :-)
- ethbr1 2y agoThe fantastic is sufficiently detached to provide an allowed, apolitical outlet for social commentary, where more realistic stories would be censored.
- actionfromafar 2y agoI often wonder how "Kin-dza kin-dza" could have been produced, but it was perhaps in a climate of increasing openness.
- actionfromafar 2y agoExcept if there’s Winnie the Pooh in them, it’s sort of a litmus test.
- slibhb 2y agoIs Furiosa a cash grab? I haven't seen it yet but Fury Road was anything but.
- stalked_why 2y ago[dead]
- musha68k 2y agoYeah this is most likely the wrong movie to blame. Fury Road was IMHO the blockbuster movie of the 2010s. I didn't have time yet but very much looking forward to see what George Miller has cooked up this time around!
- mr_mitm 2y agoFury Road was certainly not a cash grab, but a prequel to the blockbuster of the 10s except with a female lead definitely smells like a cash grab.
- urban_alien 2y agoWhat a female lead has to do with it?
- musha68k 2y agoI like how the anti-woke internet twisted the subject for their agenda, claiming people didn't watch because they have apprehensions about woke Hollywood and female protagonists. Also they often don't seem to have a clue what kind of living legend George Miller is.
- vundercind 2y agoShe was the protagonist of the other one too. The Jay Gatsby to Max’s Nick Carraway. And AFAIK this is built almost entirely off the extensive character background notes developed while writing her for Fury Road, so it’s not like they just cooked up this story because they needed something.
- actionfromafar 2y agoIf only they recycled the best of the 1980s, it would be fine. Not great but fine. A large (majority?) of the audience wouldn’t even know it was recycled. Unfortunately mostly the veneer of the 1980s is recycled into some commitee test audience mashup. In a way we succeeded in making “machine learning” movies “by hand”. An awful lot of movies aren’t from the human spark.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoThe Super Mario Brothers and Barbie movies were big successes. Lots of other cash grabs make money too. But the movies that are coming out now were greenlit years ago, during the era when Marvel showed you could print money with just any lazy movies. Things are different now, but this one was already finished.
- joshspankit 2y agoI think (hope?) many of the movie watchers are caught up on the tropes and the “always makes money” formulas that Hollywood has been riding for years. If they pay attention maybe they’ll greenlight genuinely new IP and try things and let creatives explore again. You can make a lot of “failures” for $160M and if two are hits you’ve made enough to pay for all the rest.