The Film Industry has a problem: people are not going to movies anymore. Last October the three box-office leaders netted more than $55 million each week; this October the top three films in the box office can barely pull a combined $35 million, a drop of 40 percent. Apparently, Antonio Banderas with a whip, The Rock with demonic monsters, and Dakota Fanning with horses weren't enough to save October. Hollywood is losing money, and producers, executives and their latte-wielding assistants are scrambling to figure out why.
Rick Holter, Arts Editor for The Dallas Morning News, thinks that money is the root of film evil. "The Film Industry has become The Film Business. Executives are willing, now more than ever, to sacrifice product for income. Now they have sacrificed so much product it is killing their income," Holter said.
Essentially, the films being released just aren't any good.
This summer had a few gems like Wedding Crashers, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the occasional blockbuster sequel or remake-see Star Wars or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-but for the most part the box office was tepid in comparison to previous years.
The Summer Slump quickly shifted into the Fall Funk as movie-goers got inundated with films they didn't care to see or didn't mind waiting for the 900-hours-of-extras-packed DVD. Films like Two for the Money, whose incentive was watching Pacino scream like a mad man for two hours, and Into the Blue, where the main draw was watching Jessica Alba in a bikini, did not draw the audience-or the money-the studios were expecting.
It is obvious that Hollywood has always produced films for profit, not art. For example, Warner Brothers, Fox and MGM, the giants of the mid-century movie industry, made millions with very nonacademic, similar films (think: Rat Pack). Holter comments that "today's film industry parallels the way movies were made in the 50s and 60s." However, back then, sequels were rarer and the plots seemed original.
Jane Gaines, the former head of Duke's Film/Video/Digital program, sees that "the film industry has gotten to be a form of very advanced capitalism." Basically, studios spend money not because they believe in the product, but because they believe in the product's ability to make all that money back and much more. "It's about making a white bread product," Gaines said.
The process of turning the wheaty 7-grain artisan bread of independent/artistic/academic film into the peanut butter and jelly-partner that is studio film has become Hollywood's specialty. "Hollywood takes the wrong lessons from films," Holter explains. "They saw The Blair Witch Project and didn't see a well-budgeted movie, they saw that they could make more money from investing in horror films and advertising on the internet."
Gaines remembers seeing the film and saying, "'less than $100,000? You can make all kind of good movies for $100,000'. It makes sense. The problem is selling those movies to investors who believe that investing more is making more. These investors want to make money, but they want to be safe. They want to make films that they know and are familiar with. It is a brand name."
An even scarier crisis occurs when the Hollywood industry starts to infringe upon the world of independent and underground film. "These guys get sucked into being part of the Hollywood mob. There is a larger incentive to make a crappy $70 million movie than a pure $3 million independent film," Holter points out.
Although it may seem like Hollywood is pretty much in the toilet, there is still a light of hope on the horizon. Hollywood gained a small amount of its usual monetary momentum with Flightplan and the newly released Chicken Little, which may be this year's The Incredibles.
At the same time, larger studios are tapping into the more niche film market with smart, innovative films. Ang Lee's novel-adaptation Brokeback Mountain stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in a gay cowboy love story that people of all sexualities can appreciate. George Clooney convinced the guys at Warner to let him direct the compelling Good Night, and Good Luck, which has slowly been making waves in film circles.
More exciting than the revival of Hollywood is the film revolution that is on the verge of exploding. With high-speed internet becoming more accessible and high-quality cameras becoming more affordable, the birth of a new type of independent film is waiting to happen. Soon everyone will be able to be a Steven Spielberg and produce interesting films that can be played all over the world, potentially putting box office income in a depression once again. However, Hollywood has proven time and again that, just like the heroes in the movies they make, it's when the chips are down that they'll come roaring back.
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