Hollywood's 2016 Sequel Problem

The producers of Blade Runner said while the film originally flopped it went on to make a profit and become lucrative.

Blade Runner not being successful when it originally opened had a lot of to do with how it was marketed and the type of movies that were released around the time i came out.

I don't think many people wanted a direct sequel to Blade Runner but some people did want to see more stories set in that world.
 
Well, but since then the original Blade Runner is hailed as masterpiece, so a sequel co-starring Harrison Ford, and produced by Ridley Scott is sure to garner lots of curiosity. Add Denis Villeneuve to that, who's a brilliant filmmaker, and there's a strong possibility that the trailers will stun the audience, and it'll make bank.

It's one of the upcoming blockbusters I'm looking forward the most. James Cameron's and Robert Rodriguez's Battle Angle Alita adaptation is another one.
 
It makes me think what's gong to happen with Independece Day 2. It'll make money for sure, out of curiosity factor, but like what Jeff Cannata and Dave Chen said before, on /film's podcast, maybe social media is making more of an impact on movies more now than 2-3 years ago.

Like if ID4 2 gets a meh reception on Facebook and Twitter, the movie may fail to have legs.
 
Social media just seems to be an extra way of word of mouth for me.

From two years ago on how people decide what film to see...

http://www.indiewire.com/2014/11/infographic-how-people-decide-what-movies-to-see-67790/

original.jpg
 
This all reminds me of a conversation I had last year with some coworkers. They were complaining about the lack of good, original movies that aren't sequels or big superhero movies. Then, in the same conversation, one of them mentioned Ex Machina, and I was like "I haven't seen that yet. I heard it's really good." His response was "I have it on a flashdrive over there if you want to watch it." I'm against getting movies from torrents and whatever other methods of piracy in general, but this really pissed me off. All of the other guys who were talking about the lack of original movies had seen Ex Machina... via torrent. I was just like "Don't do that! If you're going to steal a movie, at least have the decency to steal Avengers or something that is already going to make a billion dollars. Don't steal from the movies you want to see more of."
 
-JKR- said:
Like others have said, it's mostly the audience's fault. Edge of Tomorrow? Pacific Rim? Now The Nice Guys?

People complain and keep complaining about sequels and reboots and requels and whatever, but that's what they mostly flock to theaters for. Oh, look, a new Star Wars film. Oh, gee, another three Star Wars spin-offs coming out before the sequel. And I've got nothing against Star Wars, and really liked J.J. Abrams' sequel, BUT...

People need to send the right message to Hollywood, and that comes across only through cash.

It's positive that people didn't eat up every sequel this year. But what I fear that Hollywood will take from all this, is to only focus on creating 'cinematic universes.'
Click to expand...

Part of the problem though comes back to marketing. Deadpool is the perfect example of what can be done with good marketing for an unknown property. It opened to $134m. That's unheard of for a character who 12 months ago was at best a D-list comic character. Edge of Tomorrow I didn't even know existed until 6 weeks before the movie opened, and I'm a movie nerd, so how can you blame audiences when they're not even aware the films are being released?

You don't have to sell a character like Batman but you will see him get 10 times the money spent on marketing him than you do for an unknown movie. How well was The Nice Guys, or Pacific Rim, or Dredd, or some other film like that marketed? How much money was spent on selling those characters? Not nearly as much, why? Because it takes more work than it does to slap a Batman logo on a poster. There's got to be a smart marketing campaign in order to entice people. A trailer and a bunch of Youtube Likes isn't enough to get people to watch your movie, you've got to put work in to get them in the theatres.

It also comes back to budgets of the movies. Again, Deadpool was made for under $60m, yet looks just as good as any $250m blockbuster. You can't tell me you can't make a blockbuster for under $100m, so the financing of how movies are made need to be adjusted. At present too many films are basically given a blank cheque and not only does that result in money wasted but it puts no pressure on the creative team to actually have to be careful with their resources. Don't like that CGI sequence? Start from scratch. How often does the CG in the trailers and the actual film look different? Constantly, different backgrounds, different textures, nothing but money wasted on shots that should be signed off on.

It's absurd, the mentality shouldn't be about creating $250m blockbusters, it should be 'how many films can we make with $250m?'. If I was running a studio I would invest in three original $65-70m genre films, release them all in a year and see which ones the audiences go for, and then build a franchise around which ones are successful, and do this every year. The problem at the moment is instant gratification, studios want franchises now, they don't want to put the work in to build one up. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Terminator, etc, these weren't franchises to begin with, they were films that became franchises in the long run. What's needed is for studios to start thinking smaller again, stop looking at trying to make everything a billion dollar blockbuster, and be smart with finances. It other words - get back to basics.
 
Studios need to start asking themselves what concepts really would benefit from long-term storytelling, instead of throwing out sequels for any film that makes even a marginable profit.

Who wanted a sequel to The Huntsman? I mean who asked for that?
 
Kristen Stewart fans. When she dropped out, nobody.
 
Blackman said:
Just give me hood movies man...
Click to expand...

With blockbusters that is happening now. It's very different from the 90's where it was this dark age.

There are many high quality blockbusters, but the thing is, I just can't be content in only good blockbuster movies. And in a way, I think this is a trick for the masses. Fool us and buy us out into making great brand blockbuster movies while we're distracted from not seeing that there's a severe lack of other types of movies. Studios are catching on and I think they're using this to exploit it. Yeah, they're good which is fine, but it isn't the only thing anymore. I want diverse good movies. I don't have a problem with them being good, I have a problem with the unproportionate amount of them in relation to diverse/lower budget films in circulation.
 
I'm not at all surprised by the numbers in that article. I myself don't watch as many movies as I used to namely because of lack of originality. I do find myself getting most of my original content from online now, either via a streaming service or on Youtube. Youtube is where most people under 18 are going for their content.
 
I think people want quality just as much as they want diversity and originality. We're getting the former now but not so much the latter two.

StormC's post made me realize the more they lose the 20 something demo, the less chances they have of sustaining them when they get older.
 
Doctor Jones said:
With blockbusters that is happening now. It's very different from the 90's where it was this dark age.

There are many high quality blockbusters, but the thing is, I just can't be content in only good blockbuster movies. And in a way, I think this is a trick for the masses. Fool us and buy us out into making great brand blockbuster movies while we're distracted from not seeing that there's a severe lack of other types of movies. Studios are catching on and I think they're using this to exploit it. Yeah, they're good which is fine, but it isn't the only thing anymore. I want diverse good movies. I don't have a problem with them being good, I have a problem with the unproportionate amount of them in relation to diverse/lower budget films in circulation.
Click to expand...

well as I said I dont care much. I just want a movie to be good. I dont see why people care if something is original or a reboot. And I think there are a good number of original mid level movies released throughout the year. The problem is they aren't very good. If we wanna talk about that then that's something. An original movie can suck just as easily.
Because honestly, even if a movie is "original" it follows the same tropes used in countless movies. So how "original" is it really?
And not you, but as has been said in this thread, a lot of the people complaining about the lack of originality aren't paying to see original films, which undercuts their whole argument imo.
 
Doctor Jones said:
I think people want quality just as much as they want diversity and originality. We're getting the former now but not so much the latter two.

StormC's post made me realize the more they lose the 20 something demo, the less chances they have of sustaining them when they get older.
Click to expand...

And studios aren't helping themselves by catering to the nostalgic 25-35 demographic by dragging out old franchises from the 80's and 90's and giving them a fresh coat of paint. I've been saying this for year kids of today need their own franchises to grow up with, but the problem is Hollywood has failed to invest in new priorities, as a result kids viewing habits are completely different thanks in part to that lack of foresight. Youtubers like Pewdiepie and Markiplliar have subscriber bases that are mostly people under the age of 16, that's where that demographic is headed - online.
 
Another big problem for me is, I think, Hollywood has gotten way too geeky. I mean, I love geek properties (otherwise I wouldn't post here), I love comic books, I love superheroes, sci-fi, and all that stuff.

But I'd still like for studios to focus on other kinds of subjects and types of stories for their big releases. And I also think that's one of the reasons more and more 20somethings wait for the next Netflix Tv series, rather than going to the movies more often.

Edgy commercial films, marketed well, woud do bank, I belive. Projects similar to the Narcos series or lots of other series, which studios don't think will do well in theaters anymore --- that's the kind of stuff I believe people are missing in theaters. And I'm not talking about Oscar season films. I don't like this huge, clear separation between blockbusters - and the Oscar season. Come on, why does it have to be 'either or'? Why can't there be more studio films which are edgy, mature, but aren't really made with the intention of getting awards, either? Look at Silence of the Lambs. It was clearly not made for Oscar season. It was released in February '91, and ended winning big awards at the Oscars in '92.

And studios aren't helping themselves by catering to the nostalgic 25-35 demographic by dragging out old franchises from the 80's and 90's and giving them a fresh coat of paint. I've been saying this for year kids of today need their own franchises to grow up with, but the problem is Hollywood has failed to invest in new priorities, as a result kids viewing habits are completely different thanks in part to that lack of foresight. Youtubers like Pewdiepie and Markiplliar have subscriber bases that are mostly people under the age of 16, that's where that demographic is headed - online.
Click to expand...
The problem isn't even that people need their own franchises now. It's that people need their more of 'their own FILMS' right now, which can turn into profitable franchises if they hit home with an audience. The studios need to learn how to put everything (and by everything I don't mean just blowing $350 million into a single film) into one single story again: one film, with a beginning and an end... instead of setting up and day-dreaming about 7-film franchises, and delivering films which don't have any sense of closure, and where you kinda feel cheated by the end of it.

The Golden Compass was clearly a set up for a huge franchise, and look how that ended. And one film where I felt cheated by the end of it, because of how blatantly it tries to set up sequel is The Losers. It's turns out to be such a non-story, with such a non-ending, by the end. And of course it didn't even get sequels. And why should an audience love half a film so much in order to warrant a sequel?

And we're into superhero territory again, but that's what's so beautiful about Deadpool. It was a huge anomaly in today's cine-scape. And R-rated action comedy ("R-rated action films don't work anymore"), which (despite some links to the X-Men franchise) was a standalone story, and had you invested in that one, single story. It made more than freakin' $770 million, and was loved by audiences worldwide, so of course it's now a franchise, but the film itself doesn't feel like they just did a little teaser for a bigger franchise. And we need more of that. In the end of the day, if there's more Deadpool films, it's because the moviegoers have clearly 'voted' for other chapters to be made, and it's one of those properties where I think people will be excited for a sequel, if the trailers aren't dissapointing.

I'm not against sequels, at all.

But Hollywood needs to remember that films aren't television series, and that each installment needs to work independently, and stand on its own feet. It's a little problem I've got with several Marvel Studios films, too, where I felt the story didn't really go somewhere - 'but hey, it's okay, it's part of a much bigger piece, anway'. And I don't love that. But it has worked for them, and the public likes and trusts the Marvel Studios fans. But it shouldn't become a habit, as it clearly ain't a 'rule' that works for everyone and in every situation.
 
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Blackman said:
Because honestly, even if a movie is "original" it follows the same tropes used in countless movies. So how "original" is it really?
Click to expand...

Thus brings up the age old question, is there such thing as an "original" idea? You can trace almost every story back to The Odyssey or Shakespeare. However, it's doing things in a more unique and more "original" way. Let's look at two PTA films:

There Will Be Blood is loosely based on the novel OIL, therefore it's not technically "original". However, the film can't fit in any one genre, there are no major basic tropes and it's crafted unlike any other film. The same can be said for The Master even though it's technically not an "original" film, being partially based/inspired by Hubbard.

A good way of showing how "originality" has more to do with how the film is crafted and told versus the actual story itself is to look at Boiler Room and The Wolf Of Wall Street. Both films' roots are in the story of Jordan Belfort and yet Boiler Room is a pretty by the numbers film, while WOWS is rather eccentric.

Diversity is good. It's good to be able to watch satires, dramas, action films etc. It's not a snobbishness towards the inherent "wrong" of blockbuster films because as you say, just make the films good and there are plenty of masterpieces in the form of blockbusters. However, if the year was littered with blockbusters all at the level of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, ET, Star Wars, The Dark Knight and Mad Max:Fury Road, I'd still want to watch something different at times. It's good for the art form to have different types of stories.


-JKR- said:
Another big problem for me is, I think, Hollywood has gotten way too geeky. I mean, I love geek properties (otherwise I wouldn't post here), I love comic books, I love superheroes, sci-fi, and all that stuff.

But I'd still like for studios to focus on other kinds of subjects and types of stories for their big releases. And I also think that's one of the reasons more and more 20somethings wait for the next Netflix Tv series, rather than going to the movies more often.

Edgy commercial films, marketed well, woud do bank, I belive. Projects similar to the Narcos series or lots of other series, which studios don't think will do well in theaters anymore --- that's the kind of stuff I believe people are missing in theaters. And I'm not talking about Oscar season films. I don't like this huge, clear separation between blockbusters - and the Oscar season. Come on, why does it have to be 'either or'? Why can't there be more studio films which are edgy, mature, but aren't really made with the intention of getting awards, either? Look at Silence of the Lambs. It was clearly not made for Oscar season. It was released in February '91, and ended winning big awards at the Oscars in '92.

The problem isn't even that people need their own franchises now. It's that people need their more of 'their own FILMS' right now, which can turn into profitable franchises if they hit home with an audience. The studios need to learn how to put everything (and by everything I don't mean just blowing $350 million into a single film) into one single story again: one film, with a beginning and an end... instead of setting up and day-dreaming about 7-film franchises, and delivering films which don't have any sense of closure, and where you kinda feel cheated by the end of it.

The Golden Compass was clearly a set up for a huge franchise, and look how that ended. And one film where I felt cheated by the end of it, because of how blatantly it tries to set up sequel is The Losers. It's turns out to be such a non-story, with such a non-ending, by the end. And of course it didn't even get sequels. And why should an audience love half a film so much in order to warrant a sequel?

And we're into superhero territory again, but that's what's so beautiful about Deadpool. It was a huge anomaly in today's cine-scape. And R-rated action comedy ("R-rated action films don't work anymore"), which (despite some links to the X-Men franchise) was a standalone story, and had you invested in that one, single story. It made more than freakin' $770 million, and was loved by audiences worldwide, so of course it's now a franchise, but the film itself doesn't feel like they just did a little teaser for a bigger franchise. And we need more of that. In the end of the day, if there's more Deadpool films, it's because the moviegoers have clearly 'voted' for other chapters to be made, and it's one of those properties where I think people will be excited for a sequel, if the trailers aren't dissapointing.

I'm not against sequels, at all.

But Hollywood needs to remember that films aren't television series, and that each installment needs to work independently, and stand on its own feet. It's a little problem I've got with several Marvel Studios films, too, where I felt the story didn't really go somewhere - 'but hey, it's okay, it's part of a much bigger piece, anway'. And I don't love that. But it has worked for them, and the public likes and trusts the Marvel Studios fans. But it shouldn't become a habit, as it clearly ain't a 'rule' that works for everyone and in every situation.
Click to expand...

Good points. I wouldn't be surprised if a factor in the existence of The Nice Guys was because the studio thought it could easily be something episodic for future films. IMO, the three best blockbuster sequels of all time are The Road Warrior, The Dark Knight and Fury Road. They all tell a self contained story while still fitting perfectly within their respected franchise. There should be more of this. Empire Strikes Back is one of the rare exceptions to a great sequel not working incredibly well as a stand alone film.
 
I think I would've been way more interested in ID4 2 if it was happening in the late 90s early 00s instead of makings us wait 20 years.
 
To me the movie is pointless without Will Smith.
 
jmc said:
Part of the problem though comes back to marketing. Deadpool is the perfect example of what can be done with good marketing for an unknown property. It opened to $134m. That's unheard of for a character who 12 months ago was at best a D-list comic character. Edge of Tomorrow I didn't even know existed until 6 weeks before the movie opened, and I'm a movie nerd, so how can you blame audiences when they're not even aware the films are being released?

You don't have to sell a character like Batman but you will see him get 10 times the money spent on marketing him than you do for an unknown movie. How well was The Nice Guys, or Pacific Rim, or Dredd, or some other film like that marketed? How much money was spent on selling those characters? Not nearly as much, why? Because it takes more work than it does to slap a Batman logo on a poster. There's got to be a smart marketing campaign in order to entice people. A trailer and a bunch of Youtube Likes isn't enough to get people to watch your movie, you've got to put work in to get them in the theatres.

It also comes back to budgets of the movies. Again, Deadpool was made for under $60m, yet looks just as good as any $250m blockbuster. You can't tell me you can't make a blockbuster for under $100m, so the financing of how movies are made need to be adjusted. At present too many films are basically given a blank cheque and not only does that result in money wasted but it puts no pressure on the creative team to actually have to be careful with their resources. Don't like that CGI sequence? Start from scratch. How often does the CG in the trailers and the actual film look different? Constantly, different backgrounds, different textures, nothing but money wasted on shots that should be signed off on.

It's absurd, the mentality shouldn't be about creating $250m blockbusters, it should be 'how many films can we make with $250m?'. If I was running a studio I would invest in three original $65-70m genre films, release them all in a year and see which ones the audiences go for, and then build a franchise around which ones are successful, and do this every year. The problem at the moment is instant gratification, studios want franchises now, they don't want to put the work in to build one up. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Terminator, etc, these weren't franchises to begin with, they were films that became franchises in the long run. What's needed is for studios to start thinking smaller again, stop looking at trying to make everything a billion dollar blockbuster, and be smart with finances. It other words - get back to basics.
Click to expand...

That's why I like how Marvel Studios is doing with their unknown properties. Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man were properties that had little or no traction with the public, nor were they based on characters that average joe knew about. And yet after their success, Marvel can green light their sequel after their successful runs at the box office and great critical reception, and moviegoers now know who those characters are. If they did not work out, Marvel can shelf them and focus on another property instead without much of a loss.
 
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