Is it the Quality of the Films Being Made?

[widget]

 The other day, I saw a wonderful film[movie] My House in Umbria starring Ronnie Barker and Maggie Smith, one I highly recommend if anyone has not seen it. I won't tell you the story as it will spoil it so just go and restore your faith in good films. Widget

[uncle_al]

It's also troubling to see the number of remakes of old classics, many of which are not improvements even though I know this has been done in Hollywood for years ("King Kong," "Psycho," to name a few).
<snip>
This being said, it's disheartening to us newcomers who just want a chance to enter the market with something completely original.

So true... The Dino DeLaurentiis "Kong" was, to my mind, a disappointment... despite Jessica Lange.  I haven't seen the new Jack Black/Adrien Brody/Naomi Watts version yet.
The "shot-for-shot remake" of Psycho was a bad idea.  Whatever that exec was smoking, I'd say it needs to be pulled off the market.

Seems that the execs can only see greenlighting a movie if it remakes an older movie, or is a sequel to something that made money before.  They have no imagination... but neither, it seems, does the "target audience"... ages 14 to 24, IIRC.

Al Bouchard

[robogabs]

I'm truly dismayed at the reliance on special effects to "make" a movie. Perhaps, I'm an old fogey. My daughter thinks a lot of the movies, which I think are inane and bland, but loaded with lots of special effects, are great.
It's also troubling to see the number of remakes of old classics, many of which are not improvements even though I know this has been done in Hollywood for years ("King Kong," "Psycho," to name a few).
And then, there's the comic book adaptations (although I must confess, I thought "The Punisher" was funny, well-acted and had an amazing plotline).
This being said, it's disheartening to us newcomers who just want a chance to enter the market with something completely original.

[ScriptNurse]

Well said.

[uncle_al]

In my not-so-humble opinion, the upper echelon personnel at most all the studios are not capable of making entertainment-oriented decisions; IIRC, most of them are recruits from the ranks of agents and managers, if not the bean counters.
This is not to slight agents, managers, or bean counters; the really good ones seem to stay right where they are.  It's the marginally horrible ones who go into being studio execs.
We are not amused...

Al Bouchard

[ScriptNurse]

Originally posted by Ldoone on 8-19-2005 11:41 AM:  Is it the quality of the films being made?

Movie theater owners fire back at studios By Nicole Sperling Fri Aug 19, 5:10 AM ET:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) — Tired of being blamed for the box office slump, the nation's movie theater owners returned fire Thursday, accusing the studios of delivering sub-standard product. "Here's what we know about 2005: The movies are not as good," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners. "They're not terrible; they're just not as good. And so the industry has experienced a temporary drop-off compared to 2004, the biggest box office year in movie history."

His remarks were part of a direct rebuke to Robert Iger, who is about to take over as CEO of the Walt Disney Co. Iger said last week during the firm's third-quarter conference call that the industry should move toward the simultaneous release of theatrical films and videos. In 2004, the average gap between a film's release in theaters and on video was four months, 16 days.

Fithian said that compressing windows "to placate this instant-everywhere appetite" would result in a world with "no viable movie theater industry ... at least not a theater industry devoted to the entertainment products of Hollywood. (Iger) should know that Hollywood studios would be merely one shriveled vendor among many in that new world of movies-as-commodities-only," he added.

Neither Iger nor Disney chose to respond to Fithian's comments. Year-to-date box office sales stand at $5.57 billion compared with $6.05 billion at the same time in 2004. Pundits have cited exhibitors' pumped-up onscreen advertising, rising ticket prices and rude patrons as primary reasons moviegoers are staying home.

During the earnings call, Iger said, "I don't think it's out of the question that a DVD can be released in effect in the same window as a theatrical release. Although I'm sure we will get a fair amount of push-back on this from the industry, it's not out of the question. I think that all the old rules should be called into question because the rules in terms of consumption have changed so dramatically."

While no major exhibitor has suggested taking aggressive action against Disney based on Iger's comments, theater owners in the past have shown tremendous resistance to anyone who advocates a compressed windows strategy. Many in the industry believe it's just a matter of time until a major studio attempts such an experiment in the hope of reducing marketing costs and maximizing profits across the various platforms.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Posted by ScriptNurse on 8-20-2005 6:23 PM:

Movies are rarely events any more. Most films are more like enhanced-TV, if anything else, especially Disney films. They've become masters of recycling their old product into new ones. Precious little original material, just the same old stuff ... again. At the root, I believe this stems from the fact that they no longer have the vision that Walt Disney infused the company with. They ran for decades on that vision and now they've "hit the wall." They've gone through all of the stuff that Walt started before his death and there's no one to pick up where he left off. A duller man than Michael Eisner would be hard to find. He's a numbers man, and he's VERY good at numbers, especially those having to do with his bonuses, usually at the expense of the operating divisions. Employees have to make do with what they can in order to cut costs to the point where the product itself suffers. He was despised by the employees of Disneyland at what he did to the park ... at what he did to Walt's dream for Disneyland ... all for the bottom line. Walt made a product for the people ... Eisner made products to please Wall Street.

As the flagship theme park, you'd think Disneyland would get the best, have the best and look the best, but it mostly gets "hand-me-down" and recycled attractions from Florida. Non-attractions are labelled and peddled to the guests as attractions. For example, at Disney's California Adventure, a sponsored exhibit by a food company famous for making tortillas is labelled as an &quot;attraction.&quot; It's a commercial, folks. It's also not very popular with the guests.

The last sentence in the Hollywood Report article above pretty much sums it all up. It's all about costs and profits first and quality second. Walt's approach to giving his audience quality first, believing the money would come, is still valid today, but ignored by Eisner and Iger. I hope Robert Iger sees the light, but I'm not very confident he will.