10 Upcoming Movies That Nobody Asked For
Coming soon to a theater near you! Not that you care...
In the realm of populist filmmaking, the prime objective should always be giving the audience what they want. After all, with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, the product needs to be appealing enough that people are going to actively want to pay to see it.
However, this isn't a rule that all the studios actively adhere to. Sure, big-name brands like Star Wars, Marvel and Fast and Furious are virtually guaranteed to put butts in seats but on the other side of the coin there are countless blockbusters rolled out on an annual basis that seem to have no clear target audience in mind. Exactly who were the likes of the Dark Universe and Geostorm supposed to appeal to, anyway?
Name recognition isn't the be-all and end-all of financial success, but it seems that rapidly establishing a franchise, rushing out a sequel or capitalizing on a successful movie are taking increasing precedence over creating a studio picture that people are actually going to care about. Whether we like it or not, the studios make the movies they want to make, whether we asked for them or not.
10. The Girl In The Spider's Web
David Fincher's remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo may have earned critical praise, $232.4m at the box office and five Academy Award nominations, but difficulties in cracking the scripts for the two proposed sequels nixed the potential franchise at the first hurdle.
With this being Hollywood, no recognizable intellectual property is allowed to lay dormant for very long and this November brings a reboot in the form of The Girl in the Spider's Web, the source material of which wasn't even penned by original author Steig Larsson following his death in 2004.
Director Fede Alvarez has shown efficiency working in the horror genre, but this is a big step up for only his third full-length feature, especially with the shadow of one of the industry's greatest auteurs looming in the background which already creates an unfair barometer of his work on the movie.
While the casting of Golden Globe winner Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander seems like an inspired choice and the usually-reliable Steven Knight is on script duties, the novel series reached its cultural zenith a decade ago which could make the project a tough sell to casual audiences. It isn't like there's a huge number of people clamoring to revisit a Swedish crime saga that's already been the subject of four movies.