1. Show Me The Money
Original script sales have been on the decline for the past five years. The odds were always lottery-style to begin with (something like 70,000 new scripts registered with the WGA every year; 50 sold; 3 made into films) but now the chances are even slimmer as studios turn to making films out of anything with the slightest cultural impact. When they make a film out of a game called
Battleship - where one player calls out a grid reference whilst the other says either
hit or
miss - rather than a fully conceived script with a coherent plot, interesting characters, strong dialogue, arcs and plot points - you know theyre desperate. Maybe if they had some cat and mouse scenario where a fleet was bombing and being bombed by another it may have had some significance to the game but it didnt. Instead they hotched up some half-baked story about underwater Transformer style alien-bots. Theres probably a script sat on the studios shelf called
'Attack of the Giant Alien Robo-Bots' but they passed that up to make a film of a brand name even though said film had sod all to do with the brand. It used to be a case of
lets make this film and if its a hit we can make a sequel, maybe a trilogy if were lucky but now the mission is to find that property that they can maximise for 7 or 8 films (the latest being
Hunger Games) or create entire universes (as with the criss-crossing with
Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and
The Avengers).
Paranormal Activity is another great example. Not only has it been watered down for the tween market but theyre throwing all kinds of crap at it to extend the series. It started with Katie, then moved to Katie sister, then when they were kids, then to the son of Katies sister. What next? Katies sisters sons next door neighbours dog? Its no longer about telling a coherent tale and maybe following it up to a logical conclusion. Nor is it practically remaking the original (which is what most sequels do -
Friday the 13th, Lethal Weapon, Rambo, Jaws, Die Hard etc). Now its about ensuring the franchise is kept alive so that it comes back over and over again. Just like the video store owners herpes. And they dont care how. They even contradicted everything that was set up in
Paranormal Activity so that they could keep the wheels moving. The original film made it clear the demon was always interested in Katie and that nothing can stop it, The sequel said it was after her sister and that it could be stopped - by a Mexican chant of all things. It supposedly existed purely to cause human suffering but by the third film it was kicking back with witches and marrying 7 year olds! Anything to keep the franchise alive. Even if each film contradicts the previous one. If they succeed in keeping it going theyll eventually arrive at the demon having been sent back from the future to kill the eventual mother of the man who destroyed its kind. And it will have a talking Black Trans-Am, too. But I digress So even though it was always hard to get a newbie script through the development process, especially with established directors and producers gunning for their own preferred material and preferred writers, now its next to impossible. Even professional, proven writers are unable to sell their scripts anymore and are only being offered work on the latest franchise instalment. Sure, the money is a consolation, but Christopher McQuarrie, who broke in as a fresh, new voice with
The Usual Suspects, has had to give up original material and get on board regurgitating other peoples work:
Jack Reacher, Top Gun and
Mission: Impossible. And again, its down to the markets reaction to what is provided. The tweens rule and the studios are going where the money is. We all moan about it and lament the films we want to see but the truth of the matter is no one is going to see them in sufficient numbers. The most common comment I hear about
Dredd 3D (other than the myth that it ripped off
The Raid) is I wished I saw this in the cinema." Some never knew it was out and plenty had their excuses ready about not being able to find babysitters (for a whole month?), but it all boils down to one thing: empty seats in the cinema. And that's why there is so much PG-13 material; its why the indie market is evaporating; and its why were getting more and more franchises and shared universes. We're voting with our pockets and our illegal downloading and we're getting what we deserve. We can all bemoan
Scary Movie getting another installment whils
t Driver goes unnoticed but the figures dont lie. Its not realistic to expect the adult-orientated films we love so much to out-gross
Transformers but theyre not even breaking even and unless we accept we're in the minority we simply must stop being the silent majority. Or else its another nine
Hansel and Gretel movies. As Dredd himself would say: Your move, creep!
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