Moviegoers Dealt Originality a Setback in 2024 60
Box office returns have started to stabilize. But nine of the top 10 box office hits this year were sequels [non-paywalled link]. And the 10th was "Wicked." From a report: A year ago, Hollywood's creative community was celebrating the apparent decline of corporate, paint-by-numbers sequels and remakes. Blockbuster ticket sales for movies like "Oppenheimer," "Sound of Freedom" and "Barbie" had shown -- or so it seemed -- that audiences were finally hungry for fresh stories.
You could almost hear the relief emanating from franchise-fatigued writers, directors and producers. "Everything Everywhere All at Once," the wildly inventive Oscar-winning art film that broke out in cinemas in 2022, had not been a fluke! Alas. Mass moviegoing swung squarely back to the predictable this past year, with sequels filling nine of the top 10 slots at the North American box office. The ennead consisted of "Inside Out 2," "Despicable Me 4," "Deadpool & Wolverine," "Moana 2," "Dune: Part Two," "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," "Kung Fu Panda 4," "Twisters" and the 38th Godzilla movie, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire."
"Wicked," a song-by-song adaptation of the first half of the long-running Broadway musical, was the only top-10 outlier, counting as original, if only by a witchy whisker. (In the alternative reality of Hollywood, a movie can be "original" even if it is derivative of something else. What matters is whether the source material has previously been used for a stand-alone theatrical movie.)
You could almost hear the relief emanating from franchise-fatigued writers, directors and producers. "Everything Everywhere All at Once," the wildly inventive Oscar-winning art film that broke out in cinemas in 2022, had not been a fluke! Alas. Mass moviegoing swung squarely back to the predictable this past year, with sequels filling nine of the top 10 slots at the North American box office. The ennead consisted of "Inside Out 2," "Despicable Me 4," "Deadpool & Wolverine," "Moana 2," "Dune: Part Two," "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," "Kung Fu Panda 4," "Twisters" and the 38th Godzilla movie, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire."
"Wicked," a song-by-song adaptation of the first half of the long-running Broadway musical, was the only top-10 outlier, counting as original, if only by a witchy whisker. (In the alternative reality of Hollywood, a movie can be "original" even if it is derivative of something else. What matters is whether the source material has previously been used for a stand-alone theatrical movie.)
and (Score:5, Informative)
also down about %4 vs 2023, and still way off 2018 levels; in terms of total box office receipts.
So even with some big budget nostalgia bets, they could not maintain positive trend.
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Re:and (Score:4)
There's the advantage of seeing the movie with friends and partners. But who am I kidding, this is slashdot...
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I find the home experience is often better than the cinema. You can control the volume and use some compression to make the dialogue intelligible, without the explosions blowing your eardrums out. Cinema projectors often seem to be poorly focused too.
Slashdot readers dealt originality blow with dupes (Score:4, Funny)
Posted less than a week ago:
https://entertainment.slashdot... [slashdot.org]
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Sings: "They're defying rational-ity!"
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I need at least two dupes before I take the story seriously. Or one dupe from the same editor as the original.
When was the last time Hollywood made an original? (Score:1, Troll)
When was the last time Hollywood made a genuinely original movie? Not one set in an existing universe or one based on a book, play, TV show, video game, historical event etc?
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Pretty sure Everything Everywhere All at Once is unique and not based on any specific thing.
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It was based upon a plot already used in a different plane of reality, it was a big hit and titled Everything Everywhere Occasionally.
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The Homestead came out on December 20th. It's not based on any of the things you named. It has mediocre ratings and isn't particularly good, but it is original.
Now move those goalposts. You know you want to.
Re: When was the last time Hollywood made an origi (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think it really matters. Hollywood is, more than ever, a monoculture. If you want go anywhere there, you need, in order of importance:
1) The same politics (including being willing to publicly disown close friends and relatives who don't share them on your social media)
2) Who you know
3) The same shitty taste in everything
4) A brown nose, including being willing to perform sexual favors to get work (see Weinstein et al)
5) Talent
Hollywood is what an industry without meritocracy and full of narcissism and nepotism inevitably looks like. See for example, the Oscars, which nobody wins without a combination of bribes and knowing the right people.
You know who this doesn't apply to? Among others, best-selling book authors. That's why there's no point in moving any goalposts.
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The Homestead came out on December 20th. It's not based on any of the things you named. It has mediocre ratings and isn't particularly good, but it is original.
Now move those goalposts. You know you want to.
Mediocre ratings? Isn’t particularly good? According to you, we should move the goalposts right into the outhouse and be happy about it.
Original shit, is still shit.
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Congratulations. You explicitly stated my point, but mistook it as an argument against whatever you thought my point was.
Original doesn't automatically make a movie good. Being a sequel or the umpteenth installment in a franchise doesn't automatically make a movie bad.
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Congratulations. You explicitly stated my point, but mistook it as an argument against whatever you thought my point was.
Original doesn't automatically make a movie good. Being a sequel or the umpteenth installment in a franchise doesn't automatically make a movie bad.
Hollywood's painfully obvious problem, is lacking originality. Which like any good artist is literally their fucking job. You won’t be respected as an artist for long if everyone finds you standing around the copy machine.
Endless shitty sequel scripts, are a side effect of that problem. An audience rewarding that mediocrity, didn’t help. You’re right. A sequel isn’t automatically bad. But if sequels is all you’re capable of doing, don’t expect to be respected as an
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Was a bit disappointed with Homestead in that it didn't appear that the folks you would expect to have their S*** together did. The planning seemed to be lacking, although they did seem to have a handle on how much supplies they had and could grow. OTOH, they were totally blind to the outside, while actual preppers are deep into buying up vintage ham gear that uses tubes and will therefore ignore things like solar flare and nuclear explosion electromagnetic pulse. It's unreal that they had no 2-way ra
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When was the last time Hollywood made a genuinely original movie? Not one set in an existing universe or one based on a book, play, TV show, video game, historical event etc?
People were raving about Juror #2. Heretic I hear good things about though I swear there is a movie out fairly recently that had the same premise but with male missionaries not female. Werewolves aren't new to movies but this isn't based on anything other than a concept. Kiwi film Y2K looks amusing to me. Elevation, Subserviance, There are original movies all over the place. Some of them are trash. Some are excellent. But they're there. And just because it's not original doesn't mean it isn't different and
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Or based on an existing concept, not an homage or thematic repeat? Something the Simpson's didn't do first? Ie, was Star Wars "original" in that sense? Probably not. Jaws? it was based on a book. Matrix? It rehashed Dark City (well, probably accidentally as both overlapped in production).
Nothing is original if you dig deep enough. But there are things that appear to be original, and that's good enough for most. What we have in 2024 though is blatant unoriginality. Sequelitis. A cowardly Hollywood.
lmao (Score:3, Interesting)
The "creative community" wasn't celebrating shit. People who work in entertainment just want to be employed. They'd rather be an electrician or a hair and makeup artist on a show that runs for 9 seasons with low ratings than a critically acclaimed show that runs for 1 season.
People who enjoy movies as art were modestly hopeful that we were going to start getting good movies again. But the economic forces that compel big movies (big-budget, generic movies reliably make money, largely because they have worldwide appeal in a way that smaller movies do not) have not yet changed. Though with a few more mega-flops we might get there yet. "Snow White" will probably be the biggest bomb in cinematic history.
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"Snow White" will probably be the biggest bomb in cinematic history.
The lead character is a bit too "ethnic" for you?
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You realise both the lead characters are non-white, right? One is an indigenous tribeswoman at that, and nobody has a problem with her.
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The lead character is a bit too "ethnic" for you?
We have a character that is known for having fair skin, "as white as snow", and this trait being a very important point to the plot. This is an adaptation of a German folk tale, so I'd expect the characters to appear as Germans do. If there's some "ethnic" side characters then that's likely fine, just have some plausible reason as to why and how this character landed in Germany at the time the story is placed. This would be no different than watching an adaptation of The King and I and expecting Anna to
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And the "canonical" version of it stars a Russian actor as the King.
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So, by being 1/8 Indian the character would not appear as a "stereotypical Brit"? The link given suggests one of Anna's grandmothers was 1/2 Indian native, but this is still in question many years later.
The story of The King and I is fictional, though admittedly largely based on that of a real-world individual woman. This character presented herself as being of "pure" British heritage, and by all accounts so did the person on which the character was based. If the grandmother was 1/2 native Indian then th
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This is an adaptation of a German folk tale, so I'd expect the characters to appear as Germans do.
Oddly enough, the national origin of the characters has never once figured into my understanding of the story. Never once have I thought "Oh, these are Germans, no wonder..." Care to take another stab at why it should matter?
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I don't care about a non-white Snow White. I'm just sad of the Disney trend towards live action versions of it's famous animated movies. Boooring.
The non-white Snow White is just a middle finger to the anti-woke crowd. And I can applaud middle fingers. Whereas a non-white mermaid is just fine, why not?
After all, Disney did Frozen - they have exceeded their quota for easily sunburned nordics by leaps and bounds there, they now get a chance to branch out.
At least they're not trying the all white version o
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The supply did this, not the consumers (Score:4, Informative)
Movie theaters have a contract to show a given film X times over a certain date range.
Much like paying for shelf space in a bookstore or grocery store, it limits the number of different movies shown at theaters.
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Good movies take time (Score:4, Informative)
I can only dream that they are just taking longer to get the original stuff produced and this year is leftover filler.
I would settle for just better quality sequels.
I've been watching mostly movies with my kids lately and less PG-13 and up simply because there wasn't much out that I wanted to see.
The Wild Robot is probably the standout original for animated. And IF was at least not garbage-tier. But apparently they don't make as much money.
The Sonic movies are entertaining and mass market but only OK. Netflix has Sonic Prime and that show is amazing standalone. I don't think I've ever seen TV that good get a TV-Y7. That said, I haven't watched through the Avatar series yet. But sequels and IP derivatives can be good - it's the effort and risk-taking that matter.
NYTines will always find a way to punch down (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this moviegoers' faults? Maybe the problem isn't that people don't want to try movies that aren't sequels or reboots, maybe the problem is that a lot of major budgeted movies just aren't very good.
Maybe the representations of the world projected by elites onto film are no longer relevant to the common person. Hollywood found a writing formula and felt content to stick to it disregarding the intelligence of their audience. The public is presented as a parody of itself in series like the Joker.
NY Times advertisers (Score:3)
How does anyone even believe that the NY Times would post less than positive reviews of the packaged product of its movie studio advertisers?
Same thing as streamers and reviewers which get early access. Post a bad review, complain, etc. and no more early access, no more content to review to keep your job or income stream.
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Why is this moviegoers' faults? Maybe the problem isn't that people don't want to try movies that aren't sequels or reboots, maybe the problem is that a lot of major budgeted movies just aren't very good.
It's the moviegoers fault that the top 10 are sequels. There were over 800 movies officially released in 2024 in America. It seems less than 2% of them are sequels, so very much the fault of the people who wanted to watch sequels, alternatives were clearly available.
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Not really, when you consider that all 10 of the most expensive movies of 2024 were sequels/spinoffs. That expense included huge amounts of money to promote the sequels/spinoffs, making sure that they were shown on as many screens as possible for as long as possible.
How many of your 800 movies enjoyed a nationwide release and an enormous marketing budget?
https://fandomwire.com/10-most... [fandomwire.com]
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A lot of the Studio Ghibli movies are on Max right now. I'm thinking about a 1-2 month subscription. If you watch dubbed, a lot of them are high quality Disney dubs.
Agree (Score:2)
Terror from Tiny Town
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Wow that is some TDS right there..
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No (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the public's fault studios have become so risk adverse that the vast majority of everything they make is a sequel or format shift. If the only good movies being released are sequels of course that's all anyone will watch.
Never mind that there are decades worth of data to show the public will go to non-sequel, originally written for the big screen movies when given good options
Hey, Iain Bank's estate, is timing right now???? (Score:3)
HOLLYWOOD dealt originality a setback (Score:4, Insightful)
Box office is a useless metric of success. (Score:3)
Jundging how good a film is by how much it makes at the box office is a dump idea. Think about it. People go to the cinema based on marketing and pre-authorised, paid-for solicitation from critics and other people who have a financial interest in recommending a particular title to you. It's all about hype. If anything, the box office revenue is a metric of how good marketing around a particular film/serial is - not how good it is. It's a corporate, financial metric of investment return. Nothing more, nothing less.
Dune: Part Two not a sequel but based on books (Score:3)
Wicked is a prequel... (Score:1)