Hollywood’s reboot overload
Jungle Book was a rare box office success story
With so many remakes hitting movie screens these days, something is probably being rebooted in Hollywood right this second. But is that a good thing?
Redos have become de rigueur in recent years, not only as a way to make bucks off an old property, but also to potentially jump-start a franchise. There were 11 reboots or remakes in the top 100 movies of 2014, according to Box Office Mojo, and 13 in 2015.
However, there’s a certain inherent complacency to remaking the familiar and defaulting to nostalgia, argues Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. “It’s too competitive out there right now. You’ve got to be a cut above.”
Results so far this year haven’t been great for reimaginings. A live-action/CGI revival of The Jungle Book had a huge haul of $364 million, but the female-centric Ghostbusters didn’t live up to expectations ($127.4 million), another Pete’s Dragon met with a lukewarm reception ($74.2 million) and an updated Ben-Hur bombed spectacularly ($26.3 million). Meanwhile, original fare such as The Secret Life of Pets ($364.3 million), Deadpool ($363 million), Zootopia ($341.3 million) and Suicide Squad ($318.1 million) have cleaned up.
Just this past weekend, a starstudded revamp of The Magnificent Seven managed a $34.7 million debut, but with a $90 million budget and mixed reviews (only 61 per cent of critics liked it on aggregate site RottenTomatoes.com), success might be fleeting.
“There’s this stigma on reboots — the very fact that it’s a reboot turns audiences off, whether it’s a good film or not,” says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.
Not that you’d know it from looking at what’s coming down the pike. Next year alone, there are remakes of the kid-friendly blockbuster Jumanji (with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart), cult thriller Flatliners, supernatural action-adventure The Mummy (powered by Tom Cruise) and, a live-action version of Beauty and the Beast.
This “incredible reliance” on previously established brands has become a crutch where “you’re taking just as much a chance, in my opinion, as you would if you spent $100 million on something original,” says Dergarabedian.
Mike Ryan, senior writer for the entertainment site Uproxx, doesn’t think there’s an inherent issue with reboots in general, but says they work better when there’s some distance between the movies — for example, Brian De Palma’s 1983 classic Scarface updating the 1932 original.
“The problem is when films that are still very much in the zeitgeist, and are still beloved, wind up being rebooted. It seems desperate,” Ryan says. “Total Recall and RoboCop made no sense. Those original films are still part of culture. There’s no way Back to the Future will be rebooted for this very reason. The originals are magic.
“Do you know how hard it is to make a lasting movie that everyone loves? To try and do something like that twice with the same story is foolhardy.”
Many of these recent redos are lazy filmmaking, according to Bock, which allows all those acclaimed original TV series on HBO, Netflix and Amazon to wrest away eyeballs.
“By doing remakes and reboots, you’re giving up originality to the small screen. You’re throwing in the towel,” says Dergarabedian.
But the biggest issue threatening Hollywood’s love for remakes is a systematic and consistent quality problem, he adds. “Over time, that erodes goodwill. You don’t want the reboot/remake/sequel part of the business, which is so important, to get a reputation as a ‘less than’ product.”