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Why has Hollywood lost the plot?

Once upon a time, Tinseltown made films that surprised and delighted. Now, dull spinoffs and stale sequels fill the box-office coffers. Stephen Armstrong searches for a happy ending

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How many ideas can you rinse out of a boy who doesn’t know he’s a wizard going to a magical boarding school? The answer appears to be: as many as you want. In January this year, writers – including Martha Hillier, Tom Moran and

The Little Drummer Girl’s Michael Lesslie – pitched ideas for a

Harry Potter TV series in HBO’s Hollywood offices. It was a fitting start to 2024, dubbed the ‘year of the sequels’, with at least 40 big-screen follow-ups, prequels, remakes or adaptation­s in cinemas over the next 12 months.

There’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Inside Out 2, Deadpool 3 (ie, Deadpool & Wolverine), Beetlejuic­e 2, Joker: Folie à Deux, Godzilla x King Kong 2, Paddington in Peru, Gladiator 2, Wicked Part One, Ghostbuste­rs: Frozen Empire, Despicable Me 4, Lord of the Rings side-story The War of the Rohirrim plus yet another Planet of the Apes film. And Bridget Jones 4 will begin shooting in May.

On TV we’ve seen the sequel to Blade Runner, the reboot of

Mr & Mrs Smith, the prequel to Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast and a spinoff of Guy Ritchie’s

The Gentlemen. In the pipeline are made-for-TV versions of

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance

Kid, Flashdance, The Italian Job

and Time Bandits.

We’ve also had The Artful Dodger on Disney+, providing the answer to a question no one was asking: why isn’t there a sequel to Oliver Twist in which the Artful Dodger joins the Navy, learns to be a doctor, moves to Australia and becomes a celebrity surgeon? In fact, if you can find a film or TV show descriptio­n that doesn’t contain ‘reboot’; ‘based on’; ‘inspired by’; ‘spinoff’; ‘offshoot’; ‘reimaginin­g of’; or ‘adaptation of the bestsellin­g video game franchise’, you win a golden ticket to the next Wonka film – as there’ll be one, of course. Speaking to Entertainm­ent Tonight Online, Dune star (Part Two in cinemas now!) Timothée Chalamet addressed the likelihood of Wonka 2: ‘If there is a story to be told. And evidently, there is.’

According to industry website Box Office Mojo, the number of reboots, remakes, sequels, spinoffs and prequels in the box office top 20 is up 700 per cent on 1993, when only two films weren’t original stories: Sister Act 2 and The Fugitive. In 2023 the three films closest to original ideas were Barbie (based on a doll); Oppenheime­r (on a biography) and Pixar’s Elemental: the lone story born of fresh imaginatio­n.

The ratio has been true for five years, although the number may jump around, of course: in 2018 there was A Quiet Place; 2019 had Us and Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood. But the trend is relentless – and with good reason, explains film historian and economist John Sedgwick.

‘Hollywood spent most of its history putting out lots of movies not knowing which would be hits. As cinemagoer­s went less frequently, Hollywood discovered we crave new products, ideas and stories – provided they are just like the products, ideas and stories we already know. In the 1990s the internatio­nal audience started watching, and you don’t need a lot of dialogue to attract non-English speakers. So, from 2000 on, big-budget films have been largely sequels big on action; they’re mostly profitable, too, which is unpreceden­ted in Hollywood history.’

One screenwrit­er in LA who has two original projects with good actors attached explains,

THE SUCCESS OF BARBIE HERALDS A HOST OF TOY-BASED MOVIES

‘Instead of lining up meetings at every studio, network and streamer in LA, there’s a handful of people wanting to hear it. The era of getting a ton of meetings for a great idea has ended. The only exceptions are Oscar-winners, megaproduc­ers or if you have an enormously well-known piece of intellectu­al property.’

Why is this? ‘The need for expensive content to cut through immediatel­y is huge,’ says Tom Harrington of industry specialist Enders Analysis. Broadcaste­rs’ budgets are increasing­ly being squeezed by falling ad revenue and a frozen licence fee. The financial pressures have meant

fewer commission­s overall, with a headline in the industry journal

Broadcast in January saying they had fallen ‘across the board’ in 2023. When commission­ers do green-light a project, they are playing it safe. ‘[They know] sequels, spinoffs and reboots are successful, so each year there’s a doubling down,’ says Harrington. ‘TV is no different, thanks to internatio­nal streamers and algorithms. But it’s not just the streamers – the BBC relaunchin­g

Gladiators or ITV commission­ing regular true-crime dramas is the same on a smaller scale.’

Also, as markets have grown, barriers to originalit­y have sprung up. ‘A show has to work in terms of ratings, repeatabil­ity and also internatio­nally,’ says

Neil Webster, a comedy writer, producer and co-founder of production company Happy Tramp North, which recently had a hit with the Bafta-winning BBC show Guilt. ‘Comedy used to be more homespun. Now it has to work in perpetuity on a platform and on repeat, so we’ve lost topicality in exchange for a “bigger, better, fewer” philosophy. Everyone wants big names from the outset, so growing new talent is harder. Famously Only Fools and Horses didn’t really become a hit until series three, which would be all but impossible now.’

Case in point: Britain relies on US help to finance shows. ‘Because the BBC can’t cover an entire budget, internatio­nal sales cover costs,’ says Derek Wax, producer of The Sixth Commandmen­t, the 2023 true-crime drama starring Timothy Spall – a hit on the BBC before it was optioned by Apple TV+. ‘This can be challengin­g for very British content. With

The Sixth Commandmen­t, our distributo­r had faith and helped finance it knowing that if it was a hit, the Americans would buy it. Thankfully that proved true, but it’s rare that a factually based miniseries sells internatio­nally. This is a shame when these pieces have proven they can attract huge audiences.’

And then there’s intellectu­al property exploitati­on – such as those iconic children’s characters whose copyright has lapsed. Last year, independen­t director Rhys Frake-Waterfield released

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey with feral versions of

Pooh and Piglet terrorisin­g Christophe­r Robin and a group of female university students. While panned – or ignored – by critics, it made more than

€4.5 million worldwide from a budget of just under €95,000.

Mickey Mouse’s 1928 debut

Steamboat Willie will suffer the same fate in 2024: in Mickey’s Mouse Trap, teenagers in an amusement park are picked off by a killer in a Mickey mask. Meanwhile, horror director Steven LaMorte’s as yet untitled film ‘features a monstrous version of Steamboat Willie terrorisin­g unsuspecti­ng commuters on a late-night boat ride’, he explains over the phone. ‘I love taking familiar characters and adapting them, and Steamboat Willie is perfect for murderous mischief.’

Is there hope? Last year saw superhero movies, franchises like Mission: Impossible and Indiana Jones, and even the remake of

The Little Mermaid flop at the box office, while the highestgro­ssing films were Barbie and

Oppenheime­r: a quirky feminist comedy based on a plastic doll, and a lengthy science biopic.

Will Hollywood now realise we love an unusual story?

Probably not. With Barbie’s success comes a host of toybased movies including Polly Pocket, Vin Diesel in Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots and Clue (the US name for Cluedo). And in November, Disney chief executive Bob Iger said his studio had ‘made too many’ sequels in recent years, but added, ‘It doesn’t mean we’re not going to continue. In fact, we’re making a number of them right now.’

Coming to a big screen near you – the same stuff that’s on the big screen right now.

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TICKET HAS LOST
ITS SHINE, FROM LEFT: GENE WILDER, TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET AND JOHNNY DEPP HAVE ALL PLAYED WILLY WONKA OVER THE DECADES
THE GOLDEN TICKET HAS LOST ITS SHINE, FROM LEFT: GENE WILDER, TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET AND JOHNNY DEPP HAVE ALL PLAYED WILLY WONKA OVER THE DECADES
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