Hope as bad film season fades out
Industry waits anxiously to see if must-see movie of year will brighten Toronto International Film Festival
Have you heard? Hollywood just suffered a historically bad northern summer, with the US box office plummeting by 16 per cent compared with last year. Attendance hit a 25-year low. All agreed it was a season of dismal underperformers and outright duds.
When the sad history of the Summer of 2017 is written, special mention will surely be made of misbegotten enterprises such as King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, two notably lame attempts at mining popular source material — medieval folk legend and a comic book, respectively — for their franchise potential. Their swift demise — along with the tanking of The Mummy and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers movies — indicated that the studios’ old assumptions about fans showing up regardless of the quality of the movie no longer hold. Even War for the Planet of the Apes, Matt Reeves’ emotionally involving, visually impressive chapter of the rebooted series, failed to connect, suggesting that fatigue has finally set in among sequel-weary viewers.
In the comic-book world, both Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming brought vitality and rich production values into a genre that is showing signs of wear. Strong returns for Christopher Nolan’s structurally novel, cinematically lush World War II epic Dunkirk, Edgar Wright’s snappy crime musical Baby Driver and Taylor Sheridan’s moody thriller Wind River proved that wellexecuted original ideas hold far more promise than facile Baywatch adaptations. The summer’s most crowd-pleasing sleeper hits, Girls Trip and The Big Sick, as well as a steady performer like the provocative chamber piece Beatriz at Dinner, showed that originality plus inclusivity can be a winning proposition.
If Americans are showing signs of sequel-itis, foreign markets still seem game. Studios surely took heed when a patriotic action thriller called World Warrior 2 — a Chinese production — dominated that country’s enormous and growing film market.
During a northern summer when hurricanes, super-hyped prizefights, Game of Thrones finales and reality show-worthy political drama competed for filmgoers’ attention, quality and originality helped, but might not have been enough: Reportedly, Comcast, Apple and Amazon are close to launching a US$30-per-month premium videoon-demand rental system that will allow viewers to rent select titles 30 to 45 days after they appear in theatres. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the system could be in place as early as next year.
Presumably, the movies eligible for premium VOD wouldn’t be spectacles on a par with Dunkirk — or the kind of film that becomes exponentially more enjoyable when it’s seen with a crowd.
The next few months look even more crowded with prestige pictures that will be competing with the likes of comic book movies ( Thor: Ragnarok, Justice League) and a Star Wars instalment ( The Last Jedi) in the effort to coax filmgoers out of their appointment-viewing cocoons.
At the Toronto International Film Festival, which gets under way this week, all-important awards buzz will begin in earnest for movies that have already played the festival circuit. Movies arriving with the wind at their backs include Battle of the Sexes, about Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical fable The Shape of Water, the Dunkirk movie Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, Dee Rees’s 1940s rural drama Mudbound, the coming-of-age romance Call Me by Your Name and Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird, starring Saoirse Ronan.
Meanwhile, such Toronto premieres as Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game, the Denzel Washington vehicle Roman J. Israel, Esq, the Ben Stiller comedy Brad’s Status and the politicsadjacent dramas Chappaquiddick and Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House will either find their own lane to go the distance or quickly fade.
Will the must-see film of the year be among them? An anxious industry watches and waits, hoping not only that the answer is yes, but that there will be far more than one.