Why you never see an original movie anymore

CLIP You are listening to a Frequency Podcast network production.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Headed into last weekend, I knew what the number one box office movie would be.

CLIP The Little Mermaid is swimming laps around the competition at the box office for Memorial Day weekend. Disney’s live action remake of the iconic animated film is headed for an estimated four day domestic debut of $118.6 million.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Yes. Disney’s live action remake of the Little Mermaid dominated the numbers despite middling reviews. Not surprising, the week before that it was Fast X, which at least sounds cooler than saying the Fast and the Furious Part 10. Before that, it was the Third Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Before that, the remake of Super Mario Brothers. And before that, well you have to go back to a single weekend in February to find a film that topped the box office that is an original idea and not based on an existing franchise character or game. It was, if you can guess, Knock at the Cabin directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

This weekend, I can tell you right now it’ll be Spider-Man. Look, you know, this is just how Hollywood works now. Sequels, remakes, reboots, and films based on stuff like Barbie or Dungeons and Dragons or Mario that already exist elsewhere. What you might not quite know is why the common refrain is that Hollywood is out of ideas, as if nobody in the industry can think up anything new that’s a lie. There are thousands of original ideas floating around Hollywood. A handful of them get made every year. You just almost never hear about them. The real answer to the why question can be found in venture capitalism in Silicon Valley and in phrases like exponential growth. And acronyms like ROI and EBITDA. It’s not very artistic, but it is the bottom line. So how did the industry lose its way? Two ways, gradually, then suddenly. I am Jordan Heath Throwings. This is The Big Story. Jacob Oller is the movie’s editor at Paste Magazine. We are speaking on the day, Little Mermaid once again hit theatres. Hi Jacob.

Jacob Oller Hi Jordan. How are you doing?

Jordan Heath Rawlings I’m doing really well. I’m ready for another weekend, full of remakes.

Jacob Oller Well, this weekend has a big one and a, a really indicative one of the modern movie landscape.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Yeah, it’s the Little Mermaid and we’re gonna get to the Little Mermaid in a minute. The funny thing is, is the last time we discussed, remakes and the new Hollywood on this show was when the remake of the Lion King came out. So it’s now a tradition.

Jacob Oller Wow, that, that was like one of the, the very first ones. I mean, if you, if you don’t count sort of Disney’s attempts during the nineties, the Lion King was, was a huge gamble for them to just show off technology and it really hit hit the big Indiana Jones Boulder down the hill for these things.

Jordan Heath Rawlings It landed directly in the uncanny valley. But first we’re gonna start, I wanna start because I think everybody has a different moment when they looked at their movie listings or looked at their options in a streaming service or whatever, and realized that like every big movie had become recycled IP. Do you remember when you kind of realized like, holy crap, there’s no new big movies being made?

Jacob Oller I think when I became a regular film critic after freelancing and, and, and kind of making my, making my bones there and seeing what movies you get invited to and what movies that studios push for press coverage, you start to notice that it’s not the movies that you find on the best of the year lists at the end of the year. You’re not the movies that you see at the Oscars, you get pushed to movies that would, I would get on VHS when I was a kid and I’d watch over and over and over again. But, but those are no longer movies for, for kids to wear out on their streaming services they’re movies for everyone, they’re multiplex movies. They’re the only movies that we really see marketed nowadays. So it, it became an inescapable feature of my professional life. And, and then I started to see it everywhere. It was like, and they live. When you put the glasses on, you can, you can see, you can see everything for what it really is.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How far back do you think we can trace this? Because there have been sequels for decades, right? And there’s always been a few big franchises that keep going all the way back to Star Wars, and I think there were like four sequels to Jaws or whatever. But when did it begin to shift from a few big blockbusters that would get sequels to like, everything is now part of its own cinematic universe.

Jacob Oller So you, you were absolutely right that sequels and adaptations have always been a part of filmmaking. Back to the very first silent movies were based on plays, based on novels. Uh, you get to Universal Monsters. That became sort of a, one of the first, like quote unquote franchises. They started seeing a lot of success with these low budget horror adaptations, and they started making sequels to that bride of Frankenstein. Son of Frankenstein, you know? Mm-hmm. Those started to be little hits, low budget schlocky things, but then that kind of grows over time and starts replacing movies and starts becoming the only thing. So around I, I would say back into the, like the very late nineties, so after Jaws established, the summer blockbuster for what it is, Still into the eighties and nineties, you are having political thrillers, you’re having adult oriented original ideas, or maybe not that original, but at least they’re not based on like, you know, cereal box mascots. But like 1998 when Titanic like blew everything out of the water that Year’s Box office had, Armageddon had saving private, Ryan had. There’s something about Mary and the Water Boy, a deep impact and rush hour. And Goodwill Hunting. Huh? Those were all in the top 10.

Jordan Heath Rawlings All originals.

Jacob Oller All originals, all grossed over a hundred million dollars just in the US calculating for inflation. Those are huge movies and a lot of them sort of influenced, maybe not sequels, but you know, the Water Boy Continued, Adam Sandler’s Career Rush Hour had a million sequels. Goodwill Hunting was an Oscar, you know, a huge ostrich’s success. And then you look at 1999 and things have a humongous shift and what shifts is, I think Star Wars episode one comes out. The Phantom Menace comes out in 1999 and you also see the sequel to Toy Story comes out and the matrix comes out and the Mummy comes out and these start the ball rolling for these massive investments and franchises, and so it, it, it sort of grows exponentially from there. But then you get to about 2010 and then from like 2010 to present, that’s all there is because after Ironman set a precedent. Of, oh, we can really make some money out of this. We can really lay the groundwork for something huge that who knows what will happen in the future, but in the future, we may no longer be in this position of movie executives and we, but for, for the next 20 years, for whatever these stockholders care about, for now, we can really make some money.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So can you quantify that over the last, 10 years or whatever it is? In your piece you have some pretty stark examples if you continue to look at those top 10, grossing films of the year.

Jacob Oller Absolutely. So I went back in time to 2012 to 2022. Cause 2023 is box office isn’t quite determined yet. In that 10 year span, if you calculate all the movies in each of those years, top Tens, there are only eight movies out of that 100 that are not based on preexisting IP and they are Frozen, Gravity, Inside Out, Zootopia, The Secret Life of Pets, Sing, Onward, and Tenet. Six of them are animated movies. Two, two of them are live action, except for, you know, gravity is like kind of live action. Tenet is Christopher Nolan after he has established himself as a household name with the Batman movies. So you have complicating factors even with the live action originals.

Jordan Heath Rawlings In your essay, you call this IP obsession. Can you explain what you mean by that? Where does it come from? It comes from the very top, because it goes hand in hand with I, I think a lot of people have seen this lately is there’s a shift in calling TV and movies and video games, and even novels.

Jacob Oller From calling them the individual art forms to calling it all content. We’re making content right now, Jacob. Absolutely. We’re. I’m a part of it. I’m a part of the problem. I create content every day. It’s terrible. But that cuz I, I went to business school, right? I didn’t, I didn’t go undergrad film degree. I went to business school and you see that this comes down from sort of an MBA mindset of how do we corner a market and to corner a market you need something that you can have a monopoly over. And to have a monopoly over, you need to own the rights to it and to own the rights to something, especially in a, you know, in a, in a creative form, you need to have intellectual property. And so if you make movies, you’re not making a movie anymore because in. The executive’s mind. You know the people who are in charge of this company. You’re not just making one movie. You are creating something that could live on for decades and decades and decades and continue to produce profits because you have now created a piece of IP that can be exploited as a podcast, as a comic book, as action figures, as Fortnite skins. All of these myriad media opportunities now exist instead of just making a single movie.

Jordan Heath Rawlings When you talk about that, you also say that I, in this kind of world, when we’re focused on, well, I shouldn’t say we, but when the big studios are focused exclusively on ip, people are merely a liability. Can you explain what you mean by that and how the IP obsession has changed the production?

Jacob Oller Definitely. So when you say people are a liability, it’s not even that it’s specifically about movie stars going away because movie stars are going away. It’s the reason why we’re still dragging Harrison Ford’s very tired, 80 year old body out in front of the cameras, Indiana Jones. It’s the reason we’re, we’re bringing back Jeff Bridges and Tron. It’s all of these reminders. It’s the reason the Star Wars cast is brought back out. Oh yeah. It’s the reason the Jurassic Park original trio is brought back. It’s, it’s a matter of people now not being artists. But instead being shepherds of these brands. And so you are a spokesperson. You know, you may have a hit movie at at Sundance and all that really unlocks for you isn’t more opportunities to make indie movies or movies that are small and say something and, and you know, have your own personal touch to it. It’s why the people who made short-term 12, which is a fantastic movie about a foster home. They were making small movies for a little bit and then got courted to make Captain Marvel. And there’s nothing in between, right? Because no one, no one will finance anything in between. So either you’re self-financing or you are really pounding the pavement and getting, you know, scrapping together money, or you’re getting bankrolled by the biggest company in the world. And that doesn’t give you a lot of artistic freedom and that doesn’t give your performers a lot of artistic freedom. Yeah. That means you’re wearing the, you know, the directors, the writers are wearing the same costume as the actors. They are here to present to you, captain Marvel, and not get into the way of where this movie needs to go in the next 20 years.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Put your business hat back on for me, if you would. Where does the motivation for this business model come from? And I guess my question is, I can obviously see that, you know, you look at the box office returns and you see Ironman and, and everything that came after it, and you’re like, yep, print money, but isn’t there also a world in which it is valuable to develop, the new pieces of IP that 20 years from now could be the next Ironman that turns into a whole cinematic universe of its own right? Like you don’t get what we have now without the IP that came around in the seventies and eighties, and why aren’t we continuing that cycle, today?

Jacob Oller Well, we’re not continuing that for the same reason. We’re not doing a lot of things that are, that are sort of artistically fulfilling, which is that they’re not immediately profitable. Or, or they have the risk of not being immediately profitable. They might be, we just don’t know. They’ll never get the opportunity. Every once in a while you’ll get something like, a quiet place. The, the John Krasinski movie that came out a couple years ago where you, you couldn’t talk cuz there were aliens that could, that could hear you and they’d come and eat you. That came outta nowhere. It was like a passion project. The guy wanted to be a director. He found a couple like up and coming writers to do it, and that came outta nowhere and made a ton of money. And now it’s getting sequalized and and doing its own thing because now it’s ip. But that was a risk. Investing in something that’s already here, regardless of, of if it’ll exist in 20 years, or if in a generation, any of the kids will care about Ironman or, or Spider-Man or the Skywalkers, because kids won’t. They don’t have anything bringing them into this world. They don’t have anything original. But once you get to that point, The people who are in charge have cycled over if they lose their jobs because one Marvel movie made a little bit less than a previous Marvel movie, they’re protected. It doesn’t hurt them. The stock options have vested, they’re good. Investing in new ideas for the future, that’s something you need longevity for, or you need the intention of longevity. If your business model is, make all the money we can right now and then get out because there’s no consequences for getting out or shifting to be the c e o of another new company playing this sort of executive carousel around the major media companies. There’s no incentive to do anything but seek immediate profit.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Was there a shift at some point that actually happened due to, you know, new people in the industry, new money in the industry? Or was this, you know, like you described, just looking at the receipts and being like, we can make a ton of money this way, so let’s just do it this way. Like, I guess I’m trying to get a sense of who made that decision and when?

Jacob Oller So I don’t think it was one person, right. I think the studios over time stopped encouraging gowth from within the industry. So you start bringing in people who are executives from maybe adjacent industries. David Zaslav, who’s in charge of Warner Brothers Discovery. He made his bones doing stuff at NBC, but not scripted things, not really movies. He made his bones doing reality shows and shifting things around not to exactly direct to consumer stuff over the airwaves, but more like how do we monetize what we already have, stick it on different platforms. He was more of a content guy. And less of a production guy. They’re the quote, good executives in the bad executives in Hollywood. The creative executives and the executives who are more like, why isn’t this on time? Where’s, you know, we’re burning money. When those executives start to take over the wholesale. When the creative executives are left behind because, Because creativity is not valued because you see that you can still make money with things that are just, if we pour enough marketing dollars, we get x return. Because there, there really hasn’t been in the modern era that big flop that has been like, wow, well we poured all of our marketing money into this and it still went nowhere. You know, we have, we’ve made these deals overseas to distribute in Europe and China and boy, it’s still flopped. And so we’ve, we’ve all lost our jobs and they’re taking a new approach that hasn’t happened yet. That bubble’s gonna, you know, the bubble’s gonna burst and there is gonna be that mindset change, but that’ll be probably another decade plus in the making. So it’s more of a, a larger trend where creativity and risk taking has been completely replaced with a surge of people who came up and saw profits increasing in tech boom worlds and the internet bubble. People who saw exponential growth and said, I think we can get that too.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Listen, they’re your former business school classmates.

Jacob Oller They are probably not. Cause I didn’t go to a very good business school.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So let me ask you a question though. Ultimately, is this our fault? So I mentioned at the top we’re speaking as, the Little Mermaid hits theaters. We first talked about this when the Lion King hit theaters. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if the Lion King hadn’t made a ton of money, right? So isn’t it our fault for going to these movies?

Jacob Oller So as much as I like to give audiences a hard time about the things that they choose because as a film critic, you’re like, guys, there’s an entire industry, a small industry, a dying industry, but there’s an industry here to help you so you don’t have to do this stuff.

Jordan Heath Rawlings But there’s also Ant Man.

Jacob Oller There’s also Ant Man, and this is the reason I have a hard time blaming audiences is that of all the movies coming out this weekend, nobody knows of any by name besides the Little Mermaid, and it’s because marketing has just such a strangle hold on our perception of, of what’s coming out. We just don’t know what’s coming out unless we see it plastered all over our websites, plastered on our Roku home screen plastered on every TV commercial.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Okay, wait, this is an interesting experiment, Jacob. What other movies are coming out this weekend?

Jacob Oller All right, so there’s a Gerard Butler movie called Kandahar that’s coming up. There’s a Nicole, halal Center. Movie coming out called You Hurt My Feelings. There’s, a movie based on a, a comedian’s real life Russian escapade. It’s called The Machine, all of these are original movies and none of them got one 10th the marketing budget of the Little Mermaid.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Yeah. I never heard of any of them.

Jacob Oller Right. And I’m not saying any of those movies are good.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Sure. But they exist.

Jacob Oller But they exist and they’re not opening on a fraction of the screens of Little Mermaid is opening on. They’re not getting a fraction of the marketing. They’re, they don’t have any product tie-ins. They’re not on cereal boxes. You know, you, you mentioned Jaws earlier. One of the reasons Jaws was such a hit besides being phenomenal, and you know, Steven Spielberg. It had an unprecedented amount of TV advertising. Universal spent like $700,000 on TV advertising back then, which was crazy. It was humongous. And now a blockbuster will spend about half its budget again doing marketing. And so you see if, if there’s a reason where you’re like, I have no idea what came out this summer except for. Ant man, quantum mania. Well, there’s a reason for that. And it’s because it’s been bought and paid for your, you know, your attention has been bought and paid for in every facet at every screen that we look at that’s what’s being put out. And so if you are not actively pushing against this and actively seeking out alternatives, it’s, it’s so, so, so hard to know what else is out there.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You mentioned you think it’ll be a decade plus before this starts to shift. Is it gonna get worse, before it gets better? And in particular, what’s to come in this vein with the rise of ai? Which listen, I know it has its problems. If it’s good at anything, it is recycling ip.

Jacob Oller I think AI is probably going to have a huge impact in the worst side of this kind of thing. So you, you, you talk about the recycling of IP and, and creating first drafts, and this is something that the Writer’s Guild of America is striking against right now is. They have tried to put into their, into their contracts that AI will never be writing any first drafts, doing any revisions. It will not be involved in a writer’s skilled, approved project. And studios rejected them outright and said, look, listen, let’s have an informational meeting about ai and we can, we can inform you stupid writers about what AI really is. And the Writer’s Guild is absolutely correct because if you start giving an inch with this kind of thing, the studios will take a mile. People already are using a shorthand where it’s like, this movie felt like it was written by AI. And you know, that’s not that far off. There’s already such established genre formulas and IP formulas. For, for movies like this, a Marvel movie is the hero finds out he’s the hero. He, oh, I don’t know if I wanna be the hero. He gets sucked back in. There’s some banter, there’s a little set piece right in the middle, and then it all comes to a head where they fight a big swarm of, of bug monsters or robots or anything else. It’s not like human lives bloodily being ended, you know? And you see that in, in so many Marvel movies, especially if you, if you’re watching all of them. That it becomes easy to be like, well, what did a machine write this? And when you start giving that up, when you start acquiescing to this idea of, they already follow such a pattern, why shouldn’t we give it up to the machines? Then you are robbing anybody of a chance to, to fight back or to do anything creative within this, this oppressive framework while they, while they can. And, you know, I, I think it will get worse before it gets better, but there will still be people trying to sneak in interesting things up until the very end.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So, last question then. What could stop or even slow this. How can we fight back and find better things to watch? If to your point, it’s so difficult to even know what’s coming out, aside from the things that studios really want us to know.

Jacob Oller So I think the good news is that eventually this will burn out by itself, when you know every, Marvel Spectacular is having less and less of a cultural impact.

Jordan Heath Rawlings That feels like it’s starting by the way.

Jacob Oller Right? Absolutely. This last like phase, I don’t even remember all the movies that have been in, and that’s my job. Like all of those movies have come and gone. Like they’re like, they’re direct to streaming releases almost. You know, there’s so many movies that get churned out and with the expectation that they’ll be profitable with the expectation that they will be these juggernauts. And as we start to care less and less, eventually the amount of money that’s being poured into the marketing, the amount of money that’s being poured into, into these movies in general into paying these, these stars is going to stop making sense financially. And I mean, it’s also one of the reasons why these movies have started to feel even more bland is cuz they’re just shooting in warehouses and parking lots and doing everything in post because it’s a little bit more, it’s a little bit more affordable. So that’ll eventually burn out by itself, but in the meantime, I think if you are looking for something to watch and you know that the only thing on your radar is a big IP or a sequel or something, just know that there’s always counter programming. There’s always something going against the flow. For every streaming service that is like, Hi, we’re Netflix and did you know that this movie from 10 years ago is now on our service? It’s number one on our service. It’s, it’s terrible. I pronounce you Chuck and Larry. It’s now number one one, you know, for every streaming service like that there is one that is highly curated by people who love these smaller movies. There’s a Criterion channel, there’s MUBI, there’s the Metrograph, Kino Cult. There’s all of these smaller curated ways to find something that you love and not find something that’ll just kill your evening. That just takes a little bit more effort.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Jacob, that is a great way to end it. I hope some people check those out. And thank you so much for this convo.

Jacob Oller Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Jacob Oller writing for Paste Magazine. That was The Big Story. If you want more head to TheBigStorypodcast.ca. As I mentioned, the first time we talked about this phenomenon was when they released The Lion King. You can find that episode by searching for The Lion King. It’s that easy. You can find The Big Story by heading to @TheBigStoryfpn on Twitter. You can talk to us via email hello@TheBigStorypodcast.ca, and you can call us and leave a voicemail. 416-935-5935. Joseph Fish is the lead producer of The Big Story. Robyn Simon is a Big Story producer. Mark Angly led our sound design for this week, and Saman Dara is our research assistant. I’m your host, Jordan Heath Rawlings. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk on Monday.