[I copy/pasted this from an email I wrote, so I apologize for any formatting issues, including weird double-spaces]
[I also posted this in r/flicks and I have no idea which one is correct/appropriate.]
A friend of mine this morning remarked that he was angry about the terrible writing on the current season of Game of Thrones, and was bemoaning the fact that many films and TV series spend millions upon millions on actors and CGI but can't seem to find a competent writer to proofread them. My response was "Why should they?" The show is ending and everyone is talking about it. The last episode had upwards of 18m viewers; the writing does not need to be good to accomplish its purpose of generating revenue for the broadcaster in this, its final season. They certainly do not need, as petitions have asked, to remake the entire eight season, relying on the notoriety of the name to keep it going. The conversation then devolved into a discussion of the theory of making film adaptations of other works, which I shall mercifully spare you all.
This anecdote sparked a long-restive line of questioning in my head of "How much does name recognition actually matter?" A large number of very successful films and series have just been sequels of previous films, re-makes of old films, adaptations of popular books, comics, TV series, and even toy lines (looking at you, Transformers). Obviously, this line of complaint about novel storylines in film is nothing new, as I quickly found this article from 1989 exploring the abundance of summer sequels (for those of you agog at the price of a movie ticket 30 years ago, $6 in 1989 is about $12.40 in 2019 dollars). There was also an intriguing article (one of a series) by Stephen Follows in 2015 looking at sequels in a statistical analysis. I found other articles as well, but none looked at the datums exactly how I wanted, so I did my own analysis!
Methods: I took the top-10 US-grossing films of each year for the past 20 years (1999-2018), and categorized whether they were sequels, remakes, and/or adaptations. I used boxofficemojo for the raw data on box office gross and my own judgment and research in the categorization (discussed below in excruciating detail).
Results: Of the 200 films (10 highest-grossing for each of 20 years) I looked at, 162 (81.0%) were a sequel, remake, and/or adaptation of other media. For the past 10 years (2009-2018), the number is even more egregious at 88.0%. Breaking down the individual categories, 101 (50.5%) were sequels, 29 (14.5%) were remakes, and 125 (62.5%) were adaptations of other media; obviously, there was considerable overlap among these categories.I noticed interesting trends even among the 38 films that were based on original plots. Of those 38 films, eight (21.1 %) were Pixar films (relying on that name recognition to promote them); this trend is also indicative of the general trend of "original" films: 42.1% were children's animated films, 10.5% were Romantic Comedies, 21.1% were other adult comedies, and only 26.3% were dramatic films. Even more interestingly, of these 38 "original" films that were successful, 17 (44.8%) later went on to become a franchise themselves, inspiring sequels and/or reboots...so far. A prime example of this phenomenon is Despicable Me, an original film which spawned two direct sequels (Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3), as well as one spin-off (Minions) which all made the list. Milk that cash cow for all it's worth!
The tables of results are available as an Excel spreadsheet upon request. Feel free to poke through it at your leisure and yell at me about how you disagree with my categorizations. I did not triple-check the data, so it's possible there are some straight-up errors in there as well.
Conclusions: The question I asked was not "How much are common themes reiterated?" but rather "How much does success rely on name recognition?" The overwhelmingly noticeable phenomenon is that in an era of increased production costs and more internet-based media consumption, film producers seem unwilling to invest huge amounts of money in making a film that will not have the draw of immediate name recognition, or perhaps such films just simply do not have the wide appeal necessary to generate revenue to the same degree that films of well-known material can.
Notably, zero of the top-10 films from 2018 and 2017 were based on original stories and characters, and you have to go back to 2013 to get a successful original film that is not a children's cartoon (Gravity). Looking forward to the 2020s (assuming humanity and the film industry continue to exist), we can expect this trend to become even more pronounced. Why invest in uncertainty when there are sure bets that can rake in the dough?
Minutiae of Methodology and Titillating Tidbits (Presented in no organized way whatsoever)
- I counted every Marvel Cinematic Universe film after 2009's Iron Man as a sequel (as well as adaptations), since they had tie-ins, a reliance on a common cast of characters, and numerous inter-film references to a substantial degree. Of the 200 films on the list, 24 were films based on Marvel characters
- All eight Harry Potter films made the list, but only six Star Wars movies made the cut. The widely panned Han Solo film did not.
- Other series of note: DC comics adaptations (11 films), Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit (6 films), Twilight (5 films), Hunger Games (4 films), James Bond (4), Fast and the Furious (3), and Disney "main line" films (12, including "classic" Disney adaptations of fairy tales [e.g. Tangled], Disney "flagship" properties [e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean], and live-action adaptations of classic films [e.g. Beauty and the Beast, Maleficent, etc.]).
- When you factor into account that Disney also owns Pixar (13 additional films), Marvel (24 additional films, though some (the original X-Men and Spider-man films) were produced by other entities), and Star Wars (6 additional films), it is very apparent that Disney's habit of "buy the Intellectual Property Rights to EVERYTHING" is going quite well for them. It is very likely that a number of other less-obvious films were also produced by Disney, but I did not feel like checking the production company of every single film on the list. Sorry.
- Of the 200 films, 71 fulfilled only one of the criteria (sequel, remake, or adaptation); 89 fulfilled two; and only two films fulfilled all three. Those two films were Casino Royale and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
- Biography films (e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody) and historical films (e.g. Pearl Harbor, Dunkirk) were counted as adaptations: even if there was not necessarily a single book, series, or other piece of previously-produced intellectual property that could be pinpointed as the one from which the film was adapted, they are still adaptations based on people or events that already have name recognition.
- It's worth noting that some of the adaptations' final plots ended up rather different from their source material. Fans of Frozen will note that it bears little resemblance to Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen (an incredibly religious tale about the love between children), and my criteria even include films like Shrek (very loosely based on the book). Regardless of how close they were to the source material, these stories were first-degree derivative works of other media and at least partly reliant on inspiration from that original work as well as the public's familiarity with it to boost their profile ("close enough for lawyers"); thus they were counted as adaptations.
- A couple other interesting judgment calls on my part include The Mummy (which was preceded by a 1932 film of the same name) and Scary Movie. The latter was particularly difficult as it is not itself a sequel, but it relies incredibly strongly on the visuals and audience familiarity with the Scream film franchise, as well as the tropes of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Thus, I counted it as a derivative work.
- The downside to these investigations was that I was forced to search to see if the Adam Sandler film Big Daddy had spawned any sequels. I was incredibly grateful to discover that it had not.
- Every James Bond film was counted as an adaptation of Ian Fleming's books, despite the fact that those books are far outdated and bereft of material for the number of Bond films that have been made; regardless, the character is derivative.
- I managed to resist counting James Cameron's Avatar as a remake of Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves, as my focus was on franchise name recognition, rather than thematic similarities. I really wanted to, though. :-P
- One of the films that took me down quite the rabbit hole was Chicago, the 2002 musical film, which was based on a stage musical (first produced in 1975); however, a the same story was presented in the 1927 silent film Chicago, which was based on a 1926 play of the same name, which in turn was based on the true story of Beaulah Annan, who killed her boyfriend in the house she shared with her second husband in 1924 (she was acquitted of the crime, but died in 1928 at the ripe old age of 28 due to tuberculosis, after going through another husband and a half). Alas, Chicago did not get extra points for being ultra-derivative. I guess stories about uxoricide never get old.
- The abundance of children's movies makes a certain kind of sense, as children have not yet been inundated with media to such a degree that new stories are lost on them.
Anywho, I hope this has been as interesting for you as it has been for me (unlikely).
Have a good weekend, folks!
Submitted May 18, 2019 at 04:47AM by alquimistablanco http://bit.ly/2WRFvI3
