For years, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about the death of originalfilms. This week, the Wall Street Journal added to the pile with an article titledHollywood Is Cranking Out Original Movies. Audiences Aren’t Showing Up.
I have some disagreements with the article’s thesis. Audiencesdoshow up to original movies, but studios need to be smart about how much they spend on them. Movie theaters and studios can’t rely entirely on tent poles likeA Minecraft Movie, and low and mid-budget movies have been filling in the gaps. The Keke Palmer/SZA comedy, One of Them Days, was a big hit for its budget, earning $51.8 million at the box office on a $14 million budget, thenhitting number one on Netflix. Companion made $36.7 million on a $10 million budget. Last year’sLonglegs, The Beekeeper, Anora,The Brutalist, A Real Pain,The Substance, Hundreds of Beavers, Babygirl, andHereticall made back at least three times their budget, some of them much more.
Original Movies Don’t Hit As Hard As Original Games
But it’s been a while since an original Hollywood movie made the top ten global grossers at the end of the year: Tenet in 2020 (if you count that extremely weird year) and Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018 (if you don’t). That has me thinking about the other medium I pay really close attention to – video games, obviously – and how some of its biggest hits of all time are originals. Minecraft,Fortnite,PUBG,Stardew Valley, andOverwatchare all huge and all based on original ideas.
If we look atthe best-selling games of all time, there are sequels, sure.Grand Theft Auto 5,Mario Kart 8, andRed Dead Redemption 2are all in the top ten, and if you checkWikipedia’s running list, there are atonofCall of Dutygames lower down. But way more of the best-selling games are original than, say, the highest-grossing movies. Of thetop 100 highest-grossing movies of all-time, there are only 11 original movies.
Compare that to 17 originals in the top 50 top-selling games.Andthe best-selling game ever, Minecraft, is completely original, as are six of the top ten. The top-selling game on Steam right now, Schedule 1, is original. The top movie at the box office? Based on an original game.
So, why are original games so much better at connecting with audiences than original movies? Well, there are several reasons and some of them aren’t replicable for movies. But some of them are, and I think it’s worth looking into how movie studios and theaters can turn to games for more than just strip-mining its IP.
How Original Movies Can Up Their Game
For one, games have variable pricing. Minecraft, the top-selling game of all time, was never a $60 game. Wii Sports, the third best-selling game of all time, was free with every launch Wii. Wikipedia’s list of the best-selling games, though helpful, doesn’t tell the full story, either, because many of the most profitable games, like Fortnite, are free-to-play and aren’t included.
Movies have variable pricing, too, but it never tends to work out in the audience’s favor. Movies getmoreexpensive (for IMAX, 4DX, etc.) but unless you’re going in the middle of the day, tickets don’t get less expensive. Indie movies don’t offer cheaper tickets as a way to reach audiences, and there’s no equivalent of free-to-play for films.
What would that look like? Popcorn and candy as the microtransactions?
Ticket prices tend to be fixed, but it’s easy to imagine cash-strapped audiences showing up for smaller movies more often if they knew they were risking less. There are problems with this approach, too. Success in Hollywood is measured by box office gross, not the number of tickets sold. If the lower price point didn’t translate to significantly more butts in seats, it would be a lose-lose situation.
The best option might just be to bringallticket prices down.
The Game Awards Effect
Video games also have a few high-profile moments where they can stand out prior to release. A game that’s unknown could show up atThe Game Awardswith a splashy trailer and, suddenly, it’s on everyone’s radar. Nintendo Directs, State of Plays, Xbox Developer Directs, and Summer Games Fest serve a similar purpose. Audiences want experiences that feel fresh, yet familiar, and these events make the games familiar. Long beforeDeath StrandingorGhost of TsushimaorElden Ringlaunched, we knew what to expect from them.
The collapse of many of film’s traditional advertising avenues — like linear TV, newspapers, and magazines — has made it more difficult to reach a broad audience the way gaming effortlessly does. But it isn’t impossible to build something more monolithic: The Game Awards, but for film.
CinemaCon just happened in Las Vegas. It’s an event that, like E3, is built to hype up industry professionals about the products coming in the year ahead. Yet unlike E3, most of what is shown at CinemaCon isn’t simultaneously shown to the public. You might hear that the four Beatles stars were officially announced, but you don’t get to see it with your own eyes. If CinemaCon (or something like it) shifted to a more audience-facing model, it could provide an entry point for the filmgoer at home to know about big original movies that are on the horizon.
The Death Of The Movie Star
Studio names mean much more in gaming than in movies. A24 has dedicated fans, but no one is showing up to a Universal movie because the globe logo is synonymous with quality. However, playersdoshow up for original ideas because studios like Naughty Dog or Supergiant are making them.
Fans made Elden Ring one of the biggest games of the 2020s because they thought ‘FromSoftware open-world game’ was an awesome pitch.Split Fictionis a big hit because people loved It Takes Two and wanted another game like that from the same studio. In an ocean of choices, people want some assurance that the thing they’re spending their hard-earned money on will be good, and a trusted name can provide that.
Movies used to have this and can again. Movie stars have always been the key to getting audiences to show up for risky ideas. Eyes Wide Shut and Vanilla Sky were successful because audiences loved Tom Cruise. A movie where a guy is stranded on a desert island with no one to talk to but a volleyball only works if you have a steady hand like Tom Hanks playing the titular Castaway. Will Smith got audiences to come out in droves for an original movie where he played an alcoholic superhero about as reckless asHarrier Du Bois.
Marvelled the charge against movie stars in the 2010s, preferring for audiences to turn up for characters they owned, not unpredictable human beings. That’s hurt the careers of their stars, whose names have, as a result, had little value outside of the MCU. Actors like Chris Hemsworth who, in a previous era, would have had great careers as leads in romantic comedies or down-the-middle dramas have struggled to make non-MCU work, well, work. He’s been the lead in expensive movies outside the MCU — like the original films Blackhat and Rush, the book adaptation In the Heart of the Sea, and the IP movies Men in Black: International and Furiosa— but they rarely gross much unless he’s Thor.
Some current stars have learned from their example and avoided superhero movies, as a result. Timothee Chalamet, Austin Butler, Margaret Qualley, Mikey Madison, and Jenna Ortega have avoided superhero movies and Sydney Sweeney — arguably the biggest female star of the rising generation — wisely used her Madame Web role as leverage to get Anyone But You greenlit at Sony. The risky rom-com ended up out-grossing her safe bet superhero movie 2-to-1 (and at a quarter of the price).
The result is that Hollywood is in the process of rebuilding the movie star, and with it, a means to get people to show up for movies that aren’t part of an established franchise. Not all of those movies will be huge hits. But some will. And, after all, without a willingness to bet on something new, Hollywood won’t have anything old to reboot 20 years from now.
