The End of Originality

Edward Jay Epstein explains The End of Originality — Or, why Michael Bay's The Island failed at the box office:

In Hollywood, originality is anything but a virtue. Paramount rejected a recent project that had attached stars, an approved script, and a bankable director by telling the producer, 'It's a terrific idea; too bad it has not been made into a movie already or we could have done the remake.' This response, alas, is not untypical. Studios today, as a former executive explained, tend to greenlight four types of movies for wide openings: remakes (such as King Kong), sequels (such as Star Wars: Episode III), television spinoffs (such as Mission: Impossible), or video-game extensions (such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider).

Hollywood, of course, still turns out original movies, but the number is constantly shrinking. Studio executives don't lack imagination, nor do they find particular joy in mindlessly imitating bygone successes, but they must take into account the underlying reality of today's entertainment economy. Unlike in the old days when the studios could rely on a vast habitual herd of moviegoers to fill theaters, audiences must now be created from scratch for each and every film. For the studios, 'audience creation,' for which they spent on average over $30 million a film in America alone in 2005, has become just as important a creative product as the film itself.

The key to a movie's success is the level of awareness that exists for the project well in advance of the advertising blitz that takes place in the week or so preceding the actual release date.