Sequels: bad money after good

The fine folks who lead movie studios and TV networks have an odd existence.  They are constantly trying to use their personal opinions and ascetic criteria to decide what would be a profitable movie, to develop some sort of formulae for success.  Once upon a time Fred Silverman was called “The Man With the Golden Gut” for his seemingly unerring intuition in picking hit TV shows at CBS and ABC.  He then took over NBC, green-lit projects like Supertrain and Pink Lady and Jeff, and suddenly his gut was less than golden.

One reliable arrow in any movie studio’s quiver is the sequel.  There is no guesswork, no speculation required.  If people loved actor X and actress Y is a comedy set in Paris about parrot smuggling, then they will flock to a sequel with the same two performers in a comedy set in Rome about sick cockatoos.  Studios now plan for built-in sequels, planning tent pole movies that will set up the next film in the sequence, then the next, and so on until your studio’s roster is filled through 2028.

Hold on, buckaroos.  As Hollywood Reporter pointed out, sequels have had a poor track record of late. Inferno is not recreating the financial success of The Da Vinci Code, or even the more modest success of Angles and Demons (which contains one of my all-time favorite movie lines, “Thank God, the symbologist is here.”).  Bridget Jones’ Baby also tanked, as did the “Why on Earth did they make a sequel of that?” movie Jack Reacher: Never Look Back.  There are exceptions—horror films seem to be able to put an infinite number of numbers after their titles, and Tyler Perry can churn out a money-making Madea film whenever he needs a few more million dollars.

Reboots are also on shaky ground.  The Magnificent Seven had an all-star cast but won’t be remembered as well as its 1960 predecessor, or 1954’s Seven Samurai.  For some bizarre reason someone thought re-making the beloved 1984 comedy Ghostbusters was a good idea, and then didn't understand why audiences stayed away.  Note—I didn’t stay away because of the women, I didn’t go because the original Ghostbusters is an impossible to duplicate classic, and no amount of stunt casting is going to improve on Bill Murray’s improv skills.  Again, there are exceptions—the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit was generally hailed as an improvement on the Oscar-winning original.

So the easy temptation is to draw broad conclusions—stop making sequels and reboots, start making more original films.  Geez, people have been telling Hollywood that for decades.  Remember when Gen Xers started taking over studios in the late 1980’s and 1990’s and producing movies based on beloved childhood series like Dragnet (1987), Car 54 Where Are You (1994) and Bilko (1996)?  That trend has lessened, although there have been recent big screen adaptations of Get Smart and 21 Jump Street (but both of those were parodies). 

The Hollywood Reporter article linked to above contained the important warning to not make sequels no one is asking for.  Was there a groundswell of sentiment for Tom Hanks to make another Robert Langdon film?  Why follow the mediocrity (and horrific bad casting) of Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher with Jack Reacher: Even More Violence?  Who watched the original Ghostbusters on DVD and thought, “Yeah, we can make it funnier than Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis”?

As I said, one trend is to assume that a sequel will be made before making a movie in the first place.  Marvel has announced a multi-year series of inter-related movie projects. That’s great, but what if one flops?  Or people start getting tired of these characters, or disapprove of the direction the series is going? It’s like a TV series planning plot twists in season five before getting a season one full season order.  The creators of Lost swore they had a six year plan, but the fact is that they initially cast Michael Emerson for only three episodes and his character ended up driving the final three seasons.  You have to stay flexible.

I always recall the story I read about Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception.  When it was announced, everyone said the studio was just doing it to keep the director of the Batman franchise happy, that otherwise no one would finance a film that wasn’t a sequel, remake, or reboot.  When early buzz was positive, the detractors said that it might be good, but an original film not based on a comic book was still a financial risk.  When it became the biggest grossing film of the year, the detractors said “Okay, let’s see him do it again.”

Hollywood will always give “proven” projects like sequels, remakes and reboots a priority.  If it succeeds, you’re a genius; if it fails, blame the marketing department because Tom Hanks movies should sell themselves. Hollywood should remember that before you have a sequel, you have to have a successful film.  That’s the hardest part about making money in the entertainment industry; you must have a good, original idea in the first place.