Columbus not only didn't "discover" anything, but he fiercely exploited and killed the people who were living there before him in the Caribbean. Not unlike Hollywood and IP in some ways.
It really boils down to issues of control and trust. Working with IP your studio owns outright or licenses for a good fee means you do not have to conten…
Columbus not only didn't "discover" anything, but he fiercely exploited and killed the people who were living there before him in the Caribbean. Not unlike Hollywood and IP in some ways.
It really boils down to issues of control and trust. Working with IP your studio owns outright or licenses for a good fee means you do not have to contend with outside entities representing external forces the studio doesn't want to deal with. The trust aspect comes from the studio expecting the audience will know and respect the IP, will want to view anything associated with, and mostly do as they are told. This has happened with other overexploited genres in Hollywood's past, and eventually a breaking point comes when a film flops so badly that it sends the studio reeling towards bankruptcy. That hasn't happened yet, but it may occur soon.
In contrast, when a studio underwrites a pet project from a director with little experience (or even ones with good reputations) there is going to be a constant amount of head-butting throughout the process that becomes uncomfortable for both sides. All the more reason for the studios to prefer working with filmmakers who can more closely resemble employees than artists.
David is right on here, the IP angle is about making profitable business decisions and not much else. Also, I’d argue this isn’t a new phenomenon either. Hollywood and the TV industry in its infancy was microwaving the same Western characters and plots with new names and places attached as far back as the 1940s. Film Noir, sci-fi, police procedurals, it’s all cyclical.
I would caution you against saying "It's all cyclical." People say that about Hollywood all the time and, A, it's the kind of thing people repeat to explain things they otherwise can't explain and, B, isn't as true as people think it is either. There are certainly historical trends, but we can't point to Westerns for that, for example. Everyone says that, but it's historically inaccurate. They made Westerns for 65 years, non-stop, and audiences kept showing up enough to keep making them and keep making them hits. Their stride didn't break until the mid-70s. I'd also point out the demise of something like film noir overlooks the fact that 40 to 70 of those were being made a year, a tremendous amount of variety, and were being released amongst hundreds (much higher output than we remember) of other kinds of films while hundreds of older films were still playing in theaters in case you missed them. I could say people were overwhelmed with choice, but of course that wasn't the case because theaters didn't have 10 screens each. You had your theater and you went to see what that theater was playing and, if in a big city, what maybe a few were playing. Every week was a process of discovery amongst many different genres, is my point. People didn't stop going to the movies, they just stopped going to see film noirs. The decision to stop going the movies is a wholly modern one that requires far more to explain it than it's cyclical or too much IP. As I said, this has never happened before and the phenomenon is really *only* IP.
There are a lot of takes like these that reduce the problem to one thing, but it's not one thing. It's not even close to just what you're describing from anything I've seen or historical context. For example, the first 70 years of Hollywood, directors were generally long-term contract filmmakers who did what they were told - a far from new experience. Nobody was unhappy with their output and audiences loved what these "company men" were selling because they were all generally original, either because of creative innovation or the fact that audiences hadn't yet experienced anything like them before. This is one of the reasons why I try to avoid speaking in absolutes or reductive explanations on here. Everyone wants to provide a simple answer when in the 21st century there are a good ten that are critical to what's happening. As I've written about previously, the influence of screenwriting guides and the imposition of lazy, formulaic, three-act structures has probably done more to harm the theatrical experience than "trust". I think people resent going to pay a fortune for a movie that feels predictable and boring to them. You can call that trust, but I think that would really underplay what's happening.
Columbus not only didn't "discover" anything, but he fiercely exploited and killed the people who were living there before him in the Caribbean. Not unlike Hollywood and IP in some ways.
It really boils down to issues of control and trust. Working with IP your studio owns outright or licenses for a good fee means you do not have to contend with outside entities representing external forces the studio doesn't want to deal with. The trust aspect comes from the studio expecting the audience will know and respect the IP, will want to view anything associated with, and mostly do as they are told. This has happened with other overexploited genres in Hollywood's past, and eventually a breaking point comes when a film flops so badly that it sends the studio reeling towards bankruptcy. That hasn't happened yet, but it may occur soon.
In contrast, when a studio underwrites a pet project from a director with little experience (or even ones with good reputations) there is going to be a constant amount of head-butting throughout the process that becomes uncomfortable for both sides. All the more reason for the studios to prefer working with filmmakers who can more closely resemble employees than artists.
David is right on here, the IP angle is about making profitable business decisions and not much else. Also, I’d argue this isn’t a new phenomenon either. Hollywood and the TV industry in its infancy was microwaving the same Western characters and plots with new names and places attached as far back as the 1940s. Film Noir, sci-fi, police procedurals, it’s all cyclical.
I would caution you against saying "It's all cyclical." People say that about Hollywood all the time and, A, it's the kind of thing people repeat to explain things they otherwise can't explain and, B, isn't as true as people think it is either. There are certainly historical trends, but we can't point to Westerns for that, for example. Everyone says that, but it's historically inaccurate. They made Westerns for 65 years, non-stop, and audiences kept showing up enough to keep making them and keep making them hits. Their stride didn't break until the mid-70s. I'd also point out the demise of something like film noir overlooks the fact that 40 to 70 of those were being made a year, a tremendous amount of variety, and were being released amongst hundreds (much higher output than we remember) of other kinds of films while hundreds of older films were still playing in theaters in case you missed them. I could say people were overwhelmed with choice, but of course that wasn't the case because theaters didn't have 10 screens each. You had your theater and you went to see what that theater was playing and, if in a big city, what maybe a few were playing. Every week was a process of discovery amongst many different genres, is my point. People didn't stop going to the movies, they just stopped going to see film noirs. The decision to stop going the movies is a wholly modern one that requires far more to explain it than it's cyclical or too much IP. As I said, this has never happened before and the phenomenon is really *only* IP.
There are a lot of takes like these that reduce the problem to one thing, but it's not one thing. It's not even close to just what you're describing from anything I've seen or historical context. For example, the first 70 years of Hollywood, directors were generally long-term contract filmmakers who did what they were told - a far from new experience. Nobody was unhappy with their output and audiences loved what these "company men" were selling because they were all generally original, either because of creative innovation or the fact that audiences hadn't yet experienced anything like them before. This is one of the reasons why I try to avoid speaking in absolutes or reductive explanations on here. Everyone wants to provide a simple answer when in the 21st century there are a good ten that are critical to what's happening. As I've written about previously, the influence of screenwriting guides and the imposition of lazy, formulaic, three-act structures has probably done more to harm the theatrical experience than "trust". I think people resent going to pay a fortune for a movie that feels predictable and boring to them. You can call that trust, but I think that would really underplay what's happening.