A post writers’ strike drought?
Is it even possible? A movie drought? In the games industry it’s quite common. Development cycles of 2 years are normal. So during the holidays there’s a flush of good games and in the new year there can be a drought for a couple of months.
One thing is for certain. A total movie drought is impossible. Even if in some mysterious way the medium would become commercially unviable, people will still be making movies. Also, a movie doesn’t take 2 years to make. There are thousands of stories about scripts which took years, sometimes tens of years, to be made into film. But if the money is there, it can be done in months. It may not be an example of particular greatness, but look at Saw. I think they’ll do like 10 of those in just five years.
I just saw ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ and it seemed a bit rushed. The last couple of years, 100-120 minute movies became a standard. And if you take the prices, you should at least get 2 hours of entertainment in my opinion. Are the studios pressuring moviemakers to get the movies out? Yes, even more so than they did before? Are they rushing product out there to just have product out there?
Lets have a look at what’s coming. Last year’s summer blockbusters – it was quite a year:
- Spider-Man 3
- Shrek the Third
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
- Ocean's Thirteen
- Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer
- Evan Almighty
- Live Free or Die Hard
- Ratatouille
- Transformers
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- The Simpsons Movie
- The Bourne Ultimatum
- Rush Hour 3
This year’s summer blockbusters:
- Wall-e
- The Dark Knight
- Speed Racer
- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
- Indiana Jones 4
- The Happening
- The Incredible Hulk
See the difference? I might have forgotten a couple. But I probably forgot a couple in 2007 too.
Last year we saw director Roman Polanski pulling out of a project that had to be done before the strike, saying "I put a lot of work and energy into the development of Pompeii, so it is not without regret that I have to decline my further involvement." And there may be hundreds of stories like it. Movies got canned, maybe forever, because of the writers’ strike.
But if we look at where the money is, I think the producers knew what they were doing. They are businesses and they probably rode the line of marginal revenue = marginal costs – sorry, that’s the economics book talking. Also, do we really think all those writes weren’t writing anything all the time, at all? Of course not.
So in summary, are we having a movie drought? No. Are we seeing less movies. Probably, yes. But gladly the writers are back in. And the producers are lining up with the cases of money they’ve been sitting on for the last couple of months. So lots of good is probably to come. Unless of course, we are heading for… an actors’ strike.
By burnsting on
