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As the cost of moviemaking continues to skyrocket, studios are under greater pressure than ever to deliver hits-not just modest successes but blockbusters. But no one has ever figured out a formula for foolproof success.
Who would have thought a movie about talking guinea-pig spies would be a hit? But in the summertime, when kids are out of school, during a year when people of all ages are looking for escape, G-Force had a smash opening weekend.
Early in the summer, Universal had high hopes for Land of the Lost, but here was a product with no identifiable audience. Anyone who was nostalgic for the tacky 1970s television series would seemingly be out of the desirable audience demographic. Kids might have been attracted to a dinosaur film, but its PG-13 rating and foul language put parents off. And Will Ferrell's core audience of young guys probably thought it looked to childish. The movie tanked.
At the other end of the spectrum, studios that were gun-shy about R-rated comedies have changed their thinking, thanks to the box-office success of movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. This summer's comedy hit was The Hangover, but even Warner Bros. didn't anticipate just how big it would be-with women and men.
So within a week of its opening, Warners announced that it would make a sequel to The Hangover.
Oh, great. Instead of coming up with something new and original-like, say, The Hangover-they're going to try to squeeze more juice out of the same concept and cast. (On a strictly business basis I suppose I can't argue. I couldn't stand this year's strictly-by-the-numbers sequel to Night at the Museum, which reduced a clever idea to pointlessness, but it made a ton of money.)
Still, it seems to me that at the end of every year, the movies that stand out-critically and commercially-aren't the copycats and remakes and sequels. They're the originals...and those are the movies that rank the highest in my 2010 edition of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide.
Leonard Maltin, 
movies, 
cinema, 
films, 
movie reviews, 
entertainment, 
books, 
Penguin Books
