I don’t know why studios keep meddling.
Movies get expensive. Studios are afraid of the risk and want to play it safe. They start meddling.
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givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t know why studios keep meddling.
She said the script she signed up for was way better, and what got released is completely different
Like, I know some stuff will always change. But this comes up so often and it’s just producers fiddling with shit
zaphod@feddit.de 8 months ago
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
And then they ruin it. They should understand their limits and realize they’re hurting the bottom line by not trusting the people who know this stuff better than them.
psycho_driver@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Having spent way too long in corporate middle management, I can tell you that there are a lot of people in corporate offices who think they’re geniuses when they are, in fact, fucking morons.
zaphod@feddit.de 8 months ago
It’s either that or try to make cheaper movies instead, but even then they need to trust the people who actually make the movies.
Lemmeenym@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Cheaper movies are exactly what we need. There are 5 major studios (Disney, Paramount, Universal, Sony, and Warner Bros.) and between them they release about 20 movies a year with budgets over $100mil. They need to be releasing about 5. In 2023 14 movies were released with budgets above $200mil and only one (Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3) broke even on box office sales.
Throwing money at it doesn’t make a movie good. Some movies require big budgets to effectively tell their story but most don’t and the more money a studio throws at a movie the less control the actual film makers have. The story and a film maker with a coherent vision are the two most important elements.
To prove it here are some iconic movies made for less than a million dollars: Mad Max, Napoleon Dynamite, Clerks, Paranormal Activity, Friday the 13th, Halloween. Between 1 and 2 million we pick up movies like Rocky and Saw. My Big Fat Greek Wedding cost $5 million.
Studios need to focus on 1 big movie a year and then take lots of small budget risks. The box office profits from the $5 million Get Out would pay for 25 $10 million risks. Find a decent script with a passionate filmmaker behind it, give them just enough of a budget to get the film made and stay out of the way. The overall quality of cinema would be vastly improved.
negativeyoda@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Conversely, how many times have we all heard people talk about the latest Star Wars movies with the, “how the fuck did they green light the trilogy with no structure” argument?
I’m not advocating for studio meddling, but this is the highest of profile projects where it arguably would have helped. JJ Abrams set that clock back to zero
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
That story line was 100% the result of corporate board meddling
flumph@programming.dev 8 months ago
I attended a conference where a former 20th Century-Fox executive talked about the way she meddled in the trailer process with technology. It’s all about numbers and metrics – if enough people, in the right demographics, didn’t watch the whole trailer on YouTube, they’d cut the next trailer to cater to that group. Even if it wasn’t a great representation of the movie; her bonus depended on people watching the trailer.
gapbetweenus@feddit.de 8 months ago
Money people want to be artists.
snooggums@midwest.social 8 months ago
This is often over looked when people wonder why someone might sign up to something that is a trainwreck, and it usually comes down to the final film being far different than the original vision. Hell, a movie can be destroyed during script rewrites, bad scenes, and even during the editing process! Bladerunner has multiple versions based on editing the same filmed scenes. The theatrical version was ruined by insistence on a voiceover and the final cut is the best version due to what they cut out or left in.
This one sounds like the Bladerunner theatrical cut being ruined by execs, and that does suck.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
The best known opposite example is Star Wars (A New Hope). When George Lucas screened it for Spielberg, Spielberg didn’t know how to tell George how terrible it was without ruining their friendship. George gave his steaming pile of shit to his wife and she and her editing partner literally built the classic we know today from it. George learned his lesson and gave Empire to someone else to direct and his wife to edit.
CaptainEffort@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
George is the most overrated director of all time.
FreeFacts@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
One hit wonder as a director. And that hit is American Graffiti, not Star Wars.
Igloojoe@lemm.ee 8 months ago
After seeing what Disney did to Star Wars, George Lucas at least produced something decent with the prequels.
thefartographer@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Hancock
chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
What’s the story with that one? I’m unfamiliar.
thefartographer@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It was a Will Smith movie about a Superman-like superhero who became reviled and then became a bum. It was exciting because this was during the height of Will Smith’s action career and it would have been the first high-budget serious superhero movie starring a person of color.
The original script reads like pure art and adrenaline from what I remember. The actual movie turned into some shit-fest that made a white PR Rep the main character and then shoehorned some weird love triangle with ancient beings and super-amnesia.
You read that right. Somehow, the first big budget gritty superhero movie starring a black man got turned into a milquetoast semi-rom-com starring a white man as a media specialist with no superpowers.