Common Sense: As Hollywood Leans on Blockbusters, the Flop Looms

With a record number of big-budget action- and special effect-laden blockbusters opening between the beginning of this month and the end of August, competition for the spectacle-craving young male and surging international audience has never been more intense.

Steven Soderbergh, the much-admired filmmaker, delivered a blistering critique of the phenomenon at the San Francisco International Film Festival a few weeks ago, bemoaning studio executives’ lack of imagination and their fixation on big-budget franchise films. “Cinema as I define it, and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios,” he said. He likened the big studios to “Detroit before the bailout” and worried that the hegemony of the blockbuster is “a trajectory that I think is pretty difficult to reverse.”

But his warning may have come too late for this summer, when the studios seem to be headed over a blockbuster cliff. The numbers are pretty stark. According to Doug Creutz, the senior media and entertainment analyst for Cowen Company: “Of the expensive action and animated movies, we’ve never had a summer where more than nine did well, and often it’s fewer. This summer you’ve got 17 blockbusters coming out between May and July, 19 if you add August,” which he said is the most crowded release slate in recent memory. “Is this going to be by far the biggest summer box office in history? Maybe, if they’re all great movies, but it’s not likely.”

Studios have been shifting their resources toward what are variously called blockbuster, event, or tent pole movies for years — the big-budget movies intended to help studios make up for their less profitable films. By and large, the strategy seems to have paid off. “We haven’t seen many tent poles blow up,” Michael Nathanson, a media analyst and managing director at Nomura. “But this summer could be the breaking point. There may be some big write-offs on some of these films.”

The dominance of the blockbuster may have many directors, writers and producers wringing their hands, but it has been warmly welcomed by moviegoing audiences and Wall Street. Of the 15 movies that have grossed more than $1 billion, all were big-budget and all but three (“Avatar,” “Titanic” and “Alice in Wonderland”) were franchise films. And only “Avatar” could be considered original material. Disney’s “Iron Man 3,” the quintessential franchise blockbuster, opened two weeks ago and on Thursday joined the billion-dollar ranks.

(Curiously, once the figures are adjusted for inflation, none of the Top 10 grossing films of all time were part of a franchise, though all were big-budget event films at the time. The top grossing movie, adjusted for inflation, is “Gone with the Wind.”)

Mr. Soderbergh readily conceded that blockbuster films, despite often scathing reviews from critics, seem to have “the full support of the audience.” While waiting at Kennedy Airport, he said, he saw “a guy on the other side of the aisle in front of me and he pulls out his iPad to start watching stuff.” Mr. Soderbergh went on: “I’m curious to see what he’s going to watch — he’s a white guy in his mid-30s. And I begin to realize what he’s done is he’s loaded in half a dozen action sort of extravaganzas and he’s watching each of the action sequences. He’s skipping over all the dialogue and the narrative. This guy’s flight is going to be five and a half hours of just mayhem porn.”

The blockbuster phenomenon is also pleasing Wall Street and investors because it means that the big studios are making fewer movies, yet commanding a larger share of total box-office revenue. “It’s been a smart strategy,” Mr. Nathanson said. “They’re making fewer films and controlling costs and they’ve stabilized the industry. This is appealing to Wall Street. It’s a coherent strategy that can be articulated to investors. The studios may not be growing much, but they’re not the declining problem children they were after the DVD bubble popped.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/business/as-hollywood-leans-on-blockbusters-the-flop-looms.html?partner=rss&emc=rss