There is a Paste piece by Jacob Oller has been floating around - The IP Era’s Venture Capital Philosophy Has Poisoned Movies - doing what is so often done these days… raging at an idea without seriously examining it… conflating everything that pisses the author off into a false focus on one issue, largely misunderstanding or choosing to misunderstand history.
There is an anti-IP argument to be made…. but Oller is too busy tilting at windmills for that.
Pretty consistently, folks go to the movies when they recognize something and stay home when they don’t. Looking at the past 10 years of box office Top 10s, it’s far faster to note which movies aren’t based on a pre-existing property: Frozen, Gravity, Inside Out, Zootopia, The Secret Life of Pets, Sing, Onward and Tenet.
That’s it. Eight movies out of 100.
Are you weeping? Let’s look beyond than the last 10 years. “When The Movies weren’t just reflecting popular IP.”
Let’s go back to before DVD to 1995. The Top 10 was made up of 4 sequels, 2 family/kids films based on very well-worn IP (Casper, Pocahontas), Toy Story (based on merchadise from kids movies coming to life), Jumanji, and 2 original adult films, Se7en and Apollo 13, based on the famous story of the mission. These 10 films generated $1.4 billion worldwide (probably a bit more that got unreported in that period).
2005 - 3 sequels, 3 reboots, Narnia, Madagascar, and Hitch. $5.9 billion worldwide.
2015 - 8 sequels, originals The Martian and Inside Out. $11.5 billion worldwide.
2022 - 8 sequels, The Batman, and Water Gate Bridge (a Chinese hit). $10.2 billion.
The idea of sequels and IP is not new.
Want to go back to 1965 and see what the super-duper original Top Ten was? 3 Broadway musicals, a Bond sequel, a David Lean movie drama based on a classic novel, 2 ensemble comedies about European races (one in cars, one in planes), Disney’s That Darn Cat, MGM’s swinging 60s ensemble comedy What’s New Pussycat, and a bunch of prisoners escaping the Germans in WWII (Von Ryan’s Express, based on the hit novel). Gross: a bit over $500 million.
How original!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Hot Button to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.