by John | Dec 16, 2019 | Industry News
The number of reboots and remakes continues to climb, as can be seen from both the September and October script sales as reported by Script Pipeline… And there are a few other interesting things to note.
- After a great start, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN hasn’t done so well in recent years. Disney are now planning a reboot of the series, with original writer Ted Elliott being joined by CHERNOBYL creator Craig Mazin as they seek to develop a new story, reportedly without Jack Sparrow.
- It might not have the same box office draw, but another Disney franchise getting a reboot is INSPECTOR GADGET. SNL writers Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell are attached.
- And if you’re already getting sick of remakes, unfortunately we’ve got another one for you. Paramount has started work on a new version of FACE/OFF, the 1997 action thriller that was directed by John Woo.
- THE PRESENT seems like a script that shows there’s new potential even in old concepts. Despite similarities to GROUNDHOG DAY, it puts a new twist on the story – just as HAPPY DEATH DAY did – by having a young boy repeatedly relive the day his parents broke up and trying to prevent it.
- Bret McKenzie of FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS won an Oscar for 2011’s THE MUPPETS, and now he’s returning to the Jim Henson company once again. He’ll be writing the script and music for EMMET OTTER’S JUG-BAND CHRISTMAS.
Click here if you’d like to see the full Script Pipeline report for September, or click here for October. And if you think you’ve got a script more original than anything you see here, get it into our hands by submitting to one of our contests here!
by John | Sep 1, 2017 | Industry News, Updates
Summer Box-Office flopbusters – Notice the trends of Summer flops to avoid the same pitfalls.
A Summer to forget for Hollywood… the worst grossing Summer in the last ten years, but just why has this happened?
The content has been there. WONDER WOMAN, SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING, BABY DRIVER, THE DARK TOWER, DUNKIRK, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. Of course, they’re different in quality and appeal, but these belong to some big franchises and film companies. But, this Summer has not been so hot.
It’s hard to remember many other films beyond these. If I asked you to name 15 films released since the start of June you’d probably struggle – hell, we’d struggle!
One of the issues is the ease which moviegoers can check a review and decide on whether it’s worth going to see and spend their hard-earned cash on. It takes less than 30 seconds to open up the IMDB app on my phone to check the Dunkirk rating (8.4/10, not bad, Nolan). And this is no doubt how a lot of people are choosing to see films now.
And so many of those low scoring films will just be forgotten. Remember how the BAYWATCH movie was released this Summer, or PIRATES 5 at the end of May? No, me neither. It seems that Hollywood films are becoming more polarizing each year – we’re losing middle ground and average, yet enjoyable, rom-coms and now receiving either complete trash or filmmaking brilliance. We think that script development professionals deserve a bigger voice in the studios’ choice of projects and scriptwriting – and our founder Alex is compiling the research that’ll prove it, we’ve already had a look!
The lack of comedy seems apparent this Summer. Summer action films are always likely going to be a hit, but there’s very little engaging or original comedies or rom-coms out there. Which is just sad for the Summer. Now, we have to settle for things like THE EMOJI MOVIE… We used to get much better quality and ideas…
Maybe this represents a need for better and more original comedies, but there’s also a sign that Winter is becoming the time to release films. The Oscar bait is usually released around Autumn and Winter time, plus the STAR WARS franchise (and before it THE HOBBIT trilogy) was released around Christmas to increase revenue… and it worked.
It’s worth looking more deeply into what films have flopped and why. Try and spot any trends that occur in the failures and do your best to avoid them.
Read more on Hollywood’s horrible Summer here; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-11/hollywood-s-summer-from-hell
You can also see what sort of scripts are selling recently with Script Pipeline: https://scriptpipeline.com/category/script-sales
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