BlazeBrendan Fraser says ‘Batgirl’ being shelved shows that movies are being ‘commodified’ in Hollywood.
CubitOom
scopsThey still had to launch the play to get it to flop and collect the insurance. I feel like that’s an important distinction here. We never even got to see if the movie had any redeeming value before WB canned it.
rozodruI don’t disagree with Mr Fraser’s observations, but … hasn’t Hollywood always been this way? If one wants cinematic art, it’s never come from these big studios.
I keep noticing people talking about problems in cinema like they’re new and it’s kinda weird. Corpos bought up the studios and took over the industry way back in black-and-white times. If anything, the lower bar for entry in modern times has made it easier for art to be made without the approval and funding of capitalists.
My son is a budding filmmaker, and we talk about this a lot.
Young filmmakers often don’t realize what miraculous times they live in. You can literally use the phone in your pocket to shoot a movie, edit it on your computer with free software, and then release it to the world on various video platforms, and even generate revenue, all without a nickel of studio or investor support.
But if all you want to do is make Marvel movies, then yeah, you have to sell your soul to The System.
Reminds me a bit of how South Park parodied Marvel & streaming services a few years ago…
“Netflix, you’re green-lit. Who am I speaking with?”
Young filmmakers often don’t realize what miraculous times they live in. You can literally use the phone in your pocket to shoot a movie, edit it on your computer with free software, and then release it to the world on various video platforms, and even generate revenue, all without a nickel of studio or investor support
That literally just works out for like 1 out of 100s. It’s why people use bots to give it a little push so the almighty algorithm can recommend it to others. And that needs moneyz which is why YouTube front-page and recommendations filled with crap.
Depends on your definition of “works out.” If all you want to do is get your little movie made so you can learn about all the moving parts that go into it, and get it out there where people might find it, then everyone has all the elements needed to do that, except a script and actors.
My son and I talk a lot about the costs of films these days, both the actual shooting, and the promotion that follows, which often doubles the coat of the film, making it even harder to be profitable. It is skewing the sorts of movies that are getting released, and generally not for the better.
And yet there are really compelling, very successful films that were shot on micro-budgets, like Paranormal Activity, which cost $55K, and has made billions. If filmmakers can think on a micro-scale, it’s possible for them to get their movies into the market, where they can be found by adventurous movie lovers.
And that’s where you think it falls apart, not being able to get noticed by “the algorithm,” but obscure stuff goes viral every day. Being clever in your social media marketing can be far more valuable than throwing a big budget at it.
Eventually, we are going to have a backlash against the big studios, especially when they start getting all preachy and propaganda-ish (which is coming), and there a new American New Wave film movement with low budget films recorded on phones and small digital cameras will emerge.
InfynisIt’s because we haven’t done enough trust-busting in the last few decades. Back in the day, the government said it was anticompetitive for a movie studio to own a theatre. But somehow it’s okay for Disney to own every IP, and their own streaming platform
Previously there’s be a shake-up every few decades that allowed a new crop of people with some fresh ideas to get their foot in the door, whether it was the switch from silent to talkies, the attempts to compete with television, the end of the Hayes Code, the special effects revolution, etc. There hasn’t been one of these in a long time, though, so the industry has become a lot more incestuous.
AnUnusualRelicBut… “art for art’s sake”! You mean they lied to us for all those years?
I’m curious how financial incentives even worked here.
I mean, someone would get money for a theatrical release. And it’s not like recent DC cinema has a stellar reputation to “preserve”
It takes one screwed up system to reject that money.
It isn’t revenue until its revenue, but at any time before that it can be losses for tax purposes.
MimicJarI mean, they’d get more money for a theatrical/streaming release.
The argument and implied reason for scrapping the film is that they wouldn’t. Look at “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” on a budget of ~$125 million the box office return was ~$135 million. Add in the theater split, any level of marketing, etc and the film lost money. For a streaming release you need to ensure you’ll retain, ideally gain new subscribers.
The number crunchers ran the numbers and said it wasn’t worth it. Although the funny thing is, with all the news about it, they could probably release it now and it would do fine.
That said I don’t agree with what happened, it just seems ridiculous.
They already have the enormous cost of production sunk though. I understand not paying for marketing, but it goes from “negative” to “massively negative” if they don’t at least license it out to streaming.
It’s probably something tax related, but still.
It’s literally all tax-related. Every single thing, not just Hollywood and movies.
If something doesn’t make sense to us, it probably makes sense to the people who actually do the math on a regular basis.
Yeah.
An anecdote: AT&T was having a fire sale on the base iPhone 16 Plus, like so cheap that it must have been a loss. It didn’t make any sense to me, but an employee speculated that, since it was their worst selling model of the lineup, they were clearing the inventory and writing it off as a loss to compensate for some other transactions.
This is classic sunk cost fallacy logic. It’s because they had the enormous cost of production sunk, they resisted the fallacy and sinking more money into it since the returns were not favorable.
But this doesn’t apply. This product has like zero per unit cost.
And the bare minimum cost for getting it out the door is basically nothing. With the state they have, they could use a tiny amount of money to make much more, no matter how poor the movie is.
The only reasonable explanation is some external benefit to sinking instead of releasing, like a tax write off.
When did Brendan Frasier become young Drew Carey?
Can we stop with the post title and comment being the same as the content headline already so I don’t have to see the same thing 3x?
Maybe add a summary or something insightful
Brendan Fraser says ‘Batgirl’ being shelved shows that movies are being ‘commodified’ in Hollywood.
First I’m hearing about it.
TonyTonyChopperBrendan Fraser says ‘Batgirl’ being shelved shows that movies are being ‘commodified’ in Hollywood.
sramder
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Is that also why those that do get made suck? They be trying to pull a Producers? 🤔
It would be the most valuable to burn Hollywood down and piss on the ashes.
The LA fires tried but someone decided to put it out.