Many people believe that Hollywood has run out of ideas because the vast majority of films being released are either remakes or based off of books or TV shows. But has Tinsel Town really lost all of it’s originality? According to BlogCritics.org, every year about 40,000 movie scripts are registered into the Writer’s Guild West. This huge number suggests that TONS of originality is out there, so why does Hollywood seem to ignore it? Why stick with remakes and “based-ons” when they could be making new, fresh films? Is Hollywood afraid? Why are so many films created based on toys (G.I.Joe, Transformers, etc), books (Like the obvious The Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia as well as the Bourne series, James Bond films, Fight Club, and countless others), or old movies/TV shows (3:10 to Yuma, Clash of the Titans, King Kong, Footloose, and Godzilla, the latter set to be released in 2012)? This paper will seek to answer some of these questions.
There are several reasons why Hollywood tends to make films that are remakes or based on books, a few of which I will list below. For one thing, it saves the studios a lot of money. By remaking a movie that has already had some success, the studio is provided with “free advertising”. Audiences seem to enjoy returning characters from popular films, which also explains why so many of the sequels, triquels, and prequels are made. It almost ensures that the film will make decent amount of money. Also, it provides easy, and often simple, plots that greatly reduces the need for writers. Another common trick is rereleasing. Walt Disney rereleased his films every five or so years so that a new generation of young children could experience the excitement that the previous generations had seen. This also helped recirculate films that were successful in the past. Many films are made into BluRay or 3D and rereleased into theaters. A great example of this is the Titanic 3D set to be released next year.
Some have observed that many films out of Hollywood come in pairs. For example, in 1998 Pixar studio released Bug’s Life a mere month after DreamWorks studios released Ants. These two films are remarkably similar, dealing with life from an ants perspective and also showing bug wars. Later, in 2004, DreamWorks studios released Shark Tale a year after the success of Pixar’s Finding Nemo. Again, both of these films told the story of fish and sharks. There are many other examples of the “movie pairing”, such as this years Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached. The “movie pairs” are most likely trying to attract the same audiences as the other. But don’t think the days of “movie pairing” are over. Even next year, two Snow White adaptions are being released, the first called Mirror Mirror (starring Julia Roberts as the Queen in this goofy spoof) and the second Snow White and the Huntsman (starring the Twilight sensation Kristen Stewart as Snow White in this classic-made-epic).
Thousands of films have been created based off of books and other items. Some of these films have been great successes while others have been tremendous failures. Quite a few have even gone all the way to receiving Oscar nominations or awards. So why are book-to-movie conversions so common? Some would argue that Hollywood has lost originality so it looks for inspiration in popular books. While there may be some validity to this statement, it is not the whole story. Many directors like to show us their own takes on different popular stories and try to incorporate new special effects. This not only benefits the studio (if it is a success, obviously), but it also helps the publishers and authors of the books get new attention and circulation among a younger audience, as previously mentioned. Novels and other stories provide studios with already fleshed out characters, a strong plot, and sometimes, even the promise of a sequel.
Many suspect that Hollywood has lost its originality. I, however, would argue that this is not the case. Thousands of original scripts are written each year, proving that a lack of originality is not Hollywood’s issue. The reason Hollywood makes so many remakes, “movie pairs”, and book-to-movie conversions is simple: these are proven to bring in money. Hollywood has become obsessed with “hitting it big”, so it is less likely to take on original, untested works and keep to the “proven” success of former books/movies. So the problem is not that Hollywood has lost its creativity so much as the general movie-going public has become content with remakes and “based ons”.
