Hollywood is reaping a decent harvest from a tight focus on broadly appealing fare – in spite of the gloomy predictions of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas about an 'implosion'
Boisterous summer box office continued to demonstrate the iron-clad credentials of broadly appealing studio fare as Monsters University held its top berth and the top five movies each grossed over $20m. Despite the recent gloomy prognostications of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, by the half-way point, blockbuster season 2013 has shown little sign of cracking up.
What is interesting about the remarks about an "implosion" by the moviemaking duo at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in June is how, well, uninteresting they actually were. There was nothing in their dark predictions that any savvy industry watcher hadn't already accepted as inevitable.
There will come a time when several summer tentpoles will come crashing to earth within the space of several months. When that happens, Hollywood will pick itself up, tweak the model and move on. Independent moviemakers will continue to struggle to make themselves heard.
How did we get to this position of tentpole saturation? In the past few years the studios have squeezed their pipelines in favour of a ruthlessly targeted approach. This all started roughly eight to 10 years ago and Bewitched is a key player in the story. Columbia's chastening summer 2005 release of the Nicole Kidman vehicle scared the industry because the comedy cost around $85m (£57m) to produce and probably another $50m or so to market and only grossed $63m in North America.
The fact that it brought in a little more at the international box office meant nothing. Hollywood executives – or more to the point, their corporate paymasters – learned quickly that so-called mid-budget titles like Bewitched were not worth the effort. Going forward, the business model would be all about extremes: production chiefs were instructed to train their sights on costly behemoths at one end and arthouse fare at the other.
Three years later, the number crunchers realised arthouse movies weren't making enough money either. The writing was on the wall for the specialised divisions and Warner Bros, for example, closed down its subsidiaries Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse in 2008. This resulted in an even narrower Hollywood focus that championed commercial gluttony.
From that point on, by and large the only movies that have mattered are tentpole moneyspinners and micro- or low-budget genre fare that can yield huge profits if done properly. Some studios still occasionally support low-to-mid-budget awards season movies such as Argo, which became a commercial and critical hit for Warner Bros, but these are few and far between.
In most cases, the studio approach remains culturally myopic and reflects a chronic artistic timidity. But you can't blame executives for mining opportunities. Hollywood, like any other business, is about the bottom line and that's what Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel are all about. If the movies win awards, demonstrate artistic merit and/or stand the test of time, all the better, but that's not the primary aim.
So when we get to the point one year where three, four or five summer tentpoles fail to deliver the goods, then, of course, there will be an upheaval. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth at Disney, Fox, Paramount, et al, followed by write-downs, job losses and premium-pricing increases, all played out against the flight of riskier or more esoteric material to cable TV or the internet.
Business evolves. The studios will survive, which is why for several years now they've focused on reducing risk through investment in international markets and digital platforms. But let's not forget what got us to this point: customers keep on paying money to see spectacle. And it's hard to pinpoint two more prolific pioneers of modern cinematic spectacle than Spielberg and Lucas. They earned their fortunes through proto-blockbusters that quite possibly crushed the aspirations of the type of smaller independent movies they would now appear to cherish.
North American top 10, June 28-30 2013
1 Monsters University, $46.2m. Total: $171m
2 The Heat, $40m. Total $40m
3 World War Z, $29.8m. Total: $123.7m
4 White House Down, $25.7m. Total $25.7m
5 Man of Steel, $20.8m. Total: $248.7m
6 This is the End, $8.7m. Total: $74.7m
7 Now You See Me, $5.5m: Total: $104.7m
8 Fast & Furious 6, $2.4m: Total: $233.3m
9 Star Trek into Darkness, $2m: Total: $220.5m
10 The Internship, $1.4m. Total: $41.7m
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