Audiences Relish in Summer Diet of Sequels and Remakes

While we all enjoy bashing the Hollywood studios for lack of imagination, at this point in the summer the naysayers should also own up to this reality: The world's filmgoers seem to like what they're getting.

The basic facts are as follows: Just about all the tentpoles and sequels have turned out to be hits this summer, unlike last. Box office results have improved by roughly 7%, and that's a big number. Earlier concerns about "cannibalization" (too much product in the marketplace) haven't materialized, except that some independently financed fringe movies are being crowded out of the multiplexes.

And the lineup of films still to appear seems remarkably solid -- shows like The Simpsons, Hairspray, Transformers and the next iterations of Rush Hour and Bourne Identity.

To be sure, there are still some big question marks. Will Evan Almighty, with its oddly evangelical subtext, justify its enormous budget (somewhere around $200 million)? Will Michael Moore's superbly crafted Sicko perform like a Columbine or like a Fahrenheit?

Setting these aside, the bottom line seems to be that the movie going public worldwide seems to relish its diet of sequels and remakes. Or at least they realize that that's all they're getting so they might as well deal with it.

Or there's the other possibility: Namely, that the sheer magnitude of the $150 million multimedia promotions launched to support these movies is so great that the public is simply numbed into submission. Given the heft of these campaigns, it could be argued, the global distributors are effectively telling the public what it wants.

In the intriguing Hollywood era of the '70s, the studios (and I was there) would test the waters with new films (a Midnight Cowboy or a Harold and Maude) and then determine how the public reacted. If a film "worked" for audiences, the movie's run would be extended from two to twenty theaters and the advertising monies would roll out to support it. But the key was that we always had our ears to the ground. We reacted to changing public tastes.

Taste is no longer a two-way street. The studios decide what to make and, by God, they beat the shit out of the public until they get their point across. To be sure, the expense of these campaigns is so vast in this era of day-and-date distribution that the ultimate results often represent a marginal return on investment. The combined production and promotion costs of a film like, say, Spiderman, may approach $500 million, but then the third iterations of Spiderman and Pirates have exceeded $800 million worldwide. (Less than half of that revenue stream reverts to the production entity, however.)

There have been disappointments thus far this year - witness Grindhouse or The Last Mimzy or Sony's animation film, Surf's Up. By and large, however, this year has been bountiful for Hollywood. Draw your own conclusions.