Board Games+Hollywood=FAIL

This absolutely blew me away.  If I ever need proof that the last 10 years of Hollywood have been mostly devoid of originality, I no longer have to search any farther.  /Film recently authored a post responding to Wikipedia’s listing of the top 50 highest grossing movies of the past decade.  Of the top 50, only NINE were original titles.  That is, not based on a previous story whether that be a comic book, TV show, play, clothing line, Disney Ride, whatever.  In fact, in the top 20 only one title (#15) emerged without owing allegiance to a previously liscensed property.  That being: Finding Nemo.  It’s absolutely staggering to think that since 1999 eighty percent of the highest grossing films were adaptations of some sort. 

Now, while it is imperitive to keep in mind that this list constitutes highest grossing box offices and not ALL of cinema over the last 10 years, it does still make a very declaritive statement about the state of film as we have come to know it.  The box office numbers drive production and Hollywood’s willingness to greenlight projects.  And if you were a number’s analyst, wouldn’t you lean more heavily towards projects you knew were going to profit for the studio?  With adaptations and revamps becoming a monetary must for studios, it seems fair to assume that we have a long way to go through the storm of upcoming adaptations.  In case you hadn’t heard the apocalypse-inducing news, Hollywood just recently went on a greenlighting frenzy to board game and toy properties, each of which makes the one before it look less and less absurd.  The laundry list goes as such:

_Candyland
_Battleship
_Risk
_Ouija
_Monopoly
_Clue

And those are just the movies about BOARD GAME adaptations. When you take into account the multitude of ALL upcoming adaptations, the figures are staggering. What’s even more interesting is the cast and crew that are attached to these projects. Ridley Scott is directing Monopoly. Etan Cohen (writer of both Idiocracy and Tropic Thunder) is writing Candyland. And when I last checked, Gore Verbinski was attached to Clue! It sounds insane but these big budget, fully backed films are even getting certified production teams. So while the most prudent reaction would be to sit back and give each production its due and allow these upgrades to try to speak for themselves and deliver a compelling revamped storyline to a priceless piece of Americana, I can’t help but worry that this is going to plunge us into a period of unoriginality the likes of which Hollywood has never seen. The question I’m most concerned with is, do we really want our generation of cinema-storians to be remembered as the era of the remake and revamp?

Tags: Alex Hluch, Art, Battleship, Board Game, Board Games+Hollywood=FAIL, Box Office, Candyland, cinema, Clue, Disney, Etan Cohen, Film, Finding Nemo, Gore Verbinski, Highest grossing, Hollywood, Idiocracy, Monopoly, Movies, News, originality, Ouija, Paranormal Activity, Ridley Scott, Risk, Shway, shwayblog, Tropic Thunder, TV, Wikipedia