I bristled all weekend long about whether to go to 28 Years Later. It wasn’t even the movie itself that had me reticent. It’s the Hollywood theatrical business model that’s the problem. These days, they don’t make things as easy as they could. It used to be that if I was on the fence about a movie, the barrier for entry was so low that I would always go. Nowadays, the barrier for entry is high, so whenever I’m on the fence, I usually *don’t* go.
The fact that a single ticket is 20 bucks. Then parking at the Grove is another 10 bucks. That makes me think hard about whether I want to see a film.
This means that any other negative thing will be the tipping point. And when I watched this trailer, it looked so dark. I’m okay with dark. Once you get insanely dark, though, that’s too much. The capper, however, was the reviews. I heard that this was a super depressing story. Dark and depressing is not my idea of a fun weekend activity.
Now, the movie ended up making 30 million dollars. Depending on who you talk to, that’s either decent or bad. But, I still think any non superhero movie that clears 30 mil on its opening weekend is a success. It cost 75 million to make. They’re going to make that back when it’s all said and done.
But the real success – and the big lesson for all of you aspiring screenwriters out there – is that the movie got made DESPITE BEING dark and depressing.
Why is that? I’ll tell you why. BECAUSE THE MOVIE EXISTS WITHIN A MARKETABLE GENRE – ZOMBIES. Too many writers write dark and depressing movies about real-world issues and act surprised when nobody wants to read their scripts. They come to me for a logline consult and they say, “Nobody wants to read this script, Carson. What’s up?” And I look at them and I say: Look at your concept! It’s about a disfigured woman who loses her job and decides to euthanize herself.
In one of the hardest businesses to break into, you cannot handicap yourself with a “tough sell” type of script. The good news is, you can still tell THE EXACT SAME WEIRD OR DEPRESSING OR OFFBEAT story you want to tell. You just have to do it within a marketable genre!
Want to tell a story about hospice? Write an apocalyptic horror movie like A Quiet Place: Day One. Want to tell a story about cancer? Write a teenage romantic comedy like The Fault in Our Stars. Want to write a movie about mental illness? Write a psychological thriller like Black Swan. Want to tell a story about the inevitable extinction of mankind? Write a sci-fi thriller like Children of Men.
We’re playing a game here, man. We writers want to write stuff that’s more thoughtful and rich. Hollywood wants us to write stuff that’s popular and makes them money. The game is to make them BELIEVE they’re getting what they want when we’re actually getting what we want.
I’m willing to bet Universal thought Get Out was some basic “meet the parents” contained thriller. That’s what allowed Jordan Peele to get his movie made. In actuality, he was trying to say a lot more about society. And that’s what smart writers do. Peele could’ve easily ditched the thriller aspect and focused on an intense weekend with a white family and the daughter’s black boyfriend. But it wouldn’t have existed in a genre that Hollywood could market. And Hollywood is right! Nobody would’ve wanted to see that movie!
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Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the disparity between critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. I know some people think Rotten Tomatoes is a joke but I see Rotten Tomatoes as the primary checks and balances for Hollywood. You have to understand that, back in the day, Hollywood had ZERO incentive to make a good movie. They ONLY had to make a marketable one.
That’s because they had way more control over the narrative of a film than they do today. They could make you think a bad movie was great a full 3-4 weeks into its run!
Nowadays, at least, Hollywood is scared of that Rotten Tomatoes score and, as a result, they put a lot more effort into the script than they used to. They know they’ve got no shot at a successful movie if that score sucks. And, by the way, that score is almost exclusively evaluating the screenplay. Hollywood production levels are the best they’ve ever been. A movie’s failure is never about weak production value. It’s about the script. So at least now we have this thing that scares Hollywood into putting more effort into the script.
It’s not a perfect system. James Gunn recently came out and said that the main reason that Hollywood is struggling right now is because they make movies from scripts that aren’t ready. He’s built his whole DC universe on the promise that he won’t make that mistake himself. He’ll only make DC movies when the script is good and ready. As proof of that, he recently canceled a mystery DC project because the script sucked. And he’s allowing Matt Reeves to take as long as he wants to write The Batman 2.
But I have to wonder – who decides when a script is awesome? James Gunn?? So when he finishes one of his own scripts, does he go into a separate room and evaluate it and say, “Yup, it’s awesome!” Cause Gunn writes too fast to be good sometimes. So I don’t know how that’s going to work.
But the point is, when Hollywood was making movies like iRobot, it was way way way way way worse than it is now. They had ZERO incentive to make that movie good and everybody saw the result, as well as the results of all those other movies that didn’t have to worry about repercussions of being shitty either. I’m talking about The Day After Tomorrow, Catwoman, Kangaroo Jack, S.W.A.T., The Time Machine, Maid in Manhattan, and hundreds more.
So, if anything, we should be happy that Rotten Tomatoes exists, if only to strike enough fear into Hollywood to make them try harder.
Getting back to that score disparity, some of these disparities are shocking! 28 Years Later has a 90% critics score and a 65% audience score. That’s a humongous difference. And it’s another reason to think long and hard about how depressing you want your script to be. Audiences generally go to movies to be picked up, not pulled down. So, when you depress the hell out of them, they react in kind.
A good example of that would be Ballerina. It has a 76% critics score but a 93% audience score. Ballerina only wants to be fun. It wants to be a good time. Audiences appreciate that. Not in some ‘audiences are dumb’ way. But because you go to the movies to escape the dredges of life. You want to let go for two hours and have fun. Writers forget this. It’s why A Minecraft Movie is the number one movie of the year. It’s why Barbie made twice as much money as Oppenheimer.
Then you have shocking score pairings, like Thunderbolts getting an 88% critics score and a 93% audience score, yet the movie was a bomb. How does that work? And it’s in a marketable genre, too! Guessssss what? If you’re paying attention, you know the reason why. Thunderbolts was about depression.
On the one hand, that’s AWESOME for the writers. They were able to slyly slide tough subject matter into a Marvel film. That’s what I just told you to do if you want to be successful. But that’s just to get the movie made! The problem with injecting too much darkness into your Hollywood movie is that audiences don’t like too much darkness. They like just enough to add balance to the story. But they ultimately want to have fun. And Thunderbolts wasn’t fun enough.
This is why I think Superman will be a massive massive hit. It embodies that spirit of having a good time at the movies. Its tracking says it’ll make between 115-130 million on its opening weekend. I think it will go higher than that. Superman is going to be the big movie of the year. And I’m not even HESITATING at paying that 20 dollar ticket and that 10 dollar parking fee. That’s how I know everyone else is going to see it as well. :)
