Let me start by saying, thank you to everyone who’s submitted to the Blood & Ink Showdown so far. I know it can be difficult putting your ideas out there to be judged. I always try and give some sort of explanation for why I say “no” but sometimes I have to get through a lot of pitches quickly which means I only have time to write a quick “no.” Please don’t take it personally.
Next weekend is the last weekend to pitch your horror ideas. If you’re not in yet, I would generate 5 pitches a day throughout the week and then, when the weekend comes, pitch the best 5 loglines you’ve got. You’ll have a better shot.
Next weekend will see the end of the “soft maybe” as there are no more weekends to carry your loglines into. And I do have good news for those of you who are stuck in Maybe-ville. I’m going to be accepting 5 “maybes” into the contest through the process of voting. That will happen AFTER next weekend’s pitches. So, at the very least, you’re going to want to get a “maybe.”
But today, I want to take a break from loglines to talk about the movie box office this summer, which isn’t doing great. Why do I want to talk about the box office? Because it affects the types of screenplays we should be writing. So, the better we can deduce what’s causing this rejection of current offerings, the better we’ll be at knowing what to write next.
And let’s start right at the top, since it’s so connected to the contest I’m running. The two big movie surprises this year have been Sinners and Weapons. Guess what genre those movies are in? Horror. Which means The Blood & Ink Showdown is right in the genre we want it to be.
But it’s not just that. It’s that both of these movies WERE ORIGINAL IDEAS. Which is awesome. It’s exactly what we’ve been saying Hollywood is missing. Audiences want original ideas. But I’m worried they’re going to focus more on the success of the genre and not enough on the fact that they were original.
I finally saw Weapons myself yesterday (here’s my old script review) and I thought it was great. But, more than that, it was different. It had this weird mystery at the center of it. It’s not told in a traditional easy-to-digest package. Instead, it’s told through individual points of view. These are things that studios traditionally believe mainstream audiences can’t handle. But they clearly can.
Even the number one movie of the year so far, Minecraft, FEELS different than other mainstream movies. And if you really look into it, it makes sense why it did so well. The mainstream big budget option for the past decade has been superheroes. We’re tired of that. So if you give us something even slightly different that also has the big budget treatment, we’ll flock to that movie. And they have evidence of this every year yet they still don’t push it. We saw it with Top Gun. We saw it with Barbie. We’re done with these superhero movies.
I was holding out hope that James Gunn was going to bring something fresh to the table. But Superman was just a slightly more upbeat (and colorful) version of the superhero movies we’re used to. It wasn’t different enough. I truly think that we’ve reached the end with this genre. The last big hit was Deadpool and Wolverine and that’s going to be it.
They’re still hoping Avengers is going to save the day but I don’t see how it can. The reason that the original two Avengers movies were two of the biggest movies ever was because every Marvel movie was building up, both in story and box office, over the previous ones. So it really felt like the culmination of something special.
Not only is that not going on here, it’s actually headed in the opposite direction. The last three Marvel movies, Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four, have done terribly. I suppose you could argue Fantastic Four did okay. But that’s only because the bar for success on superhero movies has fallen so low that we now label something as successful if it makes half as much money as an equivalent Marvel movie would’ve made five years ago.
So what does this all mean for screenwriters? It’s hard to tell because what Hollywood knows and what they’re actually willing to do are two different things. Sinners and Weapons are telling them to make more original material. So that’s what they should be thinking. But Hollywood is notoriously terrified of going down the original route because it’s so uncertain. They have zero comps or rules they can rely on to know if something’s going to do well or not. This is why you usually only see big original chances being taken in horror, because horror is inexpensive.
But at some point, if Hollywood wants to survive, it has no choice but to move to original material. Whether they do that now or they wait for the overall box office to drop another 20%, there’s no way around it. And they know this. But a studio is like a person. Nobody truly changes unless their back is against the wall. So they will wait until the last second to accept this. When do I think the last second will be? D-Day will probably be Avengers Doomsday third weekend.
I know that’s a strange claim so let me explain. Avengers will be the true litmus test of if the superhero genre is dead. The first weekend, unless it’s drastically low, will be spun by the trades as a win. But the real data is in the second weekend drop. However, since Doomsday arrives on December 18, 2026, that means the second weekend will be Christmas, when a lot of families go to movies. So that second weekend should be strong. By the way, this is why they’re putting it a week before Christmas, so that the second weekend drop doesn’t drop much. They wouldn’t have that luxury if they opened in the summer.
Therefore, it’s the third weekend that you’ll see the drop. And how big that drop is is going to tell us everything. Literally the only way it’s not a giant drop is if the movie is good. I don’t see how that’s going to be possible. Bringing back a tired (and failed) Russo Brothers along with Robert Downey Jr. in a strange “other character” scenario feels desperate. Nor does anything here feel planned. There are numerous stories about how they’re shooting without a script. Nothing sounds promising here. Even Deadpool joining the gang is tainted by Blake Lively’s mean girl parade lawsuit.
Despite that harsh criticism, Disney may be more ahead of the game than I’m giving them credit for. They’ve been letting agents and producers know they’re looking for male-dominated ORIGINAL material. I’ll believe this when I see it (if they start announcing a bunch of sales) but it’s an indication that they’re accepting originality is the only path forward. Which is saying A LOT about Disney, considering that they have more IP than anyone.
And let’s not overlook the male part of that request either. It seems like the era of the industry knee-jerkingly wanting a woman in the lead may be over. The studios have lost a lot of male moviegoers, and they’re sorry and want them back. Well, they’re not sorry. They just want money. But still. Men have always been the backbone of the movie-buying public, just like women have always been the backbone of the book-buying public. Disney either let politics cloud that reality or hoped to bridge the gap, or some combination of both. But they’ve come to the conclusion that dudes like movies more than dudettes so maybe you should gear a lot of movies towards dudes.
All right, what have we learned here? Originality is finally being valued in Hollywood and may become even more valued after the release of Avengers Doomsday next year. Horror is hot right now. And Hollywood wants men back. So male-centric concepts should do well. What else do you need to know? Start writing!
