you know, looking at the "Movie Talk" forum has me a little down lately. i mean i love the discussions, but it seems all the threads, especially on the 1st page are about movies that are not original. they are all based on something or a superhero movie.

don't get me wrong i love 'em all, but where and what are the truly original movies made in Hollywood? or is there such a thing anymore?

there just seems, to me, a dearth of originality for a long time and it weakens me...




ps) i'm not talking about international, only NA.

First page of MovieTalk right now:

It Follows
Irrational Man
Trainwreck
Joy
The Revenant
Crimson Peak
Pixels
USS Indianapolis
The Gallows
Kingsman
Legend

This gets brought up and shot down all the time. Plus, you saw Whiplash. So there you go.

Where have all the Cowboys gone?

I've got all the original ideas. I'm hoarding them. I'll release them once I get my flying car.

touche

Of the top ten most popular movies of 2015, just two are not a sequel/remake/adaptation: Inside Out and Home, and obviously those are animated films primarily targeted at children.

From the top twenty, you have San Andreas, Spy, Get Hard and Tomorrow-land.

So just 25% of what people are paying to see is original. And the numbers are the same for 2014.

Where are all the original ideas?

Sitting around somewhere not getting produced because there is no profit in original ideas.

Whiplash.

The Oscar-winner sitting at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.

$14 million at the world-wide box office.

Whiplash was adapted from a short film.

Whiplash, the spinoff with Mickey Rourke's Iron Man character?

All movies are just an adaptation of their script. Not original.

In that case... is a Wong Kar-Wai film or two original?

But even among those, Joy, Legend and USS Indianapolis are based on real people/events, Kingsman is from a comic book and The Revenant is adapted from a novel (about a real person). Pixels may be an original story, but it's banking on familiar characters from video games.

People have been saying this since about 1989 or so, it all depends on where you look.

Modern Mainstream cinema isn't where you go for originality.

Actually... has the mainstream ever been a region to see mass amount of originality?

I thought the pitch was Adam Sandler and the guy from Frozen lol

Pixels is also adapted from a short film.

He didn't say anything about Box Office.

Inside Out
Home
San Andreas
Spy
Tomorrowland
Get Hard
The Wedding Ringer
Focus
Jupiter Ascending

All films that did $50M domestically this year; all films that are "original properties." You also have this weekend's Trainwreck, next weekend's Southpaw, and a slew of films in August (The Gift, Ricki and the Flash, American Ultra, We Are Your Friends, etc) that are "original."

Based upon that list, just because a film is original doesn't make it good.

One can point to Whiplash as an original idea, but since people did not go to see it, it proves the point that original ideas are rarer because they do not generate profits.

Try to keep up.

But they're not ultra rare. There's a lot of original movies out there. They just don't make a ton of money, nor do they necessarily get widely distributed, which in turn leads to them being lesser known, hence the perceived skew (here, demonstrated by...well who fucking else would we expect, Oldboy) towards high grossing non-original movies. And of course, money from higher grossing movies can be made to finance some of the lower budget films, as is often the case.

In addition, many of these movies, even if they don't turn a profit (which Whiplash did, going by its meager budget), can still act as career starters or calling cards, and we've seen how that's turned out for Colin Treverrow. But I guess I'm having trouble keeping up.

Try not to act like a condescending dick. We're all forum browsing fools here.

I (and others) have mentioned this in multiple threads over the years, but it just doesn't make any sense for a big studio to drop $100 million-plus on an 'original idea' (which is why some of the best stuff comes from indy filmmakers).

If you're going to invest a ton of money in a movie, it better have something marketable about it going in...be it an actor/director attached to it, based on a best selling book or other idea, or similar to something that made you a profit in the past.

THIS is why we get so many sequels and reboots. It's a branding thing...it's really hard work to market something no one's ever heard of before.

I agree. The franchise/brand has replaced the movie star. During the movie star era the star was the most important thing about a movie. The plot and title secondary. The simple fact that Clark Gable or Jimmy Stewart or Clint Eastwood were in it was enough to draw in the crowds. You drive by a theater and in big letters on the marque would be JOHN WAYNE, below in smaller letters "true grit". On posters and in ads the star's name would be as big as the film title and often bigger. Most posters these days don't even list the stars, or in small print among the credits.

The original ideas are out there (tons), all of over the world among Independent filmmakers! I especially love the Independent Horror community!