July 17, 2009
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: George Foreman Grill, the Movie!
As any fan of ScriptGirl (and what red-blooded American male isn’t?) or member of TrackingB (one of the best modest investments you’ll ever make) will tell you, lately studios have green-lit movies about obscure toys from 2000 (Max Steel?!) and popular toys from 1939 (View-Master), but that’s about it. Oh yeah, and the ancient video game Asteroids. Because apparently the Wizard of Wor’s agent was asking for too much.
Yes, friends and neighbors, right now the spec market is as dead as Dillinger. That means bleeding on a sidewalk, the-bank-vault-is-closed dead. According to another invaluable resource, Jason Scoggins’ Life on the Bubble.com, 39 specs went out wide in June and guess how many sold?
Hint: It’s a number between negative 1 and 1.
Zero. Zippo. Not a single one. Seven sold that had been kicking around for awhile, two of which had major talent attachments.
Okay, it’s only one month, the industry starts coasting after Memorial Day, yadda yadda. So let’s throw in May, too. Bunch of specs hit the marketplace in May. You’re probably thinking, “I bet a bunch of those sold, right?”
One did.
According to Scoggins, 73 specs went out in 10 weeks, fully repped and professionally marketed to friendly buyers, and exactly one sold.
Can you say “contraction?” This market’s tighter than a platypus sphincter.
Ready for the good news? C’mon, off the ledge. Put the noose and the step-stool back in the closet.
It’s actually a good sign that stuff like Max Steel and View-Master are what they’re down to. Happily, like fossil fuels, gold and Jimi Hendrix music, existing pop culture is a nonrenewable resource. Once you run out of old stuff, you have to make something new. With few exceptions, most everything they’re doing is firmly rooted in the past and the newer franchises are being bled dry quick. The way Hollywood is strip-mining our memories, the day isn’t far off when there simply won’t be another popular toy, video game or TV show even remotely worth turning into a movie.
They will have to develop new properties.
If you come up with family-friendly, internationally viable concepts executed in 21st Century style — stuff that might make good toys, comics, games, and bed sheets — someone is bound to see dollar signs.
Everything and everyone is a commodity to these people. If it has universal appeal and is easily marketed, transferable to multiple platforms and brand licenses, it has value.
They have to keep feeding the beast. Human beings are voracious consumers of entertainment. I think if we’re patient, before too long there will be an opening for creative people who understand the global marketplace. Will you be ready?
Check out the sites I’ve mentioned here and in the past, get a feel for what’s viable, and start conceiving your commodities. In a couple of years, your ideas might be exactly what a desperate Hollywood is looking for.
In the meantime, in hopes of speeding up the process, I’ve compiled a list of ridiculous but well-known “nostalgia” properties the industry should buy up and ram into development now, so we can just get them the hell out of the way as soon as possible:
• Pet Rock
• Fruit Roll-Ups
• T.J. Hooker (oops, they beat me to it)
• The Psychic Friends Network
• Cheaters (syndicated TV show)
• Fundies (two-person underwear)
• Chia Pet
• Thighmaster
• Flowbee
• Microsoft Excel
Last and very possibly least…
• Family Circus
(Worst comic strip. EVER.)
10 Comments
So are we predicting a spec market boom in 2012? With my luck the world really will end by then.
You forgot about Etch-A-Sketch and the ever popular Big Wheel. And why hasn’t there been a Frisbee movie, yet? As I understand it, the Game of Life and Monopoly have been in development for years, now (seriously). It’s all about corporate ass covering.
“It wasn’t my fault the Foreman Movie bombed! Two hundred million owners can’t be wrong!”
It’s all about having something in the pipeline that makes you look like you’re doing your job, but hasn’t a chance in hell of being made. And if perchance by lightning strike it does get made, it doesn’t hurt if you can blame it’s failure on someone else. In this case, George Foreman. (”Who knew his Q rating was that low?!)
A wise, seasoned writer once said to me, “Hollywood isn’t in the business of making movies. They’re in the business of developing them.” He capped it off with this nugget of truth: “The job of a studio executive is to say “no” for as long as he possibly can, until they grow wise to him and fire his ass so he can continue to say “no” somewhere else.”
True that, sadly.
They’re looking for brands, names with an element which is recognizable to the audience. Hence the remakes.
The success of Transformers has shown that a franchise can be built from an IP which is primarily known as a toy line. Hence the gradual roll-out of feature projects based on lines from Hasbro, Parker Brothers, etc.
Coming this summer…
Michael Bay’s SWATCH- THE MOVIE!!!!
The Mayan calendar has predicted everything that’s come to pass in the spec market so far.
What about my toy? I can see the movie poster blurg…”The metal monster continued it’s unrelenting approach down the stairs toward me, step by step…”
The latest trend of ball-shriveled, spec-killing no-men is really getting boring. It’s a sad reflection of where we’re at as a society. Scared, looking to the past and slipping into a coma. Where’s the fire cracker energy that demands innovation? Even when a creative burst shows it’s sweet face, it’s quickly drowned in the need to make it bigger and faster and more than ever before. The efforts go into the practical how-are-we-going-to-pull-this-sucker-off-with-less-time-and-money-than-it-should-take, rather than into the joy of making something cool. Please, make it stop. Or at least, can the passionate, energetic execs, desperate to fan new life into Hollywood find their cajones and a way to side step these chickens so we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
humph.
You won’t get a change in the process without a change in the culture. Therefore, to have new properties receive well-crafted attention you will need to build a new studio which has those aims as a genuine mission. However, if you look at the history of world cinema, America has always been about churning out trendy films that look great but underneath are…without substance. Now and then, a great picture gets made, which keeps hopes alive. In general though, US cinema is made like your fast food. Gross is the deemed result, not art. So, build a new studio, staffed with visionaries and skilled artists. Then find the scripts with quality. Because the writers are part of the overall process, used to turning out filler, not reaching for transcendent art.
Thanks for the shout-out, Stogie Joe. Here’s the updated numbers for the stat you cited above, as of August 15: Just 2 out of the 84 scripts that went wide after May 1 have sold. That’s 2.4%. Crazy.
I’ll have the updated year-to-date numbers up at http://www.lifeonthebubble.com on Friday afternoon.
- scoggins
P.S. “Fruit Roll-Ups” - genius.
I guess this would be a good time to shop around my “TINKER TOYS” vrs “LINCOLN LOGS” script, eh?