Marriage of Movie & Money : Death of Innovation & Creativity!

Originally Posted by Vinay Pemmasani

We are approaching a world where the most known form of art, film, is being redefined. It is no more a place where “you can tell a story”! It is no more a place where innovative and creative people can amaze audience with their original stories, resulted from their incredible passion & imagination. The only reason for this devastating situation is “MONEY”, the destroyer of beauty of mankind; & Film is not an exception.

A story is a result of a thought process, where the “ideas, opinions & thoughts” blossom in the mind of the creator resulted from his interests, passions & imagination. Such is the nature of an original story, which will form a beautiful garden full of flowers, whose fragrance will be fresh and can be felt by audience. However, the M-factor is making the film makers go behind the stories resulted from “Unoriginal Ideas, Audience Opinion & Copied Thoughts”, which makes the audience feel “Yet Again, another commercial movie, uffff”! Because, these three has also got a collective name, “COMMERCIALITY”!

  

This is exactly the case with the most renowned film industries in the world, Hollywood & Bollywood. Having done an extensive research in the trade & creative aspects of HW, I would say, Hollywood should add a caption to their Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, which says “We don’t tell stories anymore”. Hollywood top studios WB, Paramount, 20^th Century Fox, Walt Disney, and Universal are just playing nothing but a safe game. They are not ready to invest on any new original films, if they are neither sequels nor adaptations.

Here is the proof! None of the top grossers of 2011 are ORIGINAL. Shame on Studios and the film makers who could not dare make a big original film in the entire year full of 700-800 films. However, the logic is simple! If a studio invests on an already popular adaptation such as The Twilight Saga or Harry Potter, irrespective of how the film comes out, they make HUGE ROI (Returns On Investment), as they have got a huge fan base established already. The other way of making money is franchisees making a sequel such as Pirates of C, Transformers, X-man, Batman, HP etc. These also make huge ROI, because of established fan base. This has been proved several times in the HW history. In addition to this devastating situation, the new trend HW studios are following is making the 3D versions of blockbusters in the past. Walt Disney invested 10 million on The Lion King for 3D conversion, which grossed 100 million. Studios cannot ask for any better. Today, Star Wars in 3D is in theatres making good money. This summer, HW has 5 notable 3D converted releases which include Titanic. These figures obviously do not let the HW studios risk investing in new original films.

And Bollywood is also following exactly the same path to hell. They are no different. Here is the proof. None of the Top 5 grossers of 2011 are Original stories. They are either remakes or sequels.

Bodyguard   - 140.95 C (Remake from Malyalam)

Ready         - 121.26 C (Remake from Telugu)

Ra.One        - 114.78 C (Copied thought, Yet not successful)

Don 2         - 109.50 C (Sequel of a 6 times remade movie in Telugu, Tamil & Hindi)

Singham      - 102.10 C (Remake from Tamil)

This surely is not an era for Original film makers. Definitely not. Here’s a simple example. We all know renowned Christopher Nolan, who happened to direct the third highest grosser of HW, Batman Series. He had this incredibly original and outstanding idea of Inception. However, no studio was ready to invest in Inception, just because it lacked the commercial content they were looking for. & Finally, Warner Bros. did a favour to Nolan investing for Inception, just because the studio needs him to make Batman 3. Now, think about new young film makers. Such is the respect some incredible Original ideas and their makers are getting at the door steps of HW. And this is just because of the only factor, “MONEY”. Being an aspiring film maker and original film lover, that’s why I call it “Marriage of Money & Movie: Death of Innovation & Creativity”.