GOOD LUCK, I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU: Film Directors Are the New IP.
This is awesome for Hollywood. It’s a beckoning call to get viewers to engage with movies theatrically and the people who make them. There has never been a better time to be an auteur with an idea; people are coming to see them.
Imagine how much money the next Curry Barker movie is going to make.
Want more proof than just a feeling?
Look no further than the recent box office receipts.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey took over the cultural landscape and became the event film of the summer. Everyone went to see it, many of them in 70MM IMAX.
The trend isn’t isolated to Nolan. Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi event Disclosure Day was sold almost entirely on his name, legacy, and direct return to original sci-fi.
As I said above, Ryan Coogler’s original supernatural thriller Sinnersproved that when a filmmaker builds an original vision, audiences will follow them anywhere.
We’re seeing trailers for a Shyamalan movie, and we know what that brings.
With name recognition like this and movies being sold on actors, it kind of feelsl like the ’90s again.
As Lynda Obst wrote in her 2013 book, Sleepless in Hollywood, in the 21 century, the industry replaced stars with franchises, to the point where there aren’t that many bankable stars left, and those who remain today are in their 60s or older. While stars are unreliable (see also: Gibson, Mel, Rourke, Mickey, and Sheen, Charlie), franchises such as James Bond, Star Wars, Star Trek, Batman, and the Marvel Universe seemed bulletproof. But then Hollywood went woke and began to hector its audiences rather than entertain them. Then came 2020, and Hollywood decided to close movie theaters and concentrate on streaming. Thus endless streaming series based on the aforementioned IP, culminating in slop such as She-Hulk, The Acolyte, and Starfleet Academy. And then superhero fatigue began to set in among audiences, at least until Spider-Man: Brand New Day made bank this year.
Roger L. Simon once wrote that Woody Allen was the only true auteur among American directors — the only filmmaker who both writes and directs his movies. Every other director needs writers to draft the blueprints of their projects.
But those directors considered “auteurs” in Hollywood’s past (such as Hitchcock, Kubrick, Coppola, and Welles) usually had the final cut on their movies. Unlike Spielberg and Nolan, which modern-day “auteurs” will be granted final cut by nervous studios?
