2024 in Film Part 1: The State of the Studios

Hard to believe it is that time again,

Time to look back and reflect on another movie year that seems to come and gone like it was Sonic the Hedgehog going fast right along side of you but here we are and in this first part of my look back I’m going to do my State of the Studios roundup which I started doing in 2022 and was a lot of fun to do.

Last year Universal was the winner with Warner Brothers taking silver and Columbia, Paramount and Disney all stumbling to the finish line but how have their fortunes changed in 12 months well let’s start with number 5 and oh boy is this group a perfect example of how fortunes can change in just one year:

Warner Brothers:

Last year for them was so good but this year, YIKES!

And they got off to such a strong start too with Dune Part Two and the collab Godzilla X Kong the New Empire doing very well at the box office but afterwards only M Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice posting decent box office returns.

But WB has had 3 high-profile Box-Office failures this year and that is why they are at the bottom of this ranking: Furiosa a Mad Max Saga, Joker Folie a Deux and Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim all following up beloved films and all of them becoming high profile financial failures for the studio.

In fact Furiosa was such a failure that many became convinced that theatrical movie going was dying which wasn’t true otherwise Dune and the collab wouldn’t have done well and cinemas that had the Star Wars films for May the 4th also reported good attendance figures.

But here is what they need to do next: Hold their Nerve, I know many film fans don’t like David Zaslav the head of the studio for some of the actions he has made during his time so far running the studio (and the criticism has been warranted) but there has been to a certain extent a method to his madness as Batgirl probably would’ve done Birds of Prey numbers at a minimum, Coyote vs Acme would’ve appealed to adult Looney Tunes fans but not kids while Juror No 2 (said to be Clint Eastwood’s final film) is a type of film that sadly audiences haven’t been going to see in the cinema anymore, they either went to streaming or became TV shows during the peak TV period.

But with Donald Trump returning to the White House I fear Zaslav and Co will take an easy sale of the studio and leave it in the hands of Comcast/Universal creating another mega monstrosity like when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019 and enough time has passed to see what a hole that has left in the industry and for it to happen again will only make things worse especially when there will be those who will probably cheer it on if it means either Zaslav is no longer running things and/or the new ownership might finally fix “The DC Problem.”

And I think this would be a dreadful, short sighted mistake on Zaslav’s part as I do feel that he has done a halfway decent job and made some very good hires be it James Gunn and Peter Safran to oversee DC and Pam Abdi and Michael De Luca from MGM to run the overall film division.

What I also hope happens is that Warner Brothers will bring Village Roadshow Pictures back into the fold as a co-financier (and here in Australia as their primary distributor like they were before the end of 2020) as they desperately need one now that Legendary is at Sony/Columbia now and WB only has them around for the Dune films and the Monsterverse films as they cannot afford to have any more high profile failures like they had this year where they predominantly footed the bill as more of those will see the financial situation which is already precarious get worse.

4. Universal:

Oh dear oh dear,

Universal in all the time I’ve been doing this roundup has been like that great sport team that has a golden run, they kick goal after goal, get win after win and their fans are waving their jackets in the air in jubilant celebration as if their Kevin Sheedy.

But like all good sports teams before them they hit a rough patch and Universal had one this year.

Sure they had great success with Despicable Me 4 which again showed strong numbers despite being one of the weaker entries in the series but internationally Wicked wasn’t anywhere near as strong as it has been in the US, The Fall Guy was a big disappointment financially despite being a fun movie and Abigail from the Radio Silence team was a big box office underperformer especially with Melissa Barrera in it and so many horror fans expressing bitter unhappiness at her firing from Scream 7 and not showing up to support her at the box office.

But they did have one big victory this year and that is keeping Christopher Nolan in the fold after getting him the prize he long sought: The Best Director Oscar for Oppenheimer and WB has to see that as another failure as that was his home for so many years but Nolan was rightly outraged at the Project Popcorn strategy WB did in 2021 and has been at Universal ever since.

As for what they need to do next: Honestly not much, Uni has been the one major studio to not lose their nerve all that much learning the lessons of the failure of the Mummy in 2017 and avoiding the shared universe ever since has put them in better stead than their competitors and all sports teams have an off season, provided they bounce back well in 2025 let’s just chock up 2024 as a minor setback.

3. Columbia:

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy 100th Lady Columbia,
Happy Birthday to you

And unlike WB and Disney, Columbia had a great reason to celebrate their 100th anniversary this year with a number of diverse hits that became profitable due to their responsible budgeting something their competitors desperately need to do going forward.

Bad Boys Ride or Die, Garfield, Venom the Last Dance and It Ends with Us were all very successful films at the box office off of at most 120-million-dollar budgets and for the most part were also fairly well received.

But Kraven the Hunter, Madame Web and Ghostbusters Frozen Empire had no such luck as they became either big underperformers or humiliating failures which sure puts a wee bit of a damper on your centenary celebration doesn’t it.

But hey here’s what Columbia has to do next:

- First is to both let Ghostbusters die as a franchise, the original Ghostbusters from 1984 by Ivan Reitman (a genius) was a great one and done, balancing comedy and horror, full of great performances and some terrific visual effects culminating in one of the best movie monsters ever in the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Every attempt to replicate it since then has either been a mediocre rip off or so repulsed the core fanbase they tore it down before anyone got a chance to see it based off of some bad trailers and no matter how good that 2016 film turned out to be (it was okay) it was fighting an uphill battle from the get go and when Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman came in with Afterlife and Frozen Empire they didn’t do much to help either, its high time Columbia gave up on this series and let it Rest in Peace once and for all.

- Second is let this stupid idea of a Spider-Verse without a Spider-Man die as well, I get it you got a surprise when Venom hit big in 2018 and that trilogy of films was fun but those were a fluke because audiences like Tom Hardy as Venom and vibe with his dual performance as both the title character and Eddie Brock but that is over now with the Last Dance which like Deadpool and Wolverine feels like the dying breaths of a genre that once dominated cinema screens but now has become just another series audiences have increasingly lost interest in.

- Third is to get this mess of a situation regarding It Ends with Us sorted out, recently it emerged that Blake Lively and director/star Justin Baldoni (who is also said to hold the film rights to the books) clashed heavily during production and the fallout has been felt ever since on the films promotional circuit (though Lively didn’t help matters when she tried to talk about the film as if it was a light and fluffy chick flick when the film deals with domestic violence, an issue that for far too long has been in the shadows of our society.)

That said however, Baldoni’s behaviour on set is unacceptable and as the director of the film he should have been much more respectful towards Lively and you cannot have a situation where on a film like this the director isn’t on speaking terms with their star especially when said star is also a producer on the film as well, hopefully Columbia can get the rights to this film series off of Baldoni for a price sometime soon as I’m certain they are going to want the next book It Begins with Us made into a film as soon as possible.

- And lastly I hope that Columbia’s fiscal responsibility leads it to green lighting more dramas, comedies, thrillers and one off films that I feel need to make a comeback in the cinema space, spending huge amounts of money on a small group of tentpoles is fast becoming unsustainable especially when their tied to franchises that audiences feel has either outstayed its welcome or they have lost interest in and are sceptical of any new entries from the outset.

2. Walt Disney/20th Century Studios:

Last year they were cock of nothing, this year they’ve won the Silver.

And that is primarily because they had a few big hits with Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Moana 2, Alien Romulus and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes which leveraged almost all of their divisions that led to the rather uncomfortable dominance of the studio in the second half of the 2010s.

And although their ending the year with Mufasa, Barry Jenkins’s prequel to the 2019 Lion King remake and the First Omen back in April wasn’t a big money maker despite positive word of mouth that group of 5 above made more than enough at the box office to offset the losses.

But as the fates said in Hercules “A Word of Caution to this Tale”:

- Firstly Disney is relying far too much on what I would call “short term sugar hits” to get them out of the rut they’ve been in the last couple of years and what I mean by that is it feels like they are just focusing so much on more and more sequels to their popular films like Inside Out, Deadpool, Moana and the Lion King instead of doing the long term work they and other studios need to do in terms of creating new properties for the new audience.

And because their not doing that their doing themselves and the industry as a whole no favors as that sequel strategy will only work for so long before audiences roll their eyes and go “Pass” towards it and its also helping to make the movies as a medium feel old, relying on old stories, old characters, old heroes and old villains and that’s just not how this industry has worked, it was in the past moving forward creating new stories for the current generation of moviegoers to get behind but Disney isn’t the only one guilty of doing this but they bear the brunt of that guilt and it has to stop before that feeling of movies being an old medium sticks with younger audiences.

- Secondly there is Lucasfilm and as 3PO would say “Oh dear oh dear” this company is in a total total total mess right now and it has gotten so bad with the debacle that was the sequel trilogy, the merry go round of movie projects announced and then scrapped, the streaming shows losing more and more viewers and the poisoning of the well in regards to Kathleen Kennedy’s stewardship overall that Disney should frankly put it up for sale.

Kennedy’s leadership is now in a position that is not only untenable but has become such a poisoned apple that anyone that steps up to take over from here will not last long after their first bite from said apple, both Star Wars and Indiana Jones were once two of the biggest most iconic brands in all of show business but George Lucas and Steven Spielberg didn’t know when to leave well enough alone and with the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the fourth Indiana Jones film the Plastic Prop-sorry-Crystal Skull getting negative receptions which sadly didn’t help Kennedy when she was handed the reins from Lucas himself in 2012 and that became very clear when the Last Jedi came out in 2017.

But nobody in their right mind is rightfully going to volunteer to do that job and I wouldn’t blame them, the streaming shows are losing viewers more and more, the movies and TV shows that do come out have no idea who they are even for and if they are for someone it’s such a small group that spending a principal’s ransom on it budget wise isn’t worth it and in an attempt to bring in new fans the older fans were left out in the cold for better or worse.

Ideally Bob Iger’s successor will see of all this and decide “this isn’t worth it” and sell it because that is now the only hope for this once groundbreaking company.

- Speaking of selling things, Disney should ideally put 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures up for sale as well.

It’s been the better part of 5 years since the merger of Walt Disney Pictures and 20th Century Fox was finalised and it is now very clear to see what a disaster this has been as it has created a hole in the very foundation of the industry itself which for many decades was built on said foundation of the big 6 movie studios (Disney, Fox, Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers and Columbia.)

But since Fox was assimilated into the Disney collective that foundation has felt wobbly and those that have come in to fill that hole have been streaming services be it Netflix, Amazon through their purchase of MGM and Apple and while these companies have done good work they have also I felt encouraged a degree of laziness within the broader industry.

And this laziness stems from this mindset that the streamers brought with them as “movies and television are just content, WHO CARES IF IT WORKED OR NOT” to quote Dick Jones from Robocop and the legacy studios have followed this hoping to find the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the streaming rainbow but instead we’re seeing a repeat of the dot com boom of the early 2000’s where it felt like finally we would have the boom that would last a lifetime only for it to go bust badly.

And also 20th Century Fox more than any other of the legacy studios were the ones that gave you that surprise hit that captures the audience at the right time be it Planet of the Apes, Butch Cassidy, Star Wars, Alien, Die Hard, Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire, Independence Day, Titanic, X-Men and Avatar to name a few and now that is gone and if the industry is ever going to get back to where it used to be before Disney dominated to such a degree that Fox surrendered, WB stumbled and Paramount and Columbia were pounded into submission then Fox needs to be reinstated as its own independent studio once again.

And if Disney wants to make the kind of films its been using the 20th Century/Searchlight banners to make then it could just as easily revive Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures which were former Disney divisions in the 80s and 90s and those would be much easier to manage under the Disney umbrella and it would not only make Disney a better studio but would help the industry as a whole as well.

But that leaves a surprise winner which is:

1. Paramount:

Phew climbing that mountain can sure reap some good rewards.

Paramount has won this year primarily because they put out a slew of quality films (A Quiet Place Day One, Sonic 3, IF, Transformers One to name a few) while also managing to downplay their losses (Gladiator II and IF) and also they got the year off to a solid start box office wise with Bob Marley One Love being a surprise hit in February.

And also this year they got new leadership in a former co-financier of theirs Skydance which after a lengthy bidding process won control of the studio (thank the maker Ms Redstone was able to keep Paramount from ending up like 20th Century Fox, what a disaster that would have been, hopefully WB doesn’t end up that way) and they will give the studio not only a new leadership team but also new hope for the long term.

As Paramount prior to 2022 had had a rough time at the box office with few and far between hits to their name but now they’ve rebounded strongly and with Skydance helping to steer the ship (a group that those in charge are familiar with and felt comfortable enough to hand them the reins) I look at them now with a sense of hope.

But before I leave it I want to talk about what the industry as a whole has to do going forward:

- First and foremost is GET THESE BUDGETS DOWN!!! I cannot stress this enough, it is grossly irresponsible that so many of these big films be it Joker 2, Red One, Gladiator II and the upcoming Captain America Brave New World and Mission Impossible the Final Reckoning to name bit a few have production budgets that make me want to pull my hair out like I’m Homer Simpson learning Marge is pregnant with Bart and Lisa.

I mean seriously 190 million for Joker 2, A QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS for Red One, Gladiator II’s budget ballooning from 165 million to 310 million this is just ridiculous and irresponsible.

A movie like Dune Part Two having a 190 million dollar budget I can understand, James Cameron getting the budgetary equivalent of the United States Federal Reserve to make his Avatar sequels that I also understand as those are films that were hits at the box office, respected by the industry and had positive audience and critic responses but those films listed above no way especially with audiences viewing habits and tastes now changing, to quote Kevin Rudd “This Sort of Reckless Spending Must Stop.”

- And lastly studios need to start scouting for talent again, yes AI is a new shiny tool to have but that’s all it is, a tool, it won’t magically do everything for you in the way you want it to.

The Human eye is very good at knowing when something is real and something is fake and AI is inherently fake the fans, audiences and critics can tell when AI has been used and they increasingly don’t like it especially with the huge demands on power that it is creating.

And also Art and Humanity are inherently linked like a symbiosis, Star Wars came out of George Lucas’s love of adventure serials/Kurosawa films and WW2 films not to mention his desire to make a Flash Gordon film, Dragon Ball came out of Akira Toriyama’s love of Martial Arts movies and being inspired by fantasy works like Journey to the West, James Bond came out of Ian Fleming’s time in Naval Intelligence during WW2 and wanting to write the spy novel to end all spy novels and Mad Max came out of Dr George Miller’s time as a resident in St Vincents Hospital and seeing the effect of car crashes on his victims and people he knew in rural Queensland growing up.

And those are but a small handful of countless examples, all the AI tools can do is replicate that, it can’t create that inherent spark of human creativity only people can and these new studio chiefs and their production heads need to understand this like those that came before them did as it’s the only way the industry is going to have a future long term, relying on old franchises may give you a short term sugar hit win but that will only last for so long.

And that was Part 1 of my 2024 look back, Part 2 will reveal my favourite and Turkey films of the year.