Fuck you Hollywood…

10 Jan

Actually, scrap that.  That should read: Fuck you film fans.

The level of contempt that the current crop of corporate big wig studio execs have for cinema goers has reached new heights as exemplified by New Line Cinema, who have just greenlit a remake of Police Academy.

Scott Zabielski, best known for co-exec producing and directing tv show Tosh.O (nope me neither), has been handed directorial duties and is tasked with reigniting the seven film franchise that began in 1984 and ended, or so we thought, a decade later with the downright awful Police Academy:Mission to Moscow.

Yet with remakes, reboots, sequels and prequels dominating the industry, it shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise that sooner or later the likes of Police Academy would be mooted for an update.

That said, its box office numbers don’t exactly inspire confidence that this is an unmilked cash cow.  The seven films pulled in just shy of $240 million in total, but Police Academy accounted for almost $82 million of that, with Mission to Moscow pulling in an embarrassingly paltry$126,247.

But, it seems a dearth of creativity and a severe reluctance to take a risk on original material means that we’re seemingly lumbered with an increasingly lazy and contemptuous approach to film making for some time to come.

Compounding the problem even further is the fact that it comes hot on the heels of the news that the likes of Horrible Bosses, Bruce Almighty/Evan Almighty and Bridesmaids are all set for sequel treatment.

Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise what’s going on here.  It goes something like this…

Faceless Studio Suit 1: Hey that Horrible Bosses movie only cost $40 mill, but it made over $200 mill at the box office

Faceless Corporate Clone 2:  WHAT? Greenlight that sequel bitch…

END

Yes Hollywood is in the business of making money and yes times are hard so studios are about as risk averse as they’ve ever been, but what really grates about this situation is that it seems to be getting worse.

Meanwhile countless and no doubt brilliant original screenplays are being confined to the proverbial filing cabinet while audiences have to endure yet another Transformers farce.  Shame on you!

Now, if only those bad-asses Tackleberry and Hightower were around to kick some executive butt...

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