New Trend?

In the last two years, i think we can all agree, that the biggest trend among movies has been sequals. Sure there have always been sequals to movies (both good and bad, can we all say Staying Alive?). There have always been epic Trilogies, like Starwars and Alien, and septologies...Critters..

But, I wonder if the new trend in movies that expands on all that. Normally in the past what determined a sequql were box office sales and marketting and intrest from a studio.

But, lets take The LOTR Trilogy, Kill Bill, Matrix 2 and 3 and to a lesser extent Episode 2 and 3, as heralds of a new trend. The Producers/Directors and so forth film the entire span of movies in one shot. The Dualagies (Kill Bill) and Trilogies (LOTR) are pre-determined for the audience. Episode 2 and 3 dont count as much because a gap of months takes place between them, but could this be a new trend?

Are we going to see a lot more Trilogies and multiple movie story arcs from the getgo?

We already have these for TV. (Battlestar Galactica, Taken, Epoch) where multiple movies are made at once and tied together.

Will 10 hour movies split into 2-3 hour segments become the norm in the next 5 years?

Discuss...

If you go by what the LotR films made in cash alone, 900+ million, each for the first two, and RotK hit close to 500 million in 10 days, and still climbing, then yes, that will be the new trend. The other studios see New Line making a crapload of cash from the LotR movies, so they will try and copy it. Unless they are very good, they won't do as good as LotR. Also, IMO I consider the LotR movies one big movie because they were filmed at the same time.

I don't think Kill BIll is a duology. Tarantino intended it to be one movie, but the studio split it in two to save out buttocks from terminal cramp. (Producers of LotR, take note. Your customer's buttocks are a prescious natural resource. Show them mercy.) And, presumably, to double ticket sails.

If your looking for verification or debunking of this theory, perhaps you should look into how the forthcomming Narnia movies are going to be treated. I personally don't know.

I thought Aliens was a quadrilogy? Or whatever the term is for four in a row.

I don't care whether it's a sequel or not as long as the filmmakers either
a) have room left to tell something new about the characters, i.e. their story wasn't finished (Empire Strikes Back leaves room for a new story, for example)
b) tell a new story with the known characters (the Indiana Jones movies did that very well).

Unfortunately, most sequels and films about TV movies don't have that quality, but try to make (and often do make) money without expending creative energy: 2 fast 2 furious, Legally Blonde 2, Scary Movie 3, ...

If I remember correctly it was actually Back to The Future 2 and 3 that first in this regard back in the early nineties. They made both sequels in one go. Which kind of shows too as they pretty neatly knit together.

Berandor said:

Unfortunately, most sequels and films about TV movies don't have that quality, but try to make (and often do make) money without expending creative energy: 2 fast 2 furious, Legally Blonde 2, Scary Movie 3, ...

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Very true. Its as though they're trying to sell us the same movie two and sometimes three times rather than giving us something new with the same characters.

I agree that there is a bit of a trend going right now, and its something that I'm in favor of, with one notable exception that I won't go into because I've harped on it enough. The next big one will be the Chronicles of Riddick, which are supposed to be shot together and tell one large story. Other than that, I enjoy huge epic movies and movie series'. I end up investing more in the characters and the final conclusion, to me, is much more staisfying.

I don't think this will become the norm, for a few reasons.

One thing to consider is time - such projects tie up actors for longer periods than single movies. Nobody with a TV career rolling will be able to take such a project, and many others will not like to risk takig so much time on a single project that may fail.

The other follows from that - risk. Making multiple movies at once represents a notably higher financial risk to the studio. LotR may have been a smashing success, but the success of some of the other similar productions has not been so stellar. If such a thing bombs, it takes a lot of $$ with it, and studios are really going to pay attention to that.

In general - LotR succeeded so incredibly well that I don't think you can take it as an example of anything. It is a fluke, so far from the statistical average, performance wise, that comparisons become difficult.

It's similar to a television miniseries treatment for big screen film making, isn't it?

Umbran said:

I don't think this will become the norm, for a few reasons.

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The norm? Probably not. A trend? It's possible and would certainly lead to more cost effective filmmaking and likely better films.

Umbran said:

One thing to consider is time - such projects tie up actors for longer periods than single movies. Nobody with a TV career rolling will be able to take such a project, and many others will not like to risk takig so much time on a single project that may fail.

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Since approximately 90% of SAG actors are unemployed (due largely to the "Reality Television" trend), and since one of the larger portions of the budgets of many films is the money allocated to talent, there may be a simple solution available to your first consideration. They wouldn't be effectively tying up actors for a single film, but rather for a series of films for which they would be receiving payment.

Umbran said:

The other follows from that - risk. Making multiple movies at once represents a notably higher financial risk to the studio.

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It's important to note that risk is inherent in all filmmaking but the financial risk per film is lower (as with LotR) than it would be to make each movie in a series individually.

Umbran said:

LotR may have been a smashing success, but the success of some of the other similar productions has not been so stellar.

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I'd be interested to know what you consider a "similar production." It seems to me that the approach to making LotR was sufficiently different from the making of most other movie series that the similarities would be few. Back to the Future (whole series) and The Matrix (parts two and three, at least) both seem to have been made succesfully and somewhat in a similar way but I am not sure I can name any other film series that one could call similar.

Umbran said:

If such a thing bombs, it takes a lot of $$ with it, and studios are really going to pay attention to that.

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I hope so but I am not familiar with others that are similar enough and have been failures as such.

Umbran said:

In general - LotR succeeded so incredibly well that I don't think you can take it as an example of anything.

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Its success is precisely the reason that it should be used as an example for almost everything that has to do with filmmaking. It is now where the bar has been set. Any film that aims so high and manages to do half as well will be considered a huge success by current standards.

Umbran said:

It is a fluke, so far from the statistical average, performance wise, that comparisons become difficult.

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Was LotR a fluke? Perhaps from the perspective that most previous films (singular or series) are not critcally outstanding or nearly as financially successful.

Back to the original question...

IMO, the primary areas where studios would have to be more discerning for this trend to continue would be with property (or script) selection and script development. However LotR is an excellent example of how to make a series of films, or single film, in general. LotR also seemed to have been fortunate by hiring the right director for the films...on a number of levels. PJ completely invested himself in the project. He did so without dividing his time between his current project and his future projects. He garnered the confidence of the studio in such a way that they left him alone to do his job without meddling.

To summarize -

1.) Secure an excellent property.

2.) Develop the script properly.

3.) Make sure that the contracts associated with the film compensate for involvement but only truly reward actual success. (On all levels but most prominently, tie in the best available talent without frontloading the film's budget.)

4.) Hire a director that will properly invest energy in the project and let that director do their job unimpeded.

And for those that are meant to be a series -

5.) Make the films simultaneously to hold down overall production costs.

Well, that's my couple of coppers on the subject and, naturally, it's all easier to say than to accomplish...

hrm, one thing that this brings up for me is that not all sequels are the result of a planned, ongoing storyline. Like Alien vs Aliens. Two very different but equally fantastic movies, the second of which would not have come along had there been an alien series planned from the start... I consider the Indiana Jones films to be in a similar vein, though I don't know for sure if the director or writer planned sequels. Sometimes a sequel doesn't have to be the direct picking up of a story left deliberately unfinished - sometimes trying to make a series all at once will result in one story being stretched too far, and stunt the creativity of where an idea might go if it was allowed to percolate around the national mind for a while before part two emerged.

Or maybe it would have prevented Die Hard II: Die harder... and wouldn't that have been worth it?

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