New Original Sci-Fi Gets Trounced by IP-Driven Sequels

This Week in Box Office and Movie Posters! 'The Creator' got beat by Saw and Paw Patrol, and a faith-based Duck Dynasty biopic opened in 1700 theaters.

I’ve always done This Week In Movie Posters as a Monday post, and that’s also when sites post their box office recaps. I figured, why not combine them? Shouldn’t be too hard, right? And so, this newsletter consists of:

• Box Office Round-Up

• This Week In Movie Posters

• A Few Quick Stories

I’m keeping this one free again, but if you like it, please consider upgrading to paid. The more paid subscribers I get, the better The #Content.

Disney

The Creator opened this weekend, and as I wrote in my review, it may be light on details and transitions, but the big ideas were on point and it looked fantastic (it helped that I saw it at a the Dolby theater in San Francisco where the projection and sound were probably actually calibrated correctly). More importantly for the purposes of this round up, it was the kind of non-sequel, non-adaptation, not-based-on-pre-existing-IP blockbuster that movie heads are always saying we want. So, how’d it do?

In short, not great. It debuted in third, with an estimated $14 million in domestic box office, behind Paw Patrol 3 at number one ($23 million) and Saw X at number two ($18 million). I’ve heard weirdly positive things about Saw X, although not quite positive enough for me to see a movie called “Saw X.” And Paw Patrol is not something my toddler is into yet, thankfully (we watched Dug Days on Disney+ this morning, which I’m fine with. I love Dug.).

There are some excuses you could make for The Creator, mainly that they couldn’t promote it the way they normally would a movie like this because of the SAG and AFTRA strikes. Hopefully the powers that be go with that explanation, because the alternative is something like “See? This is why we only like greenlighting movies based on proven IP.”

There’s some truth to the idea that name recognition and sequels make the job of promoting movies easier (always have!) but, I would argue, even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to make new original ones. Most people would recognize the obvious point, that you eventually run out of existing IP if you stop creating new ones, and that it’s better for the long-term health of films as a medium if you keep making original stuff even if it’s not always a smash hit. Media execs, sadly, are not most people, so you have to fear their reactions to returns like this.

Then again, maybe it’s too early to be writing The Creator’s epitaph. People did that with Elemental — wrote it off as a bomb at first — before it hung around for a few more months and eventually made almost $500 million. That’s a nice story if you ignore the part about how the movie sucks, but maybe The Creator can hope for a similar pattern. Probably won’t happen, but, as they say, time will tell!

Two slots down from The Creator and earning more than $4 million in domestic box office, we have the next new movie, The Blind. Which is, I shit you not, a Walk Hard-style biopic about Phil Robertson, the guy from Duck Dynasty. Duck Dynasty was, if you’ll remember, a wildly popular basic cable reality series about a family who sells duck calls. The movie’s official website offers helpful tips about how to bring your whole church to see it (Jesus famously fucking HATED ducks).

The vanity biopic industry is alive and well, apparently. It’s great that the dramatic beats of a mass market biopic are so well established that you can pretty much plug anyone in there. I’m kind of sad there isn’t a scene in which Phil’s disapproving mother tries to snuff out his duck call dreams. “AIN’T NO DUCK CALLS GONNA PUT NO FOOD ON NO TABLE!”

(*Phil runs off to his duck call fort, determined to prove her wrong*)

We live in a weird country, I guess is the point here. Duck reality shows are a lifestyle brand. Gun, Gods, Grits, and Gravy! Ducks, Dudes, Dynasty, and Deities!

This Week In Movie Posters!

Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible. All posters via IMPA.

I’m glad the vagaries of Substack’s image-adding function gave us BUYING BACK MY DAUGHTER as the top image, because this was the one that made me laugh the hardest.

So, what’s the movie called?”

It’s called “Buying Back My Daughter?”

Neat, what’s it about?

Anyway, yes, the sex-trafficking panic has clearly filtered down to Lifetime originals. That’s when you know you’ve hit cultural saturation. Hopefully the makers of this one won’t all be revealed as sex criminals themselves like the Sound Of Freedom guys, but don’t hold your breath. Not that sex trafficking is completely made up or anything, but definitely don’t trust anyone who makes it sound like the drug cartels are going to come and kidnap little Kaleighci from soccer practice and sell her into slavery.

You didn’t have to see that little “Frightfest London” laurel graphic to know that this poster is British. That’s a very British face she’s making. It’s like she’s in the middle of saying “Yew focken wot, m8??”

The machete is only a second line of defense in case the surprise headbutt doesn’t work.

I hate one-word titles for kids movies. It feels so lazy. All I’m getting from this poster is that involves magic and everyone is Dreamworks-face-ing super hard.

Wish will follow a young girl named Asha who wishes on a star and gets a more direct answer than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her. [IMDB]

An anthropomorphic star? …Eh. Doesn’t exactly sound thrilling to me, but definitely better than fire and wind.

Aw, look at all those little baby lens flares! That’s so you know the movie is full of pining and yearning. Little baby lens flares are to earnest college freshmen what sparks are to action movie dads.

Hold up, Andrew Scott AND Paul Mescal? That’s almost too many Irish hearththrobs for one film! Someone is going to be wearing wool and radiating sex appeal in this, I can feel it.

(Have you ever seen Belfast? You’ve never seen so many people looking extremely fuckable in all-wool outfits, even the sheep were horny.)

Cats are going to be a theme this week, and to prove it here’s the poster for Cat Person, starring Cousin Greg from Succession as the creepy boyfriend from that one New Yorker story. The theme of this poster is clearly PEOPLE ARE TALKING. WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ISN’T REALLY IMPORTANT, JUST KNOW THAT EVERYONE IS TALKING!

“US NG SEE!” raves Deadline!

Knowing that Deadline was the outlet who got their quote mangled and that it probably came from Pete Hammond makes me smile. Being a critic is a really cool profession, where the less credibility you have, the longer you can keep a job.

Cats cats cats! Here’s another cat-themed poster from Argylle, featuring a goofy lil pinch-eared kitty and two types of argyle, lest you worried that Argylle wouldn’t have any argyle. I can’t fault any of the imagery here, this is a solid poster.

The somewhat strange backstory for this one is that this is based on a book, but, as reported by Seth Abramovitch last year, the author of that book (which also hasn’t come out yet and has been delayed several times) doesn’t seem to exist.

The book has no Amazon page, save for a German-language Kindle version scheduled for Jan. 10, 2023. Attempts by The Hollywood Reporter to read an advance copy of the book — a common industry practice — were unsuccessful.

According to Conway’s two-line bio, she “lives in the United States and is currently working on the next installment in the series.”

Beyond that, however, there exists virtually no information about Conway. Internet searches of her name turn up only references to a fictional character on the long-running Australian soap opera Neighbors.

Adding to the mystery, an alternate spelling of her name, Ellie Conway, appears elsewhere on the Penguin Random House website and in news reports on the rights deal.

What a fun mystery! Maybe it’s someone canceled writing under a psuedonym? Clearly it’s someone connected enough to get their book optioned before anyone has actually read it. I hope this ends up being a really weird story and not some boring contractual loophole.

(The only precedent I can think of here is I Am Number Four, which was based on a YA book co-written by James Frey — along with Jobie Hughes — under a pen name. But in that case they weren’t trying nearly as hard to maintain the premise that the writer was a real, separate person.)

MORE CATS!

In case you can’t read the writing, this is a poster for The Marvels, which is a sequel to Captain Marvel, which Marvel kind of watered down by making a whole Ms. Marvel series for streaming. I’ve seen every Marvel movie but I refuse to watch any Marvel TV serieses. They need to just start putting numbers next to these titles, you need a spreadsheet to keep track of this shit nowadays.

Cool cat though. I know it’s hack, but I feel strongly that the cat should also have an eyepatch.

Here’s the poster for May December, from Carol director Todd Haynes. He loves lesbians, but only in the artsiest, most New York intellectual kind of way. They say the monocle is the largest erogenous zone.

Mostly this poster reminds me of the one for Yogi Bear 3D:

I believe that one was also about a May-December romance.

And finally, we have this pretty cool poster for Fingernails. It’s not giving us much to go on beyond the tagline (“Love is a test. Results may vary.”) and… uh… the “fingernails” theme I guess. Still, Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and the guy from The Bear whose hair is always covering his ears? That could be cool.

Apple TV maybe needs to slow down on the projects for a while to let us catch up.

Other Stuff

• Mattel CEO Promises Barney Movie Will Not Be “Odd”

Speaking of IP-driven movies, one of the fun stories in the wake of Barbie’s success was all the idiotic-sounding projects Mattel had in development to try to capitalize on it. One of them was a Barney movie starring Daniel Kaluuya, supposedly a “surrealistic” take in the style of A24. Well, Mattel CEO Ynon Kriez has clarified the matter in a thankfully brief interview with Semafor.

Why was the takeaway from Barbie not ‘feminist culture is quite popular’ but rather ‘we should make a Barney biopic?’

That one is getting a lot of reaction.

I think that’s because it sounds weird.

It’s too early to be specific, but I can tell you we are taking a fresh approach that will be fun, entertaining and culturally oriented. It will not be an odd movie.

So, there you have it. They’re going to make an A24-style Barney movie with Daniel Kaluuya, but not, like, in a weird way or anything. Incidentally, this guy made almost $12 million last year.

• They’ve Done An AI To Tom Hanks!

Tom Hanks took to his Instagram to let everyone know that he is not affiliated with the AI deep fake Tom Hanks currently hawking some kind of dental plan on Instagram. I haven’t seen the fake Tom Hanks ad for a dental plan, but if any of you catch that, please send it over. The WGA won some protections against AI in their strike, but it’s already getting so weird out there. In Telemarketers, they showed how telemarketing companies are already using AI bots to solicit donations, some of them using the voices of dead people.

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