Hollywood studios are laying their bets even more on the tried and trusted, as more Scream and Spider-Man-related films are announced.
Sure things at the movie box office have been in very short supply over the last year or two, and you don’t have to look far to find headlines of acclaimed film after acclaimed film hitting a commercial tumble.
It’s been a massive breathe out for Hollywood executives that there are things they can count on, then.
Three recent examples spring to mind. There’s the double bill of Spider-Man related films from Sony – Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($502m worldwide), Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.7 billion worldwide) – and the recent Scream sequel, that’s raced its way past $100m nice and quickly.
Hollywood, thus, is doubling down on what works. There’s talk already about what the next Spider-Man film will look like, in spite of No Way Home effectively bringing the current narrative of the character to an end (still, decades of comic books mean they’re hardly bereft of source material). And whilst Sony makes up its mind about the inevitable Venom 3, it’s also put another Spider-Man spin-off film – Madame Web – into the works, with Dakota Johnson widely reported to take the lead role on.
Netflix, buoyed by the numbers attracted to forgettable but expensive globetrotting movie star vehicle Red Notice, has ordered two sequels to it.
Meanwhile, in spite of the series hardly crying out for another, Paramount and Spyglass Entertainment have ordered what’s effectively Scream 6. The same production team are back for that one, and they’ll be shooting it by the middle of the year. There’s no hanging around.
It’s not just the studios clinging to whatever safer bets they can find. Netflix, buoyed by the numbers attracted to the forgettable but expensive globetrotting movie star vehicle Red Notice – starring Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds – has ordered two sequels to it, with the plan being to shoot them back-to-back.
Quite where the room remains for any kind of risk and new standalone movies remains to be seen. This very weekend, Independence Day director Roland Emmerich sends the $100m independently-funded Moonfall into cinemas, with teases already for a sequel. But it’s notable he’s had to go outside of the studio system to even get that made.
Safety first, for the minute, appears to be Hollywood’s mantra as it fights to claw back business in the new era. And that means you can fully expect the sequel count to continue to rocket…
