It's Time to Put an End to Hollywood's Movie Adaptation Obsession
Lately, it seems that every single film that makes it big happens to be a book to film adaptation.
Either this says a lot about the books published in recent years or this reflects even more upon the film industry itself. While the former cannot be denied, the latter seems to make an even bigger case. Every year hundreds of thousands of scripts are purchased by production companies, yet the ones that come to fruition are stories already tried and true. Movies like "The Hunger Games" get four films whereas that indie screenwriter doesn't have their film see the light of day.
To most executives, movies mean money. Plain and simple. Making movies is an incredibly risky business. When a book reaches success, this tells a film executive that there is a built in audience for its movie companion. A built in audience basically guarantees a film will make money which makes the risk in creating the film fall down. To the film executives, no risk means unfathomable amounts of money in the case of successful franchises like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games.
However, there is an extremely large untapped well of talent in the screenwriting community. Creative features are incredibly risky and often only done by established directors/writers. While Wes Anderson is my own personal idol, giving him a budget of 16 million dollars is safe because of his large fan base. His films usually have a high gross profit, so the executives are comfortable with allowing him to go wild. He can do no wrong in both my eyes and in the eyes of executives, so he's allowed to go wild. It's not as risky as it may have been back when he was making films like "Bottle Rocket." This built in fan-base guarantees money, just like the definite fans associated with New York Times Best Sellers.
In this year alone, there will be an upwards of ten books adapted to films. Many of these adaptations center on Young Adult fiction, which is a large, usually untapped, demographic. The large question remains: what can be done to break away from this fad? With last year's Academy Awards results, maybe there will be some sort of change now that studios see that indie films win awards. Films like Birdman and Boyhood show creative concepts doing well in the box offices. If this trend continues, more films like "Whiplash" and "Nightcrawler" will enter theaters. These films show proof of concept that creative films with creative scripts are not solely confined to big-budget blockbusters. Hopefully Hollywood will get the message and follow suit.
But for now, we just have to endure another three years of Maze Runner sequels.
Brooke Schmidt is a student at The College of New Jersey and a contributor to Moviefone's Campus Beat. Are you a current college student with a love for all things movies and TV? Contribute to Campus Beat!
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