It is a hot topic of conversation around what movies, tv shows, board games and video games are going to be remade/revamped. News articles and media sites are all for trying to predict what is coming next, and having their say on which movies they think need to be/want to be remade. An article by Brew and Harley (2018) details an extensive list of spoken about, upcoming, reboot projects. Another article by Steinburg (Goliath.com) suggest movie ‘flops’ that deem a remake. Disney has a major hand in the realm of remaking movies, and is a top player in the film industry, an article by Campbell (2021) deatils the likelyhood that Disney will buy out another major film company MGM. How would this affect the future of film? Is disney were to get the rights to all MGM titles, can we expect reboots, sequals, prequals, tv shows? This is what my DA will aim to cover.
BCM325 – Future of the Film Industry DA Pitch
Taylah's Turbulence 
Reblogged this on Future Cultures.
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Hi Taylah! I love the DA idea. I have a similar DA concept in which I am exploring social media’s role in the film industry, so this topic is also really interesting to me.
An interesting aspect that you could explore, specifically in regards to the list of films in the Brew and Harley article you referenced, is how these films would need to be altered in order to suit the present social climate. What components of these films would need to be changed or even removed, and will the core essence of that film still remain? Will these films even make sense? How could you remake ‘Gone With The Wind’ or ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ in a way that would still honour the source material and also handle the subject matter accurately and sensitively? In terms of your core focus, how will the handling of these reboots impact which large film companies are able to hold the majority of the film market? Here is some research that delves further into this idea:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1367549418821850
The future of film also depends on the medium in which they are presented, as highlighted in this article. We have already seen a change in the quality of television shows over the past decade as more people have turned to streaming to access entertainment. Of course, it’s hard not to discuss the current pandemic effect on the film industry and how companies have been forced to release their films online. If high budget blockbusters are now also being released straight to streaming sights, will this have an effect on how lower budget films are produced? This article might help you gain some insight as to how this might progress in the future:
https://sbi.sydney.edu.au/the-future-of-the-film-industry-with-cinemas-dark-all-eyes-are-on-streaming/
Have you given much thought to the short, medium, or long term future? Do you plan on addressing only one of these lengths of time, or all of them? Given that you’re doing several video essays, you can either give an overview of how you speculate the future of film will play out over all lengths of time, or explore one period of time in more depth.
I think reddit is an excellent choice of platform for collecting feedback, as reddit contains passionate subcultures that have a lot of opinions about the current state of the film industry and reboots. Hopefully this is successful for you!
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Hi Taylah! This is a strong DA idea that I think is great. Whenever I think about remakes it usually has a negative connotation linked to it, because of the negative feedback. As well with remakes I usually do link Disney to the remakes because of the live-action films being made, I find it an interesting subject to dive into. Have you decided how far into the future you are going to be looking at this topic?
When I was reading up on the future of the movie industry I came upon an article that had issues following Covid-19 coming around. I think it would be interesting maybe to discuss the impact of what the pandemic had on the movie industry? How it shut down for months, movies lost a lot of money and it had a major impact on those involved in the industry, making movies became hard and many reboots were overlooked because they weren’t deemed ‘worthy’ of being made.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/08/the-future-of-cinema-seven-experts-on-industry-now
As well as looking at the reboots – live-actions are usually seen as the bad ones with reviews from the media. I think it is interesting to when Disney does them, it usually doesn’t work out all that well with the reviews. An article I found was looking at the difference between live-action and animated work, and diving into Disney movies. It also says that maybe Disney live-action films will be fading out as their audience isn’t for them and it isn’t in demand like their animated works.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2018/11/23/disneys-live-action-remakes-are-not-upgrades/?sh=1223c5995dd5
Really interesting DA and I can’t wait to see where it goes!
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Hey Taylah, amazing idea! I think it will be really interesting to uncover why remaking/rebooting
old films and tv shows has been so popular in recent years. Perhaps even more interesting will be exploring future possibilities of this trend.
I really like how focused your topic is, I think it will allow you to target a specific audience. I also think it’s a good idea that you’ve factored in editing time (editing always takes me the longest).
One thing I think you could possibly look into is how organisations (particularly, film studios) are using and capitalising on the concept of nostalgia. If you’re interested I suggest you read this article–> https://danlok.com/how-disney-movies-are-driving-sales-and-breaking-world-records-using-nostalgia-marketing/
I also wonder if there are certain criteria that make older films eligible for a remake? For example, maybe it’s based on the film’s reception and success, or perhaps, even if the film was a complete flop but the novel (or initial inspiration for the film) was regarded as really good it still qualifies to be remade?
Professor Knut Haaneas believes that continued remakes of older movies will eventually lead the film industry toward implosion or disruption. He discusses how repeating previous stories (that are guareenteed to make money) could potentially lead to a decline of creativity and exploration within film. Read this article to find out more–> https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/deja-vu-is-the-film-industrys-sequel-and-remake-addiction-a-sign-of-the-end/
What do you think? Also, do you think a film’s story needs to change in someway for audiences to be interested? I know I personally found the Lion King reboot to be kind of boring (even though it was visually stunning). Whereas, I really liked Maleficent and how they changed the perspective of the story, although I’m not too sure if Maleficent would still count as a remake though as it is so different? Disney has such a huge monopoly on the film industry so It will be interesting to see what there moves will be in coming years.
In this article–> https://www.theverge.com/21450999/disney-remakes-live-action-plus-animation
The author makes some really interesting comments, such as Disney is dedicated to faithful reproductions and that it’s more important that the audience knows the film by heart than be surprised by something new… Which kind of comes back to the idea, does a remake need to be different? Either way my favourites growing up were Disney’s Peter Pan and The Avatar the Last Airbender animated series, so I am so excited to see how those remakes compare to the originals.
Can’t wait to see this project develop!
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What a great project!
It will be interesting to see how perceived nostalgia affects how these companies choose which order to release these remakes in, and how the film companies choose to retell the story.
The most controversial remake of recent I can think of was the all female reboot of Ghostbusters (2016). The film faired a Rotten tomatoes score of 74%, but bombed in audience reviews. It seems remakes are a dangerous game as fans are loyal and have built up expectations ever since they saw the original film.
Check out this video essay on why remakes are made for some inspiration!
Can’t wait to see the final product, I am sure you will smash it!
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Hey Taylah, I love this idea. I think your Digital artefact will be very useful, It could even be targeted at smaller film companies in the sense of it could beuild the basis of what consumers like and what works within the film industry.
I think its very interesting to look at the remakes and why these are being remade in the first place. They could be broken down into different categories. For example “a star is born” (for example – I know this has next to nothing to do with future cultures) has been remade with different story lines like six times now, the most recent starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. Other films like Godzilla have been remade as technology has evolved and the more recent film was so life like that it even confused some of the American public into thinking it was based on a real event. Maybe this is an avenue that you could look into.. Heres a link of a segment called “lie witness news” which looks into peoples responses.
I found a journal that breaks down why movies are remade and looks into the framework of these movies. This journal also explains that remakes don’t increase revenue, they do however have minimised risk, If something was a hit once.. New filming technologies, high definition filming and new viewing technologies pretty much guarantees the remake being popular again.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44289556?seq=1
Please with this information, This isn’t always the case. In some cases remakes aren’t as popular as the original. Heres a little article I found on 30 of the worst remakes, You could file through this and include some research on the future of remakes and how to avoid bad remakes for the film industry and look at whats to come.
Hope this helps. I am excited to see how your DA comes along, you’ve got a really good concept. Im excited to see it come to life..
Melanie
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