“
Is this a movie?' I heard someone ask.
Naw- this is too original for Hollywood. They do sequels.
”
”
James Patterson (The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride #1))
“
He is the straight to video sequel to your summer hit movie. He is the verse to that song on the radio you have to hum cause you can’t remember the words. You couldn’t break this kid’s heart, he is so far beyond that. This is the kind of kid who blew out the candles on hope all alone for too many birthdays to remember. And no one has ever fallen in love with anyone with a smile that’s dripping with “please die”.
”
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Pete Wentz (The Boy with the Thorn in His Side)
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Summer movie idea: take all the sequels that are out right now, and make movies about their backstories.
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”
Stephen Colbert
“
It's simple. If you go to see 'Saturday Night Fever' expecting it to be good, it's a corker. However, if you go expecting it to be a crock of shit, it's that, too. Thus 'Saturday Night Fever' can exist in two mutually opposing states at the very same time, yet only by the weight of our expectations. From this principle we can deduce that any opposing states can be governed by human expectation - even, as in the case of retro-deficit-engineering, the present use of a future technology."
"I think I understand that. Does it work with any John Travolta movie?"
"Only the artistically ambiguous ones such as 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Face/Off.' 'Battlefield Earth' doesn't work, because it's a stinker no matter how much you think you're going to like it, and 'Get Shorty' doesn't work either, because you'd be hard-pressed not to enjoy it, irrespective of any preconceived notions.
”
”
Jasper Fforde (First Among Sequels (Thursday Next, #5))
“
Life is a movie, but there will never be a sequel.
”
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Nicki Minaj
“
Sometimes, parody or pastiche shows a deeper love for the original source material than a hundred official sequels ever could. In forty years, has there really ever been a better Star Trek movie than Galaxy Quest--or a better Fantastic Four movie than The Incredibles?
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Stephen H. Segal (Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture)
“
Jaws 4 is so bad it makes Jaws 3 look like Jaws 2.
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”
Neil Perryman (Adventures with the Wife in Space)
“
I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
First documented in the late 1800s, then “codified as an independent diagnostic entity” a century later, though largely comorbid with panic disorder. You can read all about it, if you like, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. DSM-5 for short. It’s always amused me, that title; it sounds like a movie franchise. Liked Mental Disorders 4? You’ll love the sequel!
”
”
A.J. Finn (The Woman in the Window)
“
We thought Bugles and a Tiger and its sequel, The Road Past Mandalay, plus Bhowani Junction, which was made into a movie starring Ava Gardner as a half-caste (or Chi Chi) East Indian and Stewart Granger playing an Indian Army
”
”
Daniel Hill (A Life Of Blood And Danger)
“
Letter Thirteen In Case I Never See You Again I know we didn’t say goodbye but I know this is the end. I’ve seen this movie before. I know when it’s time to roll the credits. I know it all too well. So, in case you never come back, I want to you know that I truly cared. I want you to know that the first time I met you, I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to talk to you all night. I want you to know that I liked your smile, I liked your eyes, I liked your depth and all I wanted was to hear your story. I wanted to know your soul. I want you to know that the second time I met you, I knew I wanted to see you again, I wanted to be around you more, I wanted to hold your hand. I felt safe with you. You made me happy. You took me out of my darkness. I saw someone special. I saw someone delicate. I thought we made sense. I didn’t anticipate any plot twists. But that was my movie and I wanted a happy ending. But I guess your movie wins, your ending is climactic, your ending is more realistic. And that’s the thing about movies; they don’t always end up the way you want them to. And that’s the thing about endings; they can sometimes be sad. They sometimes end in tears. They end and they don’t always have a sequel.
”
”
Rania Naim (All the Letters I Should Have Sent)
“
I don’t think George Lucas would want you to do this,” her mom said. “I didn’t know you knew who George Lucas was.” “Please. I was watching Star Wars movies before you were born. Your dad and I saw Empire Strikes Back five times in the theater.” “Lucky,” Elena said. “George Lucas is a father of daughters,” her mother said. “He wouldn’t want young girls freezing to death to prove their loyalty.” “This isn’t about George Lucas,” Elena said. “He isn’t even that involved in the sequels.” “Come home,” her mom said. “We’ll watch Empire Strikes Back and I’ll make hot cocoa.” “I can’t,” Elena said. “I’ll lose my place in line.” “I think it will still be there for you in the morning.” “Goodnight, Mom.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Kindred Spirits)
“
The US traded its manufacturing sector’s health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rustbelt. The US bet wrong.
But like a losing gambler who keeps on doubling down, the US doesn’t know when to quit. It keeps meeting with its entertainment giants, asking how US foreign and domestic policy can preserve its business-model. Criminalize 70 million American file-sharers? Check. Turn the world’s copyright laws upside down? Check. Cream the IT industry by criminalizing attempted infringement? Check. It’ll never work. It can never work. There will always be an entertainment industry, but not one based on excluding access to published digital works. Once it’s in the world, it’ll be copied. This is why I give away digital copies of my books and make money on the printed editions: I’m not going to stop people from copying the electronic editions, so I might as well treat them as an enticement to buy the printed objects.
But there is an information economy. You don’t even need a computer to participate. My barber, an avowed technophobe who rebuilds antique motorcycles and doesn’t own a PC, benefited from the information economy when I found him by googling for barbershops in my neighborhood.
Teachers benefit from the information economy when they share lesson plans with their colleagues around the world by email. Doctors benefit from the information economy when they move their patient files to efficient digital formats. Insurance companies benefit from the information economy through better access to fresh data used in the preparation of actuarial tables. Marinas benefit from the information economy when office-slaves look up the weekend’s weather online and decide to skip out on Friday for a weekend’s sailing. Families of migrant workers benefit from the information economy when their sons and daughters wire cash home from a convenience store Western Union terminal.
This stuff generates wealth for those who practice it. It enriches the country and improves our lives.
And it can peacefully co-exist with movies, music and microcode, but not if Hollywood gets to call the shots. Where IT managers are expected to police their networks and systems for unauthorized copying – no matter what that does to productivity – they cannot co-exist. Where our operating systems are rendered inoperable by “copy protection,” they cannot co-exist. Where our educational institutions are turned into conscript enforcers for the record industry, they cannot co-exist.
The information economy is all around us. The countries that embrace it will emerge as global economic superpowers. The countries that stubbornly hold to the simplistic idea that the information economy is about selling information will end up at the bottom of the pile.
What country do you want to live in?
”
”
Cory Doctorow (Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future)
“
When you complete a major quest and return home, do take a few moments to celebrate with friends and family, or simply celebrate alone with your thoughts. If there’s a chance to capture a memento or stick your achievement on the wall, go for it. You’ve earned it, and you should be proud of your accomplishments.
However, after a little while it’s time to grab the sword, don your cape once again, and set out on another adventure. If your life is a movie, then you just got green-lit for a sequel with an even bigger budget.
”
”
Steve Kamb (Level Up Your Life: How to Unlock Adventure and Happiness by Becoming the Hero of Your Own Story)
“
In Hollywood today, the simple truth is that there are two types of movie studios: Disney, and those that wish they were Disney. Understanding why studios have turned so aggressively toward franchises, sequels, and superheroes and away from originality, risks, and mid-budget dramas takes more than an appreciation for the financial pressures faced by executives like Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal. Just as Olympic swimmers can’t help but pace themselves against Michael Phelps, Sony and its competitors have for years been jealous of and frustrated by Disney. Hollywood is a herd industry. Its executives are constantly looking out the side window or at the rearview mirror and asking, “Why aren’t we doing that?” For those peering at Disney, that means slashing the number of movies made per year by two-thirds. It also means largely abandoning any type of film that costs less than $100 million, is based on an original idea, or appeals to any group smaller than all the moviegoers around the globe. Disney doesn’t make dramas for adults. It doesn’t make thrillers. It doesn’t make romantic comedies. It doesn’t make bawdy comedies. It doesn’t make horror movies. It doesn’t make star vehicles. It doesn’t adapt novels. It doesn’t buy original scripts. It doesn’t buy anything at film festivals. It doesn’t make anything political or controversial. It doesn’t make anything with an R-rating. It doesn’t give award-winning directors like Alfonso Cuarón or Christopher Nolan wide latitude to pursue their visions.
”
”
Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
“
MAY 7, 1989, brought a quiet milestone for Stan: the first of his many onscreen cameos. That evening saw the airing of a TV-movie sequel to the old NBC live-action series The Incredible Hulk, entitled The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.
”
”
Abraham Riesman (True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee)
“
The Movie was just a sequel to our war and a prequel to the next one that America was destined to wage.
”
”
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
“
The Los Angeles Times reported that one early contender to helm the sequel was none other than filmmaker David Lynch! This was years before he would perfect his surrealistic imagery with the likes of Twin Peaks. At this point in his career, Lynch was still a fresh commodity in Hollywood, having only helmed the bizarre midnight movie Eraserhead and unsettling biopic The Elephant Man. The degree to which Lynch was connected to Halloween II remains a mystery. Carpenter would ultimately choose Harvard grad Rick Rosenthal to direct the film. This was to be his first feature directing experience.
”
”
Dustin McNeill (Taking Shape: Developing Halloween From Script to Scream)
“
HOLLYWOOD CAN NEVER BE ACCUSED of originality. If a movie is successful at the box office, it will be cloned in the form of sequels, remakes, even unauthorized rip-offs. When a producer, writer or director commits plagiarism it is affectionately called homage.
”
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Howard Johns (Drowning Sorrows: A True Story of Love, Passion and Betrayal)
“
Warner Bros., like the rest of the major studios, had watched moviegoers grow increasingly tired of unsolicited remakes and retreads. They wanted new adventures, new ideas. “Sequels were faltering,” says di Bonaventura. “And a lot of genres were dying: action-comedy movies, buddy-cop movies. We knew we needed to do something different.
”
”
Brian Raftery (Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen)
“
The sheer number of sequels and reboots doesn’t leave much room for big-budget movies with out-there ideas. In 1999, there were fewer than a half-dozen major-studio-released sequels—an almost unthinkably low number decades later, when release schedules often include more than thirty sequels or reboots per year. And no matter what kind of movie a director wants to make, studios are rarely interested in eking out modest sums on smaller, smarter projects—a model that made many of the films of 1999 possible.
”
”
Brian Raftery (Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen)
“
Since the publicity campaigns for these blockbusters have proven effective in the popcorn economy, studios recycle their elements into endless sequels, such as those for Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, and Mission Impossible, which then become the studios’ franchises on which they earn almost all their profits.
”
”
Edward Jay Epstein (The Hollywood Economist 2.0: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies)
“
There were three of them now. All armed with crowbars or tire irons. All with shaved heads and tattooed swastikas. They were like sequels to the same awful movie. The Crusty Nazi was the original. Beneath the Planet of Crusty Nazi—the one on his left—was smiling with idiotic glee. The one on his right—Escape from the Planet of Crusty Nazi—looked a bit more frightened. The weak link, Myron thought. “Changing a tire?” Myron asked. The Crusty Nazi slapped the tire iron against his palm for emphasis. “Gonna flatten yours.” Myron
”
”
Harlan Coben (Back Spin (Myron Bolitar, #4))
“
Phones had more sequels than the Saw movies.
”
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Gena D. Lutz (Ember's Curse (Prime Wolf, #1))
“
You don't want to be here... neither and there... what you are going to see here is the truth after so much books, series, movies... the truth is going to have feet, legs... foot... and even a body and arms and head....
”
”
Deyth Banger (Notes Of A Dead Man Sequel (Notes - #1))
“
Hey, Emma, do you think Thor is a hunk?”
Emma looked up from the orders to gaze at Georgie quizzically. “Are you talking about the mythological Norse god or the guy who played him in the movie?”
“Either, both-- whatever.” Georgie returned to gazing out the shop window at the quiet main street of Scottsbluff. “The movie Thor is playing at the Midwest Theater this weekend. Looks like they’re having an Avenger movies marathon; must be getting ready for another sequel to come out soon. Anyway, it got me to thinking about how hunky Thor is. Actually it got me to thinking about hunky men, period.”
“Oh yeah, it would. It doesn’t take much to send your mind in that direction. As for Thor, I think we can reasonably presume he’s a hunk. After all, he’d have to be to swing that giant hammer of his. That would take a lot of muscle and all of it in the right places. The actor in the movie definitely qualifies as a hunk and I choose to believe his portrayal is based on fact.” She grinned. “We should go see the movie so we can check out his hammer.”
“That’s a deal.” Georgie also grinned, turning back to the window and giving a soft wolf whistle.
“Hold on. Who’s this gorgeous specimen of manhood I see?”
Emma joined Georgie at the window.
“Whoa, I don’t know who he is, but he looks like he probably has a pretty big hammer of his own, even if he isn’t a Norse god.”
“Down, girl. I saw him first so I’m calling dibs.” Georgie gave Emma a playful punch on the shoulder, eliciting a good natured chuckle. “Besides, how do you know he isn’t a Norse god?”
“Would a Norse god wear a faded tee shirt tucked into tight jeans? And, what do you mean you’re calling dibs? I thought you’d given up on bad boys. He definitely looks like a bad boy.”
“Yeah,” Georgie said sadly, “no more bad boys for me. Seriously though, Emma, aren’t all mythological gods known for their vanity? If they’d had tight jeans back in the days of the gods, that’s what they’d have worn for the sake of their godly vanity. I’m sure of it.
”
”
Jayne Hyatt (Looking for the Good Life)
“
I’m a rare fox-human, with the souls of witches inside me. Can you imagine what a certain mindset would like to do with me? I’ll give you a clue; it’s not to re-create a cherished Roald Dahl novel.” I could imagine. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. “And to make matters worse, there was a movie with a talking fucking raccoon in it. Did you know that Camelot has a cinema? That they import movies from Earth? Well, they fucking well do. For months all I heard was how maybe for the sequel they could have me be his stunt double, or that they should paint me brown and make me a star. I began to get angry with the rabid little fucker. And he’s not even real! I was angry at a fucking comic book character.” I didn’t really know what else to say. “Good film though.” Remy stared at me. “You’re sort of missing the point of my anger, here.” “No, I get it. You know, even for my life it’s a little weird that I’m talking to a fox about how unhappy he is that people compared him to a raccoon in a science fiction film about a bunch of comic book characters saving the galaxy.” “When you put it like that, I sound downright silly.” “Yeah, wording, that’s the issue here.” Remy chuckled for a moment,
”
”
Steve McHugh (Lies Ripped Open (Hellequin Chronicles #5))
“
Roy shook his head. He was the oldest man in the room in terms of physical age, because he was in his early fifties, and because he was from the year 1973. He also was an aerospace engineer by training and exuded a demeanor of terse, dependable authority. “See, kids, back in Phil’s and my day, if you made a good movie, you took that success and made a different movie, not the same movie over again.” Phillip was the second-oldest man in the room. He was in his early forties, from the mid-1980s, and exuded an air of foppish, fallible authority. He smiled broadly and said, “Actually, that was your day. In my day they had started doing the endless sequel thing. This movie was from before, and I don’t think there was ever any plan for a sequel.
”
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Scott Meyer (An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0, #3))
“
Then the heavy lifting began. For the next six months, our employees rarely saw their families. We worked deep into the night, seven days a week. Despite two hit movies, we were conscious of the need to prove ourselves, and everyone gave everything they had. With several months still to go, the staff was exhausted and starting to fray. One morning in June, an overtired artist drove to work with his infant child strapped into the backseat, intending to deliver the baby to day care on the way. Some time later, after he’d been at work for a few hours, his wife (also a Pixar employee) happened to ask him how drop-off had gone—which is when he realized that he’d left their child in the car in the broiling Pixar parking lot. They rushed out to find the baby unconscious and poured cold water over him immediately. Thankfully, the child was okay, but the trauma of this moment—the what-could-have-been—was imprinted deeply on my brain. Asking this much of our people, even when they wanted to give it, was not acceptable. I had expected the road to be rough, but I had to admit that we were coming apart. By the time the film was complete, a full third of the staff would have some kind of repetitive stress injury. In the end, we would meet our deadline—and release our third hit film. Critics raved that Toy Story 2 was one of the only sequels ever to outshine the original, and the total box office would eventually top $500 million. Everyone was fried to the core, yet there was also a feeling that despite all the pain, we had pulled off something important, something that would define Pixar for years to come. As Lee Unkrich says, “We had done the impossible. We had done the thing that everyone told us we couldn’t do. And we had done it spectacularly well. It was the fuel that has continued to burn in all of us.” T
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
“
A. B. Guthrie’s 1947 novel The Big Sky (even better than its sequel, The Way West, which won the Pulitzer Prize), The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1940), and Jack Schaefer’s Shane (1949) were all made into well-regarded movies, but these three classics of Western fiction continue to make for wonderful reading.
”
”
Nancy Pearl (Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason)
“
It’s funny how reassuring that was, to see him doing something so simple and familiar. I mean, I knew this man. I knew him inside and out. I knew his every facial expression, knew what his heartbeat sounded like under my ear. I knew how he played, and I knew how he lounged. Recalling the small pieces of the Trip that I knew brought me a bit of nostalgic comfort while dealing with the body of this famous movie star lying next to me.
”
”
T. Torrest (Remember When 2: The Sequel (Remember Trilogy, #2))
“
A couple of weeks before, while going over a Variety list of the most popular songs of 1935 and earlier, to use for the picture’s sound track – which was going to consist only of vintage recording played not as score but as source music – my eye stopped on a .933 standard, words by E.Y. (“Yip”) Harburg (with producer Billy Rose), music by Harold Arlen, the team responsible for “Over the Rainbow”, among many notable others, together and separately. Legend had it that the fabulous Ms. Dorothy Parker contributed a couple of lines. There were just two words that popped out at me from the title of the Arlen-Harburg song, “It’s Only a Paper Moon”. Not only did the sentiment of the song encapsulate metaphorically the main relationship in our story –
Say, it’s only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me
– the last two words of the title also seemed to me a damn good movie title.
Alvin and Polly agreed, but when I tried to take it to Frank Yablans, he wasn’t at all impressed and asked me what it meant. I tried to explain. He said that he didn’t “want us to have our first argument,” so why didn’t we table this conversation until the movie was finished? Peter Bart called after a while to remind me that, after all, the title Addie Pray was associated with a bestselling novel. I asked how many copies it had sold in hardcover. Peter said over a hundred thousand. That was a lot of books but not a lot of moviegoers. I made that point a bit sarcastically and Peter laughed dryly.
The next day I called Orson Welles in Rome, where he was editing a film. It was a bad connection so we had to speak slowly and yell: “Orson! What do you think of this title?!” I paused a beat or two, then said very clearly, slowly and with no particular emphasis or inflection: “Paper …Moon!” There was a silence for several moments, and then Orson said, loudly, “That title is so good, you don’t even need to make the picture! Just release the title!
Armed with that reaction, I called Alvin and said, “You remember those cardboard crescent moons they have at amusement parks – you sit in the moon and have a picture taken?” (Polly had an antique photo of her parents in one of them.) We already had an amusement park sequence in the script so, I continued to Alvin, “Let’s add a scene with one of those moons, then we can call the damn picture Paper Moon!” And this led eventually to a part of the ending, in which we used the photo Addie had taken of herself as a parting gift to Moze – alone in the moon because he was too busy with Trixie to sit with his daughter – that she leaves on the truck seat when he drops her off at her aunt’s house.
… After the huge popular success of the picture – four Oscar nominations (for Tatum, Madeline Kahn, the script, the sound) and Tatum won Best Supporting Actress (though she was the lead) – the studio proposed that we do a sequel, using the second half of the novel, keeping Tatum and casting Mae West as the old lady; they suggested we call the new film Harvest Moon. I declined. Later, a television series was proposed, and although I didn’t want to be involved (Alvin Sargent became story editor), I agreed to approve the final casting, which ended up being Jodie Foster and Chris Connolly, both also blondes. When Frank Yablans double-checked about my involvement, I passed again, saying I didn’t think the show would work in color – too cute – and suggested they title the series The Adventures of Addie Pray. But Frank said, “Are you kidding!? We’re calling it Paper Moon - that’s a million-dollar title!” The series ran thirteen episodes.
”
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Peter Bogdanovich (Paper Moon)
“
I bet you look good naturally.” “Not true,” she said, shaking her head. “I spend plenty of time at the gym doing all the things that keep me looking good. I practice yoga and Pilâtes, and sometimes I starve myself to squeeze into something stunning.” “That’s ’cause you’re a movie star. You have to.
”
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Jackie Collins (Hollywood Wives - The New Generation: The Sequel (The Hollywood Series Book 4))
“
The transformation of Hollywood into a foreign-first business has also made sequels, spinoffs, and cinematic universes the smartest bet in the movie business. Newly minted middle-class customers in developing nations like China love prestige Western brands like Apple, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci. The same logic applies in cinemas. American cineastes may reach for the Advil when offered the choice between the latest superhero, dinosaur, or talking robot spinoff, but to many foreign moviegoers, that response is somewhere between condescending and confounding—the equivalent of complaining that there aren’t enough modern art installations at Disneyland. One more trend fundamentally changed the movie business this decade: the golden age of television. As TV has gotten better, the pressure on major movie studios is not to keep up with Breaking Bad, Orange Is the New Black, and Fargo (a property that was perfect for the movie business of the 1990s and for the TV business of today), but rather to stand out by offering something different. Most people, particularly middle-aged adults, simply don’t go to the movies for sophisticated character dramas anymore. Why would they, when there are so many on their DVR and Netflix and Amazon queues at home?
”
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Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
“
Iron Man‘s success more than made up for that July’s Incredible Hulk. The result of Marvel’s most difficult production right up to the present, the second Hulk film starred Ed Norton, who proved a terrible fit for Maisel and Feige’s philosophy that studio executives should be the ultimate creative authority. Undeniably one of the best actors of his generation, Norton is also famous in Hollywood for being “difficult” and highly opinionated, refusing to allow artistic choices he disagrees with and seeking to rewrite scripts he doesn’t like, which is what he did on The Incredible Hulk. The clashes intensified in post-production, and the director, Louis Letterier, sided with Norton over the studio. They both learned who has the ultimate power at Marvel, though, when Feige took control of editing. He excised many of the darkest scenes, including a suicide attempt meant to portray how much the scientist Bruce Banner wants to rid himself of the curse of transforming into the Hulk when he’s mad. The resulting movie was still darker and more dramatic than any other Marvel Studios production and not different enough from the Hulk movie of 2003. It grossed only $263 million at the box office and barely broke even, the worst performance for any Marvel Studios film to date. The Incredible Hulk never got a sequel, but the character has returned in Avengers films, played by the easygoing Mark Ruffalo. The usually cheerful Feige stated that the decision to recast the role was “rooted in the need for an actor who embodies the creativity and collaborative spirit of our other talented cast members.
”
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Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
“
The buildings and sky are festooned with billboards for TV shows and movies. Everything is a sequel or a reboot or an adaptation. Everything is an echo of something else.
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Jordan Harper (Everybody Knows)
“
That same year, Will Smith returned to the big screen after a hiatus, following 2008’s surprise disappointment, Seven Pounds. He starred in a sequel that Sony had been dying to make for many years. Men in Black 3 was a challenging movie to produce with a mature Will Smith. Now used to being the dominant creative force in his productions, he often demanded repeated changes to scripts and never worked with directors who could wield more power than he did. That was fine for Overbrook-led productions, but it became a challenge on the third Men in Black offering, which was made in a rush, to take advantage of New York tax credits. The production was a nightmare. The unhappy Smith holed up in his fifty-three-foot-long trailer, which featured a screening room, offices for assistants, and an all-granite bathroom, while multiple screenwriters reworked the script again and again. The creative conflicts between the star, his producers, and the studio were so severe that production was halted for three months to resolve them. Greenlit with a budget of $210 million, Men in Black 3 ended up costing $250 million and barely broke even.
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Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
“
We shot that second movie in Los Angeles—we were given all too much freedom and it sucked. You can seldom re-create a good thing, and it was true here; the jokes felt stale, the parties even staler. In fact, it was so bad that a while later, I called my agents and said, 'I’m still allowed to go to movies though, right?
”
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Matthew Perry (Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing)
“
There used to be well over a dozen A-list directors working in Hollywood at any given time who could get most any movie they wanted greenlit at any studio where they chose to work. Today there are only three: Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Christopher Nolan. In the franchise age, directors increasingly resemble hired hands who are brought in to helm a single sequel or spinoff but aren’t integral to the brand. The fourteen Marvel Studios films released through 2016, for instance, had eleven different directors. The model is similar to that of a television series. Directors come and go for different episodes and are valued largely for their ability to maintain the tone of the series and bring their installment in on time and on budget. In TV, the power has traditionally lain with writers and producers—many of whom serve both roles—who work on every episode, maintaining long-running story arcs and the consistency and coherence of story lines and characters.
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Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
“
Since fear keeps us out of danger, you’d think we’d always want to avoid things we’re afraid of. But sometimes we willingly scare ourselves. People go on roller coasters. People go to horror movies. And people elect new politicians every four years.
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James Rallison (The Odd 1s Out: The First Sequel)
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The movie played to a completely packed house and it was a smash. I was waiting with Bruce and Joe Lansdale up near the screen as the end credits rolled, ready for the filmmaker Q&A afterward, and something incredible happened that cemented it for me. Since the film ended on such a melancholy and downbeat note as Elvis closes his eyes at the finale, to raise the audience’s spirits and give them some hope, I inserted a line in the end credits that read, “Elvis returns in … BUBBA NOSFERATU—Curse of the She-Vampires.” As a kid I always got a thrill watching the James Bond movie end credits where they would announce the next 007 that way, so I figured why not try that with Elvis. As this announcement rolled on-screen, suddenly a guttural roar erupted from the crowd and they burst into riotous applause. Three hundred people wanted a sequel, like, immediately.
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Don Coscarelli (True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking)
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Avengers Endgame done, Spider-Man Far From Home theory says Tony Stark made the spider that bit Peter Parker
A new fan theory says that it will be revealed in the upcoming Marvel movie Spider-Man: Far From Home that Tony Stark created the spider that bit a teenage Peter Parker and gave him his superpowers. Tony died at the end of Avengers: Endgame, and shared a fatherly relationship with Peter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
If this theory were to be proven true, it would give new meaning to their father-son relationship. It has previously been reported that Far From Home, a sequel to 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, will reveal a major secret about Tony. A trailer revealed that Tony has left behind a secret lab for Peter.
The theory, posted on Reddit, suggests that Tony worked with Norman Osborne to create the spider that bit Peter, which is why he knew his identity in Captain America: Civil War, and shared such a close bond with him. This will also allow Marvel to introduce Norman into the MCU. A fan had previously ‘leaked’ that Marvel is considering making Norman Osborne (who goes on to become the Green Goblin) a major new villain in the overarching story of the MCU.
Another theory suggests that Tony was behind Uncle Ben’s death, which happens before we’re introduced to this version of Peter in the films. A version of this theory previously stated suggests that Uncle Ben died during the Battle of New York, which could indirectly mean that Tony was responsible for it.
Far From Home is directed by Jon Watts, and stars Samuel L Jackson, Cobie Smulders and Jake Gyllenhaal in supporting roles, in addition to Tom Holland as Peter. The embargo on reviews will lift on Wednesday - two weeks ahead of release - which suggests that Marvel is positive about the quality of the film.
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TonyStark
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I will show you that the same holds true for teams and companies. There’s no way to analyze the behavior of any individual and explain the group. Being good at nurturing loonshots is a phase of human organization, in the same way that being liquid is a phase of matter. Being good at developing franchises (like movie sequels) is a different phase of organization, in the same way that being solid is a different phase of matter.
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Safi Bahcall (Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries)
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As a group grows, the balance of incentives shifts from encouraging individuals to focus on collective goals to encouraging a focus on careers and promotion. When the size of the group exceeds a critical threshold, career interests triumph. That’s when teams will begin to dismiss loonshots and only franchise projects—the next movie sequel, the next statin, the next turn of the franchise wheel—will survive. Even more important, we will see how to control that transition: how to change the magic number.
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Safi Bahcall (Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries)
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The rise of original, risk-taking television is directly tied to the decline of original, risk-taking filmmaking and the dawn of the franchise age of film—one in which studios no longer coddle creative talent, release movies of every type for everyone, or pride themselves for taking risks on quality and new ideas. Instead, movie studios now exist primarily for the purpose of building and supporting branded franchises that continue in sequels, toys, and theme-park attractions.
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Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
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Neo takes the red pill and awakens in the real world, where he is forcibly ejected from the liquid-filled chamber in which he has obliviously been living. After his rescue and convalescence aboard Morpheus's ship, Morpheus shows him the true nature of the Matrix: a detailed computer simulation of Earth at the end of the 20th century (the actual year, though not known for sure, is suggested within the original movie to be approximately 200 years later, though it is revealed through sequels The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Animatrix that at least 700 years have passed). It has been created to keep the minds of humans docile while their bodies are stored in massive power plants, their body heat and bioelectricity consumed as power by the sentient machines that have enslaved them.
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Isaac, Steven. "The Matrix". Plugged in. Retrieved July 29, 2024.
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Only, she’s not laughing. Not curling up into a ball. There are no closing credits. No sequels. Because she’s not a movie heroine. She’s flesh and blood and bone. And when the sun comes up, she’ll still feel like hell.
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Emily Ruth Verona (Midnight on Beacon Street)
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Vincent Canby’s overview may have been Olympian, but it was well informed. ‘“Heaven’s Gate’—the phenomenon not the movie— has been a long time coming, but to blame it on any one director or corporate management is vastly to oversimplify what’s been happening to commercial American movies over the last several decades … the cost of making a movie, even a modest one, has soared even faster than the cost of everything else in the economy,” he wrote, correctly pointing out that “the hits make more money than ever, while people won’t go to see a Hop even if it’s tree. The pressure to find movies with some kind of built-in appeal grows greater day by day. Thus the emphasis on sequels, on ‘properties’ that have been pre-sold as best-selling books or hit plays, by name writers, by casts with great film or television celebrity, or by the reputations of those directors who have become ‘bankable.’”....The weaknesses and foolishness of an entire industry had been focused and exposed by Heaven’s Gate and United Artists....
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Steven Bach (Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists)