NOT SO RISKY BUSINESS

BY: Michael Arkin

How lucky were we to score tickets to Moulin Rouge during a recent trip to New York? Broadway’s hottest ticket has transformed the Al Hirschfeld Theatre into a technicolor valentine. The 2001 Baz Luhrmann film turned theatrical behemoth may play for years. While PROVOKR‘s mandate is to remain critically agnostic, let us warn you that some intellectual properties are better left in their original packaging.

 

Well, maybe not their original original packaging, because there are 5 films inspired by the legendary Paris nightspot. Aside from the fourth, Luhrmann’s fast-cut masterwork starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan Macgregor, the most famous version was the second. John Huston’s 1952 homage to Toulouse Lautrec was headlined by Jose Ferrer and featured Zsa Zsa Gabor. Luhrmann’s film had more to do with La Boheme and the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice than Huston’s Academy Award-winning movie, which The New York Times called, “a not very fluent or plausible re-work of the old Of Human Bondage theme”.

You may ask yourself why Hollywood’s film industry, a business based on creativity, resorts time and time again to remaking movies. The answer can be summed up in two words: risk aversion. With the average film costing between $75-$90 million to produce, and nearly as much to market, the studios are bound to release tried and true properties that lessen risk.

As industry journalist Anita Busch told ABC News, the studios “already know these brands, and these combinations have worked on one generation and, if written properly, will work again.” We’ll see if that holds true this holiday season when no less than four remakes arrive in theaters near you.

It all begins on November 8th when Patrick Wilson and Nick Jonas take up arms to fight off the competition in Midway. The retelling of the defining battle of World War II was first brought to the big screen in 1976 with a testosterone-loaded cast including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson and Robert Wagner.

A week later, estrogen levels rise when Charlie’s Angels returns to theaters. This time, Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Ballinski assume the roles originated in the 1976 TV series by Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jacqueline Smith then on the big screen in 2000 by Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu. In this latest girl-powered project, even the role of Bosley is played by a woman, Elizabeth Banks.

If you’re looking to take a slay ride this holiday, prepare yourself for the fourth retelling of Black Christmas. It centers on a group of sorority girls stalked by an unknown killer. Perfect Christmas fare, don’t you think? This terrifying gift arrives on December 13th.

Perhaps the most anticipated remake of the season is director Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which opens Christmas Day. Throughout its rich cinematic history (there have been 7 adaptations of this classic American story), some of Hollywood’s biggest stars have played the March girls. They include Katherine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, June Allyson, Margaret O’Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst and Claire Danes. Gerwig’s take on Louisa May Alcott’s book boasts a cast with Emma Watson, Timothée Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, Laura Dern and Meryl Streep.

 

Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until Christmas 2020, some 59 years after the original, to see Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited remake of West Side Story. With a new script by Tony Kushner, the film is Mr. Spielberg’s first musical project.

While some of this season’s offerings look like slam dunks, the “tried and true” formula hasn’t always worked. One of the most famous big screen bombs was the 4th take on Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. While the press devoured the off-screen antics of the then unmarried stars who were the Brad and Angelina of their day, they weren’t as kind to the movie, which cost 20th Century Fox $40 million to make ($375 million in today’s dollars). According to Variety, it held the record as the costliest film ever made for nearly three decades and Ms. Taylor was the first actress to be paid $1 million. Although the film was number 1 at the box office in 1963, it took years to break even. It also fueled rumors that the studio sold their backlot (now Century City) to save itself. In fact, the real estate deal happened a year before production began.

 

More of a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, than a true remake, Sidney Lumet’s 1978 The Wiz was a box office failure. It starred Diana Ross and Michael Jackson and despite its megawatt star power, it only grossed a dim $21 million.

Some of the funniest women in show business couldn’t save 2016’s ill-fated Ghostbusters. Despite the best efforts of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, the film grossed $16 million less than it’s $144 million production budget. But producers are hoping that the third time will be the charm when a new version of the 1984 hit that starred Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd comes to theatres. It will star Paul Rudd and Annie Potts. Look for it in July 2020.

An astute observer on IMDB noted, for every ten Ocean’s 11, there are ten Willy Wonkas. In other words, while some remakes are hits, certain films should be left alone. An example is William Wyler’s Ben Hur. It’s a remake of a 1925 silent movie starring Ramon Navarro, but the 1959 version, with Charlton Heston in the title role, was the only film to win 11 Academy Awards until Titanic tied it in 1998. Made in the days before CGI, its spectacular chariot race had 15,000 extras and took 5 weeks to film. Then, in 2016, director Timur Bekmambetov, best known for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, had a $100 million budget to remake the legendary epic .While The New York Times observed that its 10 minute chariot race “powerfully captures the savagery of the life-or-death spectacle,” The Hollywood Reporter may have said it best, “What were they thinking?”

Luckily, that’s not a question we hear too often when talking about remakes. As evidence, consider these films, which may be better than their originals: the Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand and Lady GaGa versions of A Star is Born; The Fly with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis; Tarzan with Christopher Lambert; the musical interpretation of The Little Shop of Horrors; the Humphrey Bogart’s The Maltese Falcon and 1959’s The Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments may be the only time a filmmaker, Cecil B. DeMille, directed both the silent original and remake. The list goes on and on, but would not be complete without mentioning 2001’s Ocean’s 11 headlined by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. It made the 1960’s Rat Pack original look corny.

 

Here’s a piece of trivia you can drop at Comicon, since 1910, there have been at least 57 movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster. While not the first, 1931’s classic Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff is considered the best. The diverse franchise includes everything from Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, the first ‘ensemble’ monster movie, to the comedic antics of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, to 1973’s Blackenstein. My personal favorite is Mel Brooks’ hilarious send-up, Young Frankenstein.

Similarly, including The Joker, there have been 15 films that feature Batman, who was first introduced to moviegoers in a 15-part series in 1943. Next year, Robert Pattinson dons the batsuit in The Batman and joins an exclusive Caped Crusader club that counts Adam West, Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Val Kilmer and Christian Bale as members.

Frankenstein and Batman are franchises that include both remakes and sequels and there is a difference between them. Both are the elements of a franchise. And to Hollywood, franchises are like French fries, because no matter how soggy or overdone they are, they’ll always be on the menu.