A lot has been written about the IP problem besetting mainstream filmmaking today. IP, or intellectual property, refers to all the preexisting material adapted to film by studios and producers. It’s a way of minimizing financial risk by relying on familiar sources that have already found favor with consumers. These include best-selling novels, popular comic books, hit video games, and remakes of beloved older films and television shows but also, increasingly, successful brand-name commercial products such as Barbie, Air Jordan, and BlackBerry.
In short, IP refers to all of those plus any sequels, spin-offs, remakes, or reboots that follow from the ones that make big money. The blockbuster hit A Minecraft Movie, based on the beloved video game, will inevitably beget Another Minecraft Movie. Stockholders and investors may be reassured by a full slate of IP projects, but in the meantime the theatrical exhibition side of the movie business is in free fall as bored viewers skip new releases or wait for mundane content to show up on streaming services.
IP it is argued, is killing cinema as we know it. Or knew it. But then, at the same time, it’s the IP movies that so often make billions of dollars while original films tank at the box office. A lot has been written about that phenomenon, too, in long think pieces that wind up blaming audiences for their dreadful taste in films.
It’s become such a familiar topic that it’s featured as the main comedic target in the premiere episode of the new hit Apple TV+ series The Studio, a satire of the contemporary American film industry in creative decline. The show is about a new studio head named Matt Remick, played by Seth Rogen, who yearns to save Hollywood by making great, original, auteur-driven pictures again. But he can only nail down the top job in the first place if he promises to do “the Kool-Aid movie.”
In order to do that, he winds up having to torpedo his own dream project, which is…
Auteur: Eileen Jones
