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- A Hollywood Tech Nerd Halloween!
Happy Halloween Hollywood tech nerds!
In this week’s post:
🎃 A Hollywood Tech Nerd Halloween!
🎬️ The Secrets of A24’s Success
🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for
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A Hollywood Tech Nerd Halloween!
It’s a special Halloween edition of the Hollywood Tech Nerds newsletter! I gathered a few terrifying(ly informative) news items for your enjoyment before my trick-or-treating starts. To answer your questions: yes I know where you live and yes I’m stopping by! Get those Reese’s ready. Or else! (or else I will write about Taylor Swift again and irritate a sizable segment of my readership)
Need scary movie recommendations?
The Hollywood Reporter suggests Pix AI, an AI-powered chatbot that allows “users to curate entertainment recommendations” and provides “direct links to the title on multiple streamers.” Does it work? Well, sort of. The example cited in the article asks for scary movies on Prime or Hulu with the caveat of “no slashers,” but then the app’s first recommendation was Amazon’s Totally Killer, which is technically a slasher! Perturbed, I asked a more important question:
Disappointing results! There’s a Steve in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and various Steves in the Friday the 13th movies. I suppose this is what happens when you ask a machine for movie recommendations instead of a living, breathing person. Unlike the robots, I have some off-the-beaten path recs for Halloween movies and where they’re streaming:
Cobweb - a creepy, gothic fairy tale starring Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr
Bodies Bodies Bodies - one of my 2022 faves, a hilariously scary Gen Z slasher/whodunit from A24 (more on them below)
No One Will Save You - I was very impressed with this frightening home invasion thriller which has just one line of dialogue
Infinity Pool - incredibly disturbing meditation on class and moral rot from Brandon Cronenberg; definitely not for everyone!
The Blackening - a funny horror movie spoof that made me laugh often, there was one punchline so edgy the audience I saw it with gasped
Orphan: First Kill - a cashgrab followup made 15 years later? Sure, but it’s about as clever as you could ask for, the original’s big twist is twisted again
Speaking of scary movies…
Five Nights At Freddy’s Big Box Office
FNAF (as the kids call it) released in theaters this past weekend with a simultaneous day-and-date on Peacock. Deadline reports some stunning numbers for the video game-based film, including:
–Biggest opening weekend for a horror pic YTD, besting Scream VI ($44.4M)
–Second-biggest opening ever for a video game pic, behind Super Mario Bros ($146.3M) and ahead of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($72M)
–The biggest Blumhouse opening ever, ahead of 2018’s Halloween ($76.2M)
–Highest opening for a Halloween weekend movie, beating Puss in Boots ($34M)
–Second-biggest theatrical day-and-date debut, after Disney+’s Black Widow ($80.3M).
–The third-largest debut for any horror film ahead of Halloween ($76.222M) and behind only IT ($$123.403M) and IT Chapter Two ($91.062M)
–The highest opening for any PG-13 horror film, surpassing The Mummy Returns ($68.139M)
–The biggest opening weekend for a horror film directed by a woman, ahead of Candyman ($22.002M)
This is big theater attendance for a movie you could also watch at home. As I’ve written a few times now, Hollywood will be taking notes as superheroes continue to bring diminishing returns.
Pretty clear that between Freddy’s, The Last of Us, and Super Mario Bros, we will see ongoing cinematic exploitation of video game IP, as Hollywood homes in on faithful adaptations with appeal to the massive gamer audience, as opposed to the “make some crap and slap a video game title on it” strategy of decades past. How far off can Garry’s Mod: The Movie be now?
Conversely…
The Exorcist: Believer’s Bad News
Believer has not been as successful for Universal, with a disappointing box office run thus far, largely due to paying over $400 million for franchise rights and plans for a full trilogy. Yet I was also surprised to learn Believer is already the second-highest grossing film of the Exorcist series, although with practically no chance of catching up to the original’s $440 million haul (in 1973 dollars!).
I’ve never understood why the studios assume they can squeeze another mega-hit out of this franchise, it seems obvious to me that William Friedkin’s original was simply suis generis and not cloneable with additional installments. Unlike Michael Myers, Freddy, or Jigsaw, Pazuzu isn’t a replicable premise that will excite audiences, and other horror films have successfully taken possession scenarios in exciting new directions. That hasn’t stopped Hollywood from its dreams of another Exorcist mega-hit, the quest for which has produced a disastrous sequel, a cult classic semi-threequel (with two separate edits), a prequel that was made twice, a TV show, and now this new David Gordon Green trilogy which was hoping to capture some of that Halloween reboot magic. To me this is all like trying to endlessly milk a classic like Psycho… Wait, they did endlessly milk Psycho! Three whole sequels, one shot-for-shot remake, and a TV show! Can’t fault them for trying, I suppose.
The Secrets of A24's Success
I very much enjoyed this deep dive in The Generalist from a few months ago on the rise of A24. It’s long, but absolutely worth taking the time to read.
Two of the article’s points should be briefly highlighted. First, that A24 understands the power of its brand in a way inspired by a certain other major studio:
That singular essence has spawned an unusual fandom: moviegoers are not only besotted with individual releases but the studio itself. Consumer devotion of this kind is unusual for those who stand behind the curtain. Though many may love the stories they tell, few would consider themselves Paramount obsessives, Columbia Pictures devotees, MGM ultras.
Like Disney before it, A24 is an exception to this rule. And like the House of Mouse, it has started extending its consumer relationship beyond the screen.
Second, that A24 was unique in its deployment of technology to promote its content:
A24’s modernity, especially from a tactical perspective, is an underrated aspect of its story. Yes, its success stems from its differentiated taste and unusual support for artists. But it is also a technology story. Social media smarts underpinned the firm’s rise, allowing it to acquire attention much more cost-effectively than its more backward-minded peers. So did its understanding of internet culture, memes, and viral mechanics. Over the past decade, no studio has more efficiently inserted itself into the online zeitgeist, seasoning our feeds with satanic goats and Oscar Isaac dance sequences.
It’s a lesson the other indie studios would do well to learn. Read the entire piece over at The Generalist.
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:
How Netflix plans to spend $2.5 billion in Korea. (link)
David Fincher on The Killer, The Social Network 2, and whether Fight Club is responsible for incels. (link)
PlayStation introduces controllers designed for gamers with disabilities. (link)