Project Greenlight: What movies would you make if you ran the studio?

This column is about money and Hollywood, but please do not mistake a discussion about studio decisions for a discussion about what “should” be made. 

I think the biggest thing I want to impart here before we get started, is that you as an artist, a writer, a director or a creative person should absolutely not think this way. A great film, or book, or television show, is worth a million times more than whatever lucre it generates. Even an album that is initially considered a failure can launch a thousand bands and change a thousand lives. 

And we don’t know, have no way of knowing, if the ripples we create in the water cause a flood downstream.   

The people who call films or television shows, or novels or comic books “content,” are the enemy. They are the people Mel Brooks was speaking to shortly after a screening of The Elephant Man when the studio executives wanted director David Lynch to start making cuts. 

“We screened the film for you to bring you up to date as to the status of that venture,” Brooks said. “Do not misconstrue this as our soliciting the input of raging primitives.” 

Brooks’ autobiography, “All About Me,” has several little anecdotes like that. He screened Blazing Saddles for studio executives and the head of the studio pulled him aside and basically told him to cut every offensive scene out of the movie. Brooks, who later laughingly said if he did that the movie would be 14 minutes long, told the exec he would make all the changes and then ignored it completely. 

When the movie came out, and was a huge hit, he never again heard boo from the studio. 

But, if you are a studio chief, the one with the power to actually make things happen, the question you face every year is not about changing the content of the things that were already shot, it’s deciding what to make in the first place. 

If you have a billion dollars in the budget to make movies next year what would you greenlight? 

Here’s the top 20 movies by worldwide box office 2023 according to Box Office Mojo.

• Barbie $1,441,761,333
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie $1,361,990,276
• Oppenheimer $950,191,715
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 $845,555,777
• Fast X $704,709,660
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $690,516,673
• The Little Mermaid $569,626,289
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One $567,535,383
• Elemental $495,851,987
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania $476,071,180
• John Wick: Chapter 4 $440,146,694
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts $438,966,392
• Meg 2: The Trench $395,000,317
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny $383,963,057
• Creed III $275,248,615
• Five Nights at Freddy’s $271,913,275
• The Flash $270,633,313
• The Nun II $268,067,073
• Sound of Freedom $247,801,879
• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour $246,365,022

The obvious caveats are that the year is not over and the numbers may change somewhat between now and December 31. But, I think the list is instructive enough at this point that we can discuss it.

Let’s go with the easy ones first. If you are the studio lucky enough to be in business with Greta Gerwig, the director of Barbie, or Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer, you probably hand them whatever amount of money they want and let them do whatever they want. 

Isn’t that the easiest answer? 

“Hi, the movie you just made for us made a billion dollars please make another one.”

Of course, when you are dealing with studio executives the most obvious answer is not always the one you suspect. In my mind, Barbie was a hit because Gerwig made an impressive film and the marketing hit the right tone and it, and Oppenheimer became a moviegoing phenomenon on the same weekend.

People went to see them as a double bill! I’m not sure that is particular synergy can be cloned and recreated on demand. Nor, I’m sorry to say, does this mean that the movie-going audience is starved for original creative works for adults. 

You can certainly find people online cheerleading for this, and I wish them well and I do believe studios need to take a few more chances each year. They also should identify several writers and directors and just let them roam free. 

Of course, that strategy probably ends with a fiasco of the level of Heavens Gate. But we will get a load of interesting movies in the meantime. 

However, at least some executives somewhere think they know the key ingredient for success. They know, in their executive hearts what the masses want. 

And it’s a toy movie franchise. 

So, yes, I would greenlight whatever Gerwig wants to do next. Yes, I would also greenlight a Barbie sequel (with or without Gerwig but hopefully with) but no, I do not think the success of Barbie means that what the world is craving a cinematic universe featuring the trials and tribulations of Polly Pocket, Boglins and (I kid you not) Chatty Cathy and Betsy Wetsy.

It’s this kind of thinking that leads you to release Haunted Mansion in July instead of October. 

We’re going to do part two of this tomorrow. 

But in the meantime look at that Top 20 and ask yourself what types of movies would you greenlight? The top 3 so far this year are not sequels, so does that mean it’s time for more original movies from top talent? Or is the argument that the top three are not sequels deceiving. After all, while Barbie and Super Mario are not sequels they are based on existing properties that have worldwide recognition.

Do you find five directors who are as talented as Gerwig and Nolan, hand them $100 million and say, “Do what you want, just make it great?” 

Or do you say to Christopher Nolan, ‘Please pick any videogame you would like and our $100 million and make us a movie.”

No one will do that but I would dearly love to be in the room when they try.

Also, don’t sleep on horror movies. Will your horror movie make $500,000 million or more at the box office? Probably not. But if you make something of the caliber of Five Nights at Freddy’s (budget $20 mil) or The Nun 2 (budget $40 mil) and then make $200 or $300 million back you can probably sleep easy at night. 

All things being equal, knowing what we can know from the numbers, is it time for more superheroes, a videogame/toy line cinematic universe or something else?