(Image source: AMC)
BY BRICE SANDER
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Remakes, reboots and rehashed stories- they’ve all become box office commonplace. But do they work?
After remakes Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night bombed at the box office, some say the reboot is dead. (Nu Image/Millennium Films)
As Deadline’s Nikki Finke points out, remake success hinges on a built-in audience that isn’t always there.
“The consensus … is that Conan The Barbarian didn't have the ‘brand equity’ they hoped it would. [The creative team] had convinced themselves that the brand was ripe for a reboot and that the fans were ready for it … But it was all for naught. In the end, the execution was just poor, poor, poor.”
And as a movie critic told CBS’ The Early Show, movies today need more universal appeal.
“There aren’t that many movies a year where you can just tell anyone- your mother, your priest, the hipster behind the counter at Whole Foods- to go see a movie and pretty much rest assured that they would like it.”
After 'The Help' bested the remakes at the box office, a Washington Post contributor suggests the movie biz needs to wake up-- and realize who its target audience really is.
“…it’s a sign that studios would be wise to reconsider all those ’80s remakes and find fresh stories that resonate with men as well as those ‘older women’ who like to go to the movies.”
But Entertainment Weekly blames the numbers game, saying-- movie success may all be in our heads.
“It’s fine to say that a movie succeeded or failed, but the fun of the numbers is that they don’t lie … When Thor opened at $66.5 Million, it was greeted with a perfectly respectful yawn, but the $54 million grossed by Rise of the Planet of the Apes was treated as some sort of expectation-smashing, rise-of-the-rebel-blockbuster surprise. To which I say, really?”
Both Conan and Fright Night did debut in the top five, so who knows?
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