Lets Talk About ‘The Creator’ and the State of Original Filmmaking in Hollywood
With 'The Creator' still not reaching its $80 million budget, let's talk about what its poor performance in the box office means for original films in the future.
So now that The Creator has been in cinemas for about two weeks, it’s safe to say the film can be considered a box office flop; having grossed about $65 million at the global box office, it is yet to break even on its $80 million budget. This must serve as a disappointing blow not just to Gareth Edwards, the film’s director, but also those excited by the release of a genuinely original Hollywood blockbuster, one not reliant on any established franchises.
Upon its release, the film was garnering some attention for being the ‘best Sci-Fi movie of the year’, and for the most part it lives up to that claim. What Edwards has made is a complete visual spectacle, with beautiful cinematography, engaging fight scenes and visual effects that for as little as the film was made for puts higher budget blockbusters utterly to shame — The Flash, we’re looking at you! Sure it may also be a highly derivative melting pot of every Sci-Fi trope and cliché you’ve ever seen, with a plot that never moves beyond a space of high predictability, it also comes at a time where AI is at the forefront of public discussion and thus had all the potential to capture the public’s imagination — so why didn’t it? And how does that reflect on the overall state of original filmmaking in Hollywood right now?
In many ways, the film’s box office failure is the result of a perfect storm of problems, most notably its lack of an established IP. The weekend of its release the film came third in the box office behind Saw X and Paw Petrol, both arguably worse films but also ones linked to an established franchise and thus a dependable fanbase. Even the biggest blockbuster of the year, Barbie, whilst not being linked to an existing franchise of films, relied heavily on its IP to create one of the most successful marketing campaigns Hollywood has ever seen. The Creator on the other hand had no such luxury and failed to invest in the necessary star power to help bolster it’s wider appeal, not even being able to use the relatively unknown cast it did have to market the film due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
In relation to marketing campaigns, The Creator’s was notably non-existent. The few publicity stunts it did pull garnered very little social media attention, with most people not realising the film was even out. With very little word of mouth surrounding the film, the only impression audiences would’ve gotten about it is from the trailer — one that showcased the visual aesthetic very well, but for the most part blended into the background of an already incredibly packed summer release cycle. With a potential blockbuster being released almost every other week: Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, Mission Impossible, Barbie, Oppenheimer — films like The Creator need to do more to stand out from its competition. With viewership skewed at 71% male, it’s clear the film never moved past being viewed as yet another action sci-fi by audiences.
Cinema-goers right now seem to be going through a transition of viewing habits. Audiences seem tired of the endless stream of franchise related media: the MCU, DCEU, Star Wars, Mission Impossible — audiences simply aren’t engaging in the way they used to. There’re numerous reasons for this, most obviously how studios are aiming for quantity over quality in their pursuit of never ending profits. Never before has the film industry felt so much like a business, churning out franchise after franchise irrespective of the quality of the product since they know markets are going to buy it. Yet whilst the model is slowly starting to fall apart and audiences are becoming hungry for new stories and fresh ideas, they aren’t quite willing to let go of the security of a pre-established IP.
For example, the two highest grossing films of the year: Barbie and Super Mario Bros, aren’t linked to any existing film franchises but instead depend on their well-known intellectual properties to drive audiences into investing their time and money in them. The third highest ranking film was Oppenheimer, a rare example of original filmmaking, but one that’s commercial success piggybacked off not just the ‘Barbenheimer’ marketing, but was fuelled by the audience’s love and familiarity with Christopher Nolan as a director. It seems not only are audiences demanding greater quality from their content, but that the content itself shouldn’t stray too far from recognisable IP.
This seems to leave films like The Creator feeling a little bit lost in the mix. From a critical perspective, the film can hardly be classified as ‘indie’ or ‘counter culture’, but yet with no IP to rely on and no big stars in its cast, it almost feels as though audiences weren’t quite sure how to digest it. That isn’t to imply they aren’t intelligent enough to, but rather when cinema tickets are already so expensive and disposable income so small, why wouldn’t you invest your time into the more secure experience a franchise film represents. But when studios are now able to use this project’s failure as reasoning not to fund the next original script that comes through the door, we’re left seriously wondering what the future of original films like The Creator is, and if there’s even a large enough market for them amongst audiences.
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