The Hard Truth About Hollywood and Originality From Gore Verbinski
We used to want more challenging and interesting stories.
'The Ring'
There was a time when Gore Verbinski was the hottest director in Hollywood. The guy used a scope and scale as a weapon for his Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. His work in horror on The Ring created a generation terrified of VHS tapes. And he even delved into animation with the creative and exciting Rango, which we love.
But Verbinski has been quiet in recent years.
He hasn't had a feature film since 2016's A Cure for Wellness.
Now he's back with Good Luck, Have, Don’t Die!. It's an exciting action science fiction movie where a man from the future arrives at a diner in Los Angeles to recruit some of the patrons to join him on a one-night quest to save the world from rogue artificial intelligence.
That movie just premiered in LA at Beyond Fest at American Cinematheque, and is set to hit theaters this January.
Verbinski joined a post-screening Q&A and, when asked about the current state of Hollywood, opened up on how hard the climate has gotten for filmmakers, even famous ones like himself.
This is a hard time for original content. It feels like the big studios just want sequels and the streamers are shackled by their algorithms.
Verbinski's new movie is an original idea. One that sounds unique and fun and interesting and unlike all the other stuff we're getting in the theaters. But as he points out, it's very hard to tell those stories today.
With Hollywood so motivated by the box office, they're always trying to bet on a sure thing. For them, that sure thing usually is a sequel or IP that comes with a known entity.
Even directors with Verbinski's clout have to fight tooth and nail to get cast and budgets for stories they love, because of this risk-averse mindset.
Summing It All Up
Nothing in Hollywood is easy, but the current climate is really stacked against storytellers with original ideas. Hopefully, in a year that gave us Weapons, Eddington, and One Battle After Another, we see Hollywood embracing these wholly unique and interesting ideas and changing a bit.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
