One of the major shifts in the book world, especially in "genre" fiction, over the last 30-40 years has been the series and, beyond that, shared universe. One-off fantasy books still exist, but they're increasingly rare, it seems. Everything is part of a trilogy, a trilogy sequel to a trilogy, a spin-off series featuring the favorite character from a trilogy (which is being expanded to a quadrology), a new series that's a prequel or a sequel or a parallel …
And it works, sales-wise. Readers like having a leg-up on what they're reading, a certain degree of known quality and backstory knowledge.
Are we starting to see a similar move in the movies? Everyone's been noting / complaining how sequels are such a big part of the mainstream of movies these days. Now, with the success to date of Disney's Marvel franchise, Warners and Universal are taking a stab at it. _If_ these efforts are a success, I'd expect an increasing number of shared-universe movies to follow.
There are differences between the movie and book world, of course, that make this more difficult.
1. Books are a one-writer affair, while movies have a huge array of writers, directors, and (especially) actors; Tying actors into these sorts of arrangements may be difficult (even just schedule coordination). And finding the right person to oversee such a universe, managing writers and directors both, is no trivial challenge.
2. Books can also be cranked out faster and (more importantly) much more cheaply than movies, which makes this sort of arrangement more ponderous and much more risky — if a book flops, the harm is limited; if a multi-million flick flops, the harm can be substantial, especially if the studio then panics and inserts more creative interference.
3. On top of that, the timelines and social nature of movies make them different from books. If Bob doesn't care for a book, I probably won't know it before I pick it up; if Bob doesn't care for a movie, I've heard it, and seen all the professional and amateur critics dig into it in the years leading up to and the years following a particular film, which can have a direct (and negative) impact on the next film in the set.
(This is the biggest risk to this model; if Marvel suffers one, or even two flops, I would expect Disney to radically change and/or cut back on what they're doing, and fiercely imitative Hollywood to do the same; everything I've speculated above could be completely out of the question by late September if Guardians of the Galaxy goes down in flames.)
On the other hand, the potential benefits could be huge. As much as folk critically resent sequels, they still flock to see them. A shared universe could add substantially to movie sales, in the theaters and/or in private viewings at home.
So, is the shared universe franchise the direction the movie industry will start to progressively movie toward? Or are the barriers simply too high to make it happen (and can those barriers change if the money is there to support it)?
Reshared post from +Marty Shaw
Interesting… and cool. Universal Studios apparently looked around and got jealous over all the superhero films that are dominating the box office these days and thought they'd try something similar.
DC and Marvel are off-limits, and why bother with obtaining rights for something when you already have one huge franchise just sitting around collecting dust?
With that thought (or something similar) in mind, Universal is bringing back the classic Universal monsters. Way back in the days of black-and-white, they already had experience with introducing characters in their own films and then teaming them up in other films, so why not do it again now that it's the trendy thing to do?
I'm a huge fan of the classic monsters and spent many childhood weekends watching Dracula, Wolf Man, and all the others, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes. The first movie planned for the revitalized franchise is The Mummy, scheduled for release April 22, 2016.
Source: http://www.deadline.com/2014/07/universal-classic-movie-monsters/
