Boiling Point: Studio Meddling

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 30, 2008

Boiling Point: Hancock

This one is just too easy.  We hear about it all the time.  Producer interference.  Studio mandated changes.  Force ratings.  The upcoming Hancock has had its fair share of all of the above shoved down director Peter Berg’s throat.   Back in the original script, Hancock was a bad, bad man.  Encouraging teen drinking, violence, bad language, all of that.  Really none of the things that make a Will Smith superhero comedy.  Yet here we are with a PG-13 Hancock.  Surely not what any of the idea men wanted or hoped for.  They wanted, no doubt, a faithful badass R-Rated look at the jerk side of superheroes.  But the Studio wanted a PG-13 Will Smith Summer Superhero film.  Where will Hancock finally fall?  Time will tell.

What gives with all this bullshit?  Cast them younger!  Add a love interest!  We know what the movie audience of today wants, listen to us!  Because clearly if the producers and studios knew what we really wanted, there wouldn’t be bombs and they’d all be writers.  There is a kind of elitism to it all, these financial giants lording over us, deciding that they know us to the letter and will give it to us.

And really, what’s the supreme logic behind buying an R-Rated kick-ass film and then dictating it be changed to a PG-13 friendly script with hundreds of thousands of dollars in rewrites?  If the story isn’t what you want, maybe you shouldn’t buy it in the first place.  Maybe you buy the things that were complete thoughts to begin with.  Any movie idea that is bought and changed moves further away from a coherent idea.  The final draft of the authors original idea is probably as complete as it will get.  Each rewrite picks and chooses scenes, plucking out things, dropping others in, with different tones or styles.  Soon, you end up with an uneven bit of writing far from what was intended.  That’s a pile of it, right there, I’ll tell you.

I wonder how many films get changed for the better.  There have been instances of adaptations being changed for the better (see last weeks BP or read Jaws) but that’s rare and even then, the adaptations for the screen are still coherent thoughts.  That is, until the executives bring down the hammer upon them and bend it out of shape.

So while I have a hard time believing many executives are making positive changes, and I think that the more you mess with a script the farther you get away from the original idea, maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe there are a few instances where the changes are for the best.  But clearly there are a ton of glaring films that have had their heart and soul ripped out and replaced in some misguided all knowing attempt to increase box office revenue and that pushes me past my boiling point.

What movies come to mind when you think of producer interference?


| MovieBlips: vote it up! | Read more articles by Robert Fure

« Previous Article | Next Article »

Related Topics:

Boiling Point, Site Features, , , ,

Related Reading:

Your Ad Here

Comment Policy: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Film School Rejects reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. We also reserve the right to modify any curse words in your comments and make you look like an idiot. Thank You!

  • kheas
    One movie, or series of movies, that i was very disapointed in were the Mission Impossible series. As a fan of the original, I was VERY disipointed in the direction they used so that Tom Cruise could be the shining hero instead of just another part of the team. MI was originally a group of people working for a single goal, not a James Bond wanna be. Mr. Phelps a bad guy? come on! The studios had to be the one's that said, lets make this a Tom Cruise movie so we can make two more crappy versions of a great TV show.
  • Chris
    Hear hear, Robert! As a person who's gone through this myself with my scripts, I gotta say, it's really annoying. I mean, every writer whose script is sold is told the same thing... "We love it! It's perfect!" Then, only after you sign the contract, do you start to hear "well, reading through it again, it's not that perfect. You know the father character? The one who has the epiphany that he loves his gay daughter right before he gets killed in a burning building in order to save his dying nephew? Can we change him to a talking yellow motorcycle that speaks jive?" It doesn't make sense! But... an idea is easy to have I suppose once somebody does the hard part of coming up with an entire story. Doesn't mean those ideas are any good however.

    As for the question... studio/producer meddling killed the Halloween series. It started with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers (or Halloween: 666 as it was first known). It had the potential to be a decent enough movie (it's not Shakespeare, it's a horror flick). Some of the rejected screenplays were quite good. But then Dimension/Weinstein/Disney/ gets involved, and the movie takes a tremendous crap. Same goes for the next several entries.

    Then again, pretty much every Dimension/Weinstein film has had studio/producer tampering and has really come out as garbage.
  • If you hate studio meddling this much, you should check out the movie The TV Set. It's about a television show in development, but it echoes a lot of what happens in movies.

    "Does the brother have to commit suicide? It's so depressing."

    Plus, Sigourney Weaver is awesome as the elitist, ratings-obsessed, television executive prick who demands changes around every corner.

    I think the real problem just comes from having too many voices in the mix at the blueprint phase. Audiences are pretty savvy about tone, and it's very difficult for any writer to match another's tone and pacing. That, and it seems like studios have audiences waiting in the wings for testing but don't have a Logic Nazi on hand to tell them when their shit doesn't make any sense at all.
  • Hollywood is a business. Look at the list of top-grossing films and you have to go pretty far down the list to find R-rated releases with any regularity. (Yes I know Passion of the Christ ranks at #11 but that had Jeebus-freaks to support it.) PG-13 opens the film to a much larger audience and the (theoretical) possibility of higher grosses. Many of the studio "chefs" don't see beyond that so they all try to make their changes with the intention of making more $... while ignoring the film's true quality.

    Sucks, but that's the bottom line.

    @ Cole, good call on The TV Set. It was simultaneously funny and depressing.
  • The thing is, a movie doesn't *have* to be R-rated to be gritty. I'm sure the "studio executives" or whoever could have stayed with the original screenplay and make the movie PG-13. After all, the MPAA always seems to be more concerned about nudity and sex than intense violence.

    I think exectuvies changing stuff goes beyond the rating. Yes, they want to make sure that the movie is as adolescent-friendly as possible, but to do that thet have to, apart from changing the rating, insert humour and lots of CGI and flashy stuff like that. If these are the rules they follow, then executives must think The Dark Knight is gonna be a total failure...

    Oh well, I'll still watch Hancock. It might not be as good as many of us would want it to be, but I can't be *that* bad either, can it?
  • Rob, you're right about it being about money and about having a larger audience with a PG13 rating, but I'd argue there are also a ton of flops that crash and burn after word of mouth spreads that it's a clusterfuck.

    Oh, and if you want further proof that poll testing to create a product doesn't always work, check out the Hillary Clinton campaign.
  • Eric Dale Eubanks
    William Peter Blatty's LEGION [released as EXORCIST III] starred George C. Scott, Jason Miller, and Brad Dourif --script was good, direction was subte, performances marvelous.

    The last 8 minutes or so seem to be a case of "producers knowing better" -- lotsa grue effects and sturm und drang that Blatty didn't really intend -- and which belong in a different movie altogether [lovely demonic voiceovers by Mrs. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst notwithstanding].

    The body of the film was subtle, creepy, and not an attempt to out-gross-out the original, but rather to get under the skin.

    Apparently the studios thought it would be better with some levitations, mutilations, and so on. The stuff added [at least it sure seems added] might be okay as the climax to an effectsy picture -- but Blatty was trying to make a supernatural drama, not a "stick-em-in-the-eye" picture.

    It's too bad that this happens, whenever it happens. Studios seem unable to trust their source material, can't seem to trust the directors, writers, etc. that they've engaged --- it's infuriating.
blog comments powered by Disqus