Of the 21 wide releases to come out this summer (May – August) based on original screenplays (i.e. not novels, true stories, comic books, crappy TV shows, other movies, a doodle on a cocktail napkin, etc.) 13 are comedies:
Made of Honor
What Happens in Vegas
You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
The Love Guru
Meet Dave
Step Brothers
Swing Vote
Pineapple Express
Tropic Thunder
The Rocker
The House Bunny
Disaster Movie
College
One is a drama (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), but that has more to do with the fact that almost no dramas come out in wide release in the summer. One is a horror film (The Happening). And two are action/adventure (Traitor, Hancock – although the latter might qualify as comedy).
Can you guess the genre with the next highest number of original ideas? Animated/Family:
Wall-E
Kung Fu Panda
Space Chimps
Fly Me to the Moon
Basically all of the animated family films from the summer were original screenplays, which is interesting when you consider that, early on, animated films were dominated by the adapted fairy tales of Disney. But I digress…
This confirms what I’ve suspected for a while. The last bastion for original screenplays, genre-wise, is the comedy. (We’ll revisit this in the fall vis a vis dramas, but I can tell you right now a looooooot of those are based on novels or occasionally plays).
As far as the action genre goes, this makes sense. In the 80′s, original screenplays had more of a shot because you had action stars (Schwarzenegger, Stallone, etc.) who sold the movie. It didn’t matter what the plot was. But as the tide shifted towards properties (Harry Potter, comic books) and away from vehicles, star power became irrelevant (who saw Spider-Man for Tobey Maguire?) and brand recognition became all. So just try selling an action screenplay now not based on an existing property. (And with no less than 42 comic books currently undergoing adaptation, this is only the beginning.)
Comedy, on the other hand, is still largely star-driven. There is little advantage in basing your comedy on an existing property because that’s not why people are going to see your film. Yes, about five people are interested in Land of the Lost because it’s Land of the Lost, but the other five million want to see Will Ferrell be Will Ferrell. With dinosaurs.
Here’s the rub. Out of those 13 releases, how many were actually good? I’ll admit, I haven’t seen most of them, but that’s because, on average, they scored about 39% on Rotten Tomatoes (that’s not including the last four, but I’m guessing Disaster Movie and College will actually bring that number down).
So, let’s review. If you saw an original screenplay in a movie theater this summer, you were probably watching a comedy. And it probably sucked.
Yay?
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