Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business by Lynda Obst

There was nothing about it they could relate to.”
    WHAT DOESN’T TRAVEL
    • Rule 1: Chemistry on paper does not equal chemistry on-screen.
    Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, two of the very biggest (if not the biggest) international stars, couldn’t save The Tourist, because he looked like a girl and she looked like a boy, though on paper they looked amazing together. The much higher international box office numbers—$210 million, compared to$64 million domestic—couldn’t help the movie break even because it cost so much for its astronomical budget and advertising costs.
    • Rule 2: Sports movies can’t jump—even soccer movies.
    People would rather go to a soccer game than see a movie about one, the better to drink and brawl and riot. Forget baseball, basketball and football; forget the whole thing. This is why it took even a star of the magnitude of Brad Pitt so long to get the movie Moneyball made. Well done, Sony, for not caring and making it anyway!
    • Rule 3: Dramas that explore, glorify or otherwise delve into our national history bore everyone but us.
    They like their local and national history, not union-organizing stories, Green Beret movies, America in Iraq, name-the-country-where-we-triumph-in-sports-or-war stories, or Lincoln stories (with or without a vampire).
    • Rule 4: Minimal awareness is insufficient—for example, second-tier caped crusaders such as Green Lantern and Green Hornet. Maybe green things don’t work.
    Universal just canceled Clue (which my late, great partner Debra Hill already made once for Uni in the eighties; I was her exec—we flew to Parker Bros. in England to get the rights. Everything old is new again), as well as a number of other movies based on Hasbro games (for instance, Magic: The Gathering ). Ouija went from a tentpole to a tadpole with a budget under $5 million, to be made by the producer of Paranormal Activity, the abnormally successful faux-found-footage horror series about a couple who move into a haunted house; the first in the Paranormal franchise was made in 2009 for $15 million and grossed $193 million worldwide. Likewise, movies based on video gameshave an iffy track record (just as video games based on movies often fail). The two businesses don’t yet understand each other. One reason is that movie people don’t give their game rights to the best game developers, but instead to in-house lackeys. Great game developers who try to work with the studios or savvy filmmakers don’t get access to the film process early enough to make the games cool. When it works well. But video games are not board games, which may be “Old Empire.” Mere awareness may not be sufficient. Awareness means games like Mortal Kombat, World of Warcraft, Tomb Raider, etc. We all have to be completely internationally aware, like Jell-O or Kleenex, if Kleenex were a video game being played by thirteen- to seventeen-year-old fan boys all over the world.
    • Rule 5: Mixed genres don’t work. Maybe if you’re too many things, you’re nothing at all.
    Cowboys & Aliens . Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter . Wash-up ideas that look good on paper, but ridiculous on-screen. All in all, after a rare bidding war for the latter property among studios, the “winner,” Fox, ultimately eked out $101 million worldwide on the picture, with domestic earning less than the movie’s $66 million production budget.
    • Rule 6: No cowboys, no hats, no horses, no cattle, and no dust are allowed. With aliens or without.
    • New Rule: Apparently the above works with Tarantino only, or there’s a new black/cowboy genre. Guessing Tarantino.
    BROADS ABROAD
    With Sandra Bullock, we’re in very good shape. Meryl Streep, mon Dieu, mais oui . Jennifer Lawrence, due to the magic comboof franchise ( The Hunger Games ) and Oscar. Angelina is huge. She has big international gazoogies. And the more she sticks her right leg out at the Oscars, the bigger they get. They love our movie stars; they’ve always