#studio executives

You could give them to other people to watch. You could show a movie to a group of ten friends. You had already paid for the tapes, so who was going to care what you did with them in that time?

Similarly, if you have already paid for a Netflix/Max/Disney+/Paramount+/whatever subscription, you're getting charged monthly for that. The companies have already decided how much it is worth to rent their entire catalogue to you for a month.

So during your "rental period" for these movies and shows, who are they to say what you do with them? If you have someone over for Netflix and chill, they aren't part of your household, so should they not be able to watch a movie you are renting? If you want your friends to see something cool, who cares if they live a town away? That movie is still being paid for, and your "rental" will renew the following month when you pay your bill.

There tends to be that sentiment that studios don’t make anything original anymore.

But that’s not true; even if the ratio of originality to safe IP has tipped dramatically in the direction of the latter.

But I think we need to have less conversations about which IP is getting a new installment, and more conversations about marketing.

See, the problem isn’t simply that new ratio—it’s that only the safe IP gets the big marketing push. (Sometimes even safe IP doesn’t when it needs to of course, look at Transformers One).

But essentially, studios create a perception of which movies and shows and such they are making by which they make people aware of. If people are more aware of safe IP and less aware of original stories, it will feel like original stories aren’t getting made regardless of how many are actually out at the time. (Though again, it is a known factor that it is harder to get original stories green lit today than it used to be and that shouldn’t be dismissed).

And of course the frustrating part is that the safe IP needs that awareness far less. A smaller marketing budget can go a lot farther if the thing being marketed gets people excited by its mere existence.

All together this creates a cycle of original stories often experiencing less success, which then feeds studio exec data crunching with numbers that people prefer sequels and franchises and don’t want to give new movies a chance.

"We think your novel will make an excellent kids' series."

"How about [Completely wrong actor] to play the part of [Your hero(ine)]?"

"We love it, but can we cut the [Entire point of the whole damn book]?"

Hey, Hollywood. How about you trust that we did our best to write a good book and at least try to be faithful to the actual content?

Not that I've got close to getting there, yet. But I have seen enough books murdered by the hollywood process to know a little something. Between whitewashing, cutting exposition in favour of big boom or T&A, or just plain rewriting the whole damn thing... It's a wonder you still call it movie rights.

It should be called "Title rights" because the thing that winds up on the screen has little to no resemblance to the original.