Once Upon A... Trend?

Well it really seems that there are a ludicrous amount of trends in the film idustry right, now, and im not talking 3D or a ridiculous amount of CGI or digital backlots. Film executives have become so enamoured by profits that they think of nothing of jumping on the latest trend in cinema beurocracy, ie; whatever last made a profit.

Really one of the most ridiculous trends has to be basing films on bord games, one at least hopes that this trend will have subsided with the critical and commercial disaster also known as battleship, where Razzie winner Rihanna acted as herself for two hours and everyone pretended that she was acting. Does it not seem more than a little ridiculous to base a movie on a game that has not been played by anyone below retirement age, and even the addition of an alien species couldn't push this film above a 50% approval rating. Many other films were reported to be in development, including movies based on Monopoly, Risk, Candyland, and the occult favorite Ouija. A remake of the cult classic Cluedo is even in developpment, in fact, Cluedo could even be seen as perhaps the genesis of all these projects, however given the lackluster response to battleship, it is unknown if these projects are still on the go.

Another HUGE trend is for movies based on fairytales, allegedly a response to Tim Burtons megahit, Alice In Wonderland. The last year alone gave us a string of films which were mostly flops based on fairy tales, including Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, Oz the Great and Powerful, Jack the Giant Slayer, and a host of others, Disney also has in development 3 more adaptations of animated classics, including Sleeping Beauty (Maleficent), Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella. Dreamworks also produced an animated film called Rise of the Guardians, which was nougt but a monumental flop, and resulted in the layoff of 300 staff from Dreamworks offices.  Do the math, you will see that many of these films were huge flops, with the exception of Alice and Oz, both produced by Disney oddly enough. All this really concludes that fairy tale based films are really nothing but a trend, and that viewers have relatively little interest in them.

The conclusion that we can really draw from all this is that studio executives really are more than anxious to make a profit, and will literally turn to the latest trend in order to make money, ironic given that very few of these films had big box office returns! Though is anyone else really excited to see Angelina Jolie in Maleficent?