George Clooney, one of the smartest and most talented people in Hollywood today, has released another film to disappointing box office results.
His latest project, Tomorrowland, is a $180 million (Dh661m) movie from Disney that fizzled in its opening two weeks and will be marked down as a serious financial failure by the studio, despite its megastar leading man, its impeccable creative team and the almost too-perfect synergy with the worldwide Disney theme parks.
What went wrong? The movie has everything a movie needs – effects, great writing, on screen charisma, a thought-provoking theme – but it’s missing something important, something at its core, to draw audiences in and – this is crucial – get them to tell their friends.
I once worked with a very rich, very experienced television and film producer. The two of us were part of a large team assembled by a television network, and we were tasked with the job of figuring out how to fix a television sitcom.
The first episode of the show had yet to be filmed, but everyone involved with the project knew it was in trouble. After two weeks of rehearsals – most of which were attended by increasingly nervous studio and network executives, mindful that each day that the show refused to improve added roughly 15 per cent to its overall budget – a frantic call went out for help.
It was a pretty simple idea for a show. A long estranged brother and sister – she was an uptown, sophisticated attorney; he was a hillbilly from some benighted rural hovel – find each other after a near lifetime of separation, reunite, and try to become a family again. If you didn’t think about it too hard, it made a certain amount of sense. If you did think about it too hard, it was sort of creepy.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong, but my older and more experienced colleague identified the issue immediately. “The only way this show is going to work,” he said, “is if the two lead characters get together romantically. You’ve got to deal with the romantic tension you’re creating.”
There was some eye-rolling around the conference room table. The younger writers of the series clearly thought the older writer had slipped into early dementia and just didn’t understand the premise of the show.
“No, see, the thing is,” they said, “they’re brother and sister. So there isn’t any romantic angle here.”
He looked at them with a withering expression. “No, see, the thing is,” he said with a sarcastic twang, “it doesn’t matter what you say they are. They’re two attractive people on screen together and the audience wants a romance.”
“But this is a brother and sister story. If we throw that out, we’ve got nothing.”
“I’ve got news for you,” the old timer said. “You’ve got nothing right now.”
And with that he walked out, got in his Bentley, and drove home.
He was right, of course. The show was fatally flawed. What the audience wanted – what the on screen characters led them to want – the requirements of the story refused to deliver, and when the writers were unwilling to make the crucial adjustments, the show and the series were doomed. After a few more days of trying, the network eventually decided to pull the plug altogether. Not one frame of film was shot. Total cost: somewhere around $3 million.
“You’ve got nothing right now” is a pretty good way of analysing the chances of an entertainment industry product, either television or film. Often, especially in the movie business, the “something” a movie has is a star or two, or a famous director, or some other element that studio executives assume will pull the crowds into the cinema.
But what my wise (and very rich) friend meant when he said “You’ve got nothing” was: you’ve got nothing going on onscreen between the characters. The relationships aren’t electric or intense or high stakes enough. Despite what market researchers and studio executives will tell you, people go to the movies and watch television shows because they want to see characters interact with each other, they want to see two people change each other, mean something to each other.
Think about it: two best friends (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) or two blood enemies (Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader) or two mismatched romantic partners (Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) – in each case, the hot molten core of those pictures, despite the special effects and the star power of the actors, was the crackle of the relationships.
In George Clooney's latest movie, Tomorrowland, he plays an older, downcast man and his co-star, Britt Robertson, plays a young girl. She's too young to be a romantic partner. The two of them aren't related in any way. Between the two lead characters there's no crackle or high stakes or intensity of any kind, which leads the audience to shrug, which is the worst possible reaction because it means "you've got nothing right now".
And that means you’ve got nothing in the box office till.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
