Every week, I answer a question from the Monday Act Four Live chat in the Wednesday edition of this newsletter. You can read the transcript of this week’s chat here,and...
| |  | | | | Alyssa Rosenberg on culture and politics | | | | | | Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in "It." (Brooke Palmer/Warner Bros. Pictures) | Every week, I answer a question from the Monday Act Four Live chat in the Wednesday edition of this newsletter. You can read the transcript of this week’s chat here,and submit questions for the Sept. 18 chat here. And while you’re at it, check out the preview episode for my new podcast miniseries, “The American War,” here. It’s a deep dive into Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s new documentary series “The Vietnam War,” based on extensive interviews with Burns and Novick as well as their colleagues. But before we get there, a chatter wants to know about this weekend’s new breakout movie, an adaptation of an old book. How do you make sense of the box office domination from “It” over the weekend? Is this an anomaly fueled by years of not having an adaptation besides the 1990 miniseries, and a lucky release date without much competition? Or are there lessons to be learned by studios from this moving forward? I’m not a box office analyst, unlike my friend Scott Mendelson, but it seems to me that a couple of things set “It” up to be a huge hit. First, this has been a pretty good year for horror, with “Get Out” having a breakout run at the box office. Second, there’s been a lot of percolating nostalgia, and “Stranger Things” set up the whole period-kids-deal-with-the-uncanny vibe that I’m sure “It” benefited from. Third, I think the book and original adaptation are very much loved, so “It” came in with enormously high brand awareness. And honestly, it has been just an awful summer for movies, just completely dreadful. I think there was probably a lot of pent-up energy, people who hadn’t gone to the movies in quite a while and were eager to see something that might interest them. “It” probably benefited from that, especially with the other factors I’ve already mentioned. I don’t know that there are hugely consequential lessons for Hollywood here other than the other ones that are obvious from this summer. Sequels will only take you so far, especially if subsequent installments are bad. Genuinely surprising people is good. Adapting things that people genuinely love, and have loved for a long time, and doing reasonably well at it will probably bring people to the movie theater. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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