Anghus Houvouras on Legendary Pictures’ decision to double down on Pacific Rim 2…
$400 million. That’s the line. The threshold your movie has to cross in order for your big budget studio tent-pole film to be considered for a franchise. The veritable break-even number for films that in this risk averse studio system will warrant consideration for another installment.
The recent announcement that Pacific Rim is going to get a sequel was something of a surprise seeing how the first film was seen as a disappointment. In the United States the film barely cracked the the $100 million mark. Internationally, it fared better bringing the worldwide total to $400 million. Given the movies’ sizable budget and P.R. campaign, the movie didn’t recover its initial investment. It was by no means a bomb, but you couldn’t exactly call it a hit either. It was an average film with an average performance, and yet here we are with Legendary Films considering doubling down on this disappointment. Why?
There are two schools of thought. Somewhere in an office, there are executives who believe that the average performance of the movie is a stepping stone to a higher plateau. That the first installment was so well received that there is more revenue to be earned. Much like the exponential growth between Nolan’s first and second Batman installments. Batman Begins took in a little less than $400 million or so worldwide. A few years later, The Dark Knight cleared a billion dollars. Something similar happened with this year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past which managed to improve significantly on previous X-Men films to the tune of an additional $200 million dollars. Proof that there is still potential growth even for established franchises.
The second philosophy would be that the bean crunchers now believe that $400 million is the floor for Pacific Rim 2: Rim Harder. That their worst case scenario is still a break-even venture. This wouldn’t be the first time a studio has doubled down on a movie that hasn’t performed to expectations. Hell, it isn’t even the first time it’s happened to Guillermo Del Toro. Hellboy was a movie beloved by geeks but generally ignored by mainstream audiences. Universal doubled down on the failed attempt at a new franchise with Hellboy II: The Golden Army and the end result: A slight improvement but a film that fought to make it’s money back. Ever since the unsuccessful second installment, fans have been clamoring for Hellboy 3. At one point I would have said that was impossible, but in this day and age nothing seems impossible. Franchises no longer need to be successful to be given new life. They just need to achieve average.
There are a number of films like this in the 2000’s. Movies that orbited average and were given second installments. Movies like the rebooted Clash of the Titans. The original made almost $500 million dollars against a budget of $125 million. Even though the film wasn’t very well liked, the threshold had been crossed and a second installment was put into production. The result: the equally bland Wrath of the Titans barely crossed $300 million and the franchise was dead. The same fate befell the Percy Jackson films that managed to get a sequel after a painfully average first film.
There’s a number of franchises that fall into this category. Studios are betting on the increasing international box office as a potential launch pad for their average franchises. Pacific Rim joins other films like Prometheus and Snow White & the Huntsman actively being developed for new installments in spite of an average performance and polarizing reactions from audiences.
There are film series which continue to get new installments in spite of a chronic case of average-itis. The Terminator films, The solo Wolverine films, The Narnia series, The new Die Hard sequels, and the G.I. Joe series immediately spring to mind. These series continue to be franchised because it’s a perceived ‘guaranteed return’. Break-even is still better than a loss. No one gets fired as long as you’re in the black. Even if you’re inching your way in.
The problem for these average franchises is that they’re doing little to contribute to the pop culture landscape. They are perpetuating the idea that intellectual properties can become perpetual even if they are underwhelming to both audiences and the studios producing them.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with doubling down and franchising the average. But it continues to validate the idea that Hollywood is so averse to something new, that they’re willing to double down on disappointments because it produces less risk than a new idea. There are those will reply to this argument by saying ‘Pacific Rim was a new intellectual property’, but was it really? Borrowing so heavily from anime and manga, cribbing material from kaiju films that have been so popular in other parts of the world. Pacific Rim westernized a lot of existing concepts and was fairly average on many levels. And yet, Guillermo Del Toro gets another chance to play in this toybox because Hollywood seems content to get in bed with the stories they know, rather than the ones they don’t, much like he did with Hellboy.
But did he earn it? Maybe. No one is accusing Del Toro of not being a hard worker, but it used to be that success was required for a filmmaker to be given a return ticket to a burgeoning franchise. With Hellboy and now Pacific Rim, Del Toro is evolving into a filmmaker who continues to be rewarded in spite of his inability to produce a substantial hit.
It only becomes a problem when cinemas are overrun with average franchises being sustained through life support because they’d rather double down on the familiar. But is this fear of failure that studios are using to chart which films are funded be applauded? Or should we see it for what it is:
Hollywood hedging their bets. And that’s disappointing.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
Originally published July 9, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
