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The purchase of "Mowgli" at the 11th hour of Netflix was hailed as a turning point for the streaming service and as a sign that taste changes have left big-budget studio films fighting for justify a traditional theatrical release. 19659002] But it's also a recognition that some type of franchise hunting has only reduced returns. For a time, Warner Bros., the studio that sold "Mowgli", had largely bet on the exploitation of intellectual property that had fallen into the public domain. The hope was that clbadic fantasy stories could be reinvented for the modern audience, inspiring epic films that could lead to sequels and that would hit multiplexes with "brand awareness". They also had the benefit of having creators dead. This meant that studios would not have to engage in a compliant, complicated author (see: EL James) or meddle with long-standing rights litigation (see: Tolkien's Estate) [19659002]. as a bro-y version of "Sherlock Holmes" that featured a brawler Robert Downey Jr. as the most famous inhabitant of Baker Street, but it also led to costly failures. Guy Ritchie's "King Arthur" gonad, Joe Wright's "steampunk" "Pan" and Bryan Singer's dramatically inactive "Jack the Giant Slayer" all exploded, costing the studio hundreds of millions of dollars. Only "The Legend of Tarzan", David Yates 'attempt to regain the boy's spirit of adventure in Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels, has managed to get into the dark. With $ 356.7 million worldwide, it has barely recovered its cost of production of $ 180 million. A return to the jungle seems unlikely.
In Relation
At one point, Warner Bros. had a version of "Beauty & the Beast" in development, but this was killed well before Disney does not launch its own remake of 2017. It must be said that many of these films were initiated under a different regime, the one in which Greg Silverman directed the production and Sue Kroll directed the marketing and distribution. Both left the studio. The current studio head, Toby Emmerich, seems less enamored of movie elves and trolls, perhaps because he's been burned by "Jack the Giant Slayer," a film that he oversaw as a filmmaker. Former head of New Line
. by stiffening the fancy vaults. Universal has championed the success of "Snow White & the Huntsman", reshaping her heroine into an armored warrior, and Relativity countered with "Mirror," Mirror, "a less successful version of the fairy tale that seemed to have been designed by Liberace's decorator. 39. Interior. "Snow White" was a significant enough success to lead to a sequel in 2016, "The Huntsman Winter's War," but not loved enough to prevent this film from flipping and leading to a steep drop
A problem with this strategy Walt Disney Studios has been busy in recent years producing live-action versions of its animated clbadics.Many of these animation films were adaptations of this same treasure of fairy tales. and adventurous stories that other studios had hoped to exploit. "Mowgli", for example, had the unenviable task of following Disney's live action version of "The Jungle Book" – a film that drew critical raves t nearly $ 1 billion at the box office. Was Rudyard Kipling's world so rich that listeners would come back more than two years after making $ 15 to see "The Jungle Book"?
The answer seems to be no. Warner Bros. tried to differentiate his "Mowgli" by pushing him like a grimace against the fable "man cub". At CinemaCon, director Andy Serkis promoted the film as a "darker narrative" and an "epic story of a child turned warrior". Internally, Warner Bros. employees seemed less confident, admitting privately that they were facing a difficult climb. to see the movie in theaters when it opened in October. Last Friday's decision to sell the film to Netflix seemed to be a bit of white flag waving, although "Mowgli" was done is a perplexity.
The sale of Netflix is also a recognition of finding compelling stories that can justify a big-screen release is a tricky business. It takes more than just a dive into the Grimm brothers or Kipling.
It takes luck.
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