What Backrooms Tells Us About the Future of Hollywood | The Backdrop

Presenting The Devil Wears Prada 2 as a plucky underdog "workplace comedy lega-sequel made for under 100m dollars" makes it out to be more mundane than it is. Although I haven't seen it, and sure, decades-later nostalgia cash-ins can easily fall face first into a toilet, this is a film that has the backing of an ultra-cuturally impactful original. It's made with the same ultra-famous actors (who hilariously barely look any different 20 years later) and has crazy recognition whilst not being overexposed from a marketing perspective like superheroes are. So I don't think it fits in so well with Darren's theme this week of "plucky underdog films beating out the entrenched establishment". It is the entrenched establishment even if they didn't spend crazy money on making it

Mentioning the need for diversity of genre and budgets made me wonder...is this new YouTube cohort also /really/ male and mostly white? I confess to total ignorance on the YouTube movie scene so hopefully there is also a cabal of (e.g.) young female directors on there about to get their opportunities...but...I guess we'll see...? I am excited to hear from new, young voices though. Good piece!

At the mid-way point as the video talked about the the new-generation movies of the late 60s/70s - I couldn't help but think of when that period drew to a close and remembered the wiki write-up on Sorcerer (some irony in it being a box-office failure attributed to Star Wars) and sure enough it was included in the clip montage! Not precisely the same thesis, but it stood out to me when the wiki argued that the legacy of Sorcerer's box office failure was the 'demise of unrestrained writer-director creative control in favor of studio-governed film-making.' I haven't watched that movie myself, but I want to check it out on the basis of The Wages of Fear still being absolutely phenomenal and I'm curious to see how Friedkin remade it.

I think we are entering the post-punk era of social media indie filmmaking. The YouTube, tiktok and Instagram short films had a very punk vibe of experimental film making. And now they are starting to become the new industry as it grows with with the audience that loved them on those platforms.

I know Avengers is still probably going to make a billion dollars. Probably. I’m less sure after what happened to Mandalorian and Grogu. But it would be hilarious if it got dumpstered by, I dunno, some sixteen year old’s adaptation of Mouthwashing.