Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 02:47:20 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Could something like the James Bond franchise succeed today?

Started by Puffin Chunks, October 30, 2010, 05:46:22 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Puffin Chunks

I've been watching The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret recently and one of the things that I have found most interesting is the transposing of a US sitcom to a UK environment. This got me thinking about other transatlantic crossovers, particularly James Bond which is (/was) essentially a UK production which has seen massive success in The States over the years leading to possibly the longest mainstream movie[nb]fuck you Firefox spell-checker... movie is a word. And not including 'Firefox' in your dictionary just makes you look insecure[/nb] franchise to date (22 instalments so far, 23 if you include the unofficial Never Say Never Again).

Now, forgetting for a moment that movie franchises do not really exist these days to the extent they did back in the 50s and 60s, would something like the James Bond franchise see the same success in the USA if it had been produced for the first time today? It just seems to me that some smarmy 'Brit' saving the world from whatever global threat is dreamt up wouldn't be as acceptable to an American audience as it may have been in the past... certainly not to the extent that it would become the box office smash spawning numerous sequels that it has become. Over the years the franchise has become somewhat more Americanised, but I still believe it remains quintessentially British.

It seems to me that over the years America has become much more closed-minded about accepting foreign imports, even if they share a common language. I'm not sure that this is for any particularly concious reason, but more a cultural shift over the years. I suspect that the US syndication and advertising model for TV has contributed towards this in some ways, with the networks looking to maximise advertising revenue and milking successful shows for all their worth, generating as many episodes as possible. This just isn't obtainable with imported TV which is likely to have a short run and have an already defined start and end. It makes much more sense for the network to try and recreate the successes so that they can maintain ownership and keep generating revenue (see The Office). Of course, for every Office there are a myriad of failures (Coupling, Life on Mars etc.), but even with those failures I think more episodes were created than ever existed in the UK versions[nb]but maybe not, I haven't checked[/nb]. This, in turn, has lead to more closed minded attitudes towards foreign programming as the public just do not get the exposure. The amount of complaints I read about Americans not understanding the 'thick British accent', when quite often the accents aren't that strong at all (I think I've even seen it levelled at the IT Crowd and the UK Office, which I find staggering) is surely evidence of this lack of exposure to other English speaking cultures.

Have things really changed that much since the 60s? Has the TV model really changed that much? I'm sure in the past programmes like Dr Who, The Avengers, The Prisoner, Are You Being Served were broadcast on US network television[nb]I wasn't there, I'm prepared to be corrected, maybe they were on PBS[/nb], or are the reasons more far reaching? Ultimately does this mean that James Bond couldn't succeed if created today?

Or am I just talking a load of shit?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


Puffin Chunks

Bollocks.

Posting at 4 in the morning is not a good plan.

Pedro_Bear

Harry Potter is a US Time Warner franchise, riding on the back of an aggressively marketed print success, with a very media-friendly authoress playing her role script-perfect. Her widely-promoted insistence that the film be made with British actors is as much a part of the marketing as the posters. Had the producers felt they would make more money using US talent, we'd have very different films, JK's naive wishes be damned.[nb]This exact same synergy strategy was employed to promote the independent Twilight series with a much weaker set of novels and a much less media-friendly authoress, to a still hugely financially profitable success. That the producers lacked the punch of Time Warner didn't stop this marketing approach from working.[/nb]

Quote from: Puffin Chunks on October 30, 2010, 05:46:22 PM
Have things really changed that much since the 60s?

Yep. The UK doesn't have a coherent film industry any more, for a start.


There is far more money to be made by US producers purchasing the right to remake tv shows and films, taking complete control of projects, their marketing and their merchandising. Consumer products are synergised with other consumer products, soundtracks being the more obvious example, along with product placement on screen.  Star names can be positioned within products to maximise marketing and sales. And so on.

Why miss out on a money making opportunity by importing a foreign product as is? There's no business like show business.


Bond would be fine if he came from a successful bestselling series of contemporary books. The Bourne Trilogy of quite boring books and films demonstrates this. The main difference is that Bond would have only five year's worth of films, thereabout, as this is how long the book trade appears to market new fiction writers these days. Flemming would have to be media-friendly, that sort of thing. I don't know if the original Bond books are considered classics or bestsellers of their time. If they are, then Bond might still get made for the first time successfully, but how many films would make it to the screen is still debatable. Basically, we'd have the current reimagining of Bond on the big screen, for as may films as this is going to run with the current arc.

Films of the ambience of Star Trek The Motion Picture simply would not get made today if the tv franchise was being plundered for the first time. We'd have exactly Star Trek.[nb]And Star Wars would be shit.[/nb]




Puffin Chunks

Interesting stuff, cheers Pedro. As well as seemingly having my entire point de-constructed by two words back there, I was actually involved (in an extremely minor way) in the production of the first 2 HP films, so it's doubly embarrassing that I forgot about it! But ultimately it is a US Production that happens to be shot over here using British actors. That said, it still pretty much destroys my argument if you're looking at it from an 'Americans don't like foreign things' perspective,  but doesn't if looking at it from a 'successful foreign import spawns successful franchise' point of view as technically it isn't a foreign import. Was Dr. No a wholly UK Production? I'm not sure either way.

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on October 30, 2010, 10:47:32 PM

Yep. The UK doesn't have a coherent film industry any more, for a start.


Why is this? Lack of investment? Lack of demand within the UK for home-grown films, with most people wanting to see US blockbusters? Or does it link back to my initial post that the US market are less willing to import foreign produced films? I would imagine that this would be a huge revenue stream, and if it slowly disappeared over the years then it could conceivable completely destroy the industry.

kidsick5000

A long running action/adventure film series being a purely UK venture? Nope
But then it's hard for anywhere to make a long running film series.

The key to the transition from page to screen for Bond was it being 'the continuing adventures'.
Bond didn't particularly age, There was no end in the books.
Potter is finite, there's a definite arc throughout and it has a conclusion.
Technically, the Bourne series could continue indefinitely. They barely followed the books beyond the title, and with Bourne being established as simply a codename (as some want "James Bond" to be established) the possibilities are there for a long series.

But any film franchise now struggles to get past 3 before the 5-10year gap deemed needed for a reboot.
Either that or it just takes too long to make a filmnow. Bonds used to be out every two years. Unless some kind of back-to-back plan is created, three appears to be the limit. Even then it's a huge risk.

Look at the new Star Trek. The success of that looks like it took the creators by surprise because they made no allowance in their schedules to make another anytime soon. Sweet in a way, to concentrate on one at a time but bewildering too.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Hollywood doesn't have any fucking ideas, so yes, any franchise from anywhere could work if they thought it would make money.

It looks like they've finally made the third Narnia film (which on another subject seems to have regressed in cgi terms rather than improved, and done that while using more of it!), and the superhero movie conveyor belt is still being bled to death, as are the horror sequels.

They are averse to an original screenplay (original in theme as well as it just being the work of someone new rather than an adapted, syndicated, hacked-out piece of shit).

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Puffin Chunks on October 30, 2010, 05:46:22 PM
... particularly James Bond which is (/was) essentially a UK production which has seen massive success in The States over the years leading to possibly the longest mainstream movie[nb]fuck you Firefox spell-checker... movie is a word. And not including 'Firefox' in your dictionary just makes you look insecure[/nb] franchise to date (22 instalments so far, 23 if you include the unofficial Never Say Never Again)....
Bond is still rather behind the highly successful Blondie franchise, which notched up 28 different films – the first movie also led to an American radio sitcom, which lasted 11 years.

You could argue that Bond is longer running because it's been going for more years, but the Godzilla franchise started a few years earlier before Dr No, is still going and makes up more films.