memes

What is wrong with Ghost in the Shell?

OH MY GOD YES. Let's see, They Live (I actually really liked that one), Re-animator, Howard the Duck, and grave encounters series

Wonder Park was a bland, risk-averse animated film in 2019. A little girl's imaginary theme park (and coping mechanism for her grief) actually exists. Remake it as an ongoing animated series.

I agree with the premise, but your example is, like, spectacularly bad. The Ghost in the Shell movie you're thinking of, the recent one? THAT WAS A REMAKE THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE, IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The original is good. It didn't need a remake. You're literally talking about the opposite of your whole premise. They took a movie that was already good and made a remake of it, to make it suck, except for the fact that it had Scarlett Johansson in a very tight robot suit.

EDIT: nevermind! The title is an example of how it's currently done wrong. That makes so much sense, now that someone pointed it out.

I think the main thing here is that the original was such a flop that they don't want to repeat the error.

It's a hard sell to take an unsuccessful film (with admittedly a good underlying story/concept), and then convince the suits that this time will be different because reasons.

When they can remake an old hit, even if it's done poorly, most people will want to see it for themselves, if for no other reason than to join in on the chorus of hate. Those ticket sales are still sales. So whether people like it or not, they stand a good chance to turn a reasonable profit.

Meanwhile, films that did poorly, whether due to script issues, or poor execution of the underlying material or whatever, people will be more willing to let it pass them by unless they have it on his authority that it's good. Of course, not everyone will think this way, but it's the basis for judgement for most.

Additionally, by remaking a movie they can renew their copyright on the film, which is why, I believe that many of the older films are getting unnecessary remakes and sequels. Even if it's bad, it locks them in on copyrights for a while longer; so if they want to continue to profit from the property, whether through licensing, promos, merchandise, whatever, they can. The base point being: does anyone want to license this property? If not, the suits wouldn't care as much if the copyright expires.

Think about something like star wars. It had a pretty strong following at the first three films, even decades after the release, it was very likely that there were ongoing licensing deals. So to renew the copy rights, they remastered and rereleased it to theatres. Even if it flopped, it would have ensured they can continue their licensing deals for years to come. Since it didn't, they decided instead to expand the franchise and see if they can get more money from it, and they did. Which is how we ended up with the sequels and several spin off shows.

Simply put, it's just too risky to invest more money into properties to renew copyright when there's no interest in licensing the content in the first place. Many of the production companies are happy to let a property rot while they're collecting paycheques on licensing. It's all about the numbers.

In Time.