Hollywood By the Rules
In the year to come, as in years past, Hollywood filmmakers will play it safe with sequels and remakes
BY LAUREN GOLDSTEIN
Somehow D.W. Griffith restrained himself from making The Rebirth of a Nation. David O. Selznick never produced Even More Gone With the Wind. And, nearly 20 years after the original, Steven Spielberg has yet to greenlight E.T. 2: The Extra-special Extra-Terrestrial. Didn't these guys know anything about Hollywood? In modern Tinseltown, the really creative executive is the one who dares to say, "You know that thing we did last year, made all that money? Let's do it again." So it is in 2001. The crystal ball is a rear-view mirror. That's Rule No. 1 for this, and any, movie year: to look forward, look back.
Hollywood loves sequels. It is the simplest recipe: take what worked, and add more dough. Some sequels flop, but when a déjà-view movie hits, it hits big. In 1999, the three top-grossing films were further installments in the Star Wars, Toy Story and Austin Powers franchises. This year The Mummy will return; Dr. Dolittle will do more; Hannibal Lecter will again be dining out (on cervelles humaines); and the beasties of Jurassic Park will, third time around, finally get off the island — we hope.
Hollywood also loves remakes — updatings of favorite movies or, these days, TV shows. Thus the top hits of the year 2000 were Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (a remake of the immortal Chuck Jones TV cartoon of 1966) and Mission: Impossible 2, which had the added piquancy of being a sequel to a remake (of the 1966 spy series). With the supply of '60s TV shows nearly depleted, one fearless auteur is now remaking a mediocre movie from 1960. Steven Soderbergh's gloss on the old Rat Pack caper Ocean's Eleven stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Matt Damon.
Rule No. 2: Don't stop thinkin' about yesterday. Time was when directors thought about the future; in 1968, Stanley Kubrick made the visionary 2001. That science-fiction year has now arrived. And what is Tim Burton — sort of the modern kinky-cool Kubrick — doing? Remaking a movie from 1968: Planet of the Apes, with Mark Wahlberg in the Charlton Heston role. Ho-hum? No: hope. Remember what Burton, a vigorous imagist, did with Sleepy Hollow: fashion a familiar tale into a Gothic delight.
Rule No. 3: Anything can be remade. Some hit movies, like Titanic, don't lend themselves to sequels. (Ship sinks; star drowns.) But never underestimate a mogul's ingenuity in going where others have gone before. Ergo, Pearl Harbor, a zillion-dollar epic from producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
The story doesn't seem promising: Japanese bomb Hawaii, Americans die. But, as a Disney honcho explained to us, the attack on Pearl Harbor is only the middle section of a larger drama. First there's the love story (Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale); then the attack; finally the survivors join Jimmy (not Dr.) Dolittle's raid on Tokyo. World War II — and this time it's personal! All right, that didn't really happen. But as the Disney exec told us: "It's not history. It's a movie."
Rule No. 4: Spielberg. The man can do anything. Right now he's collaborating on a film with Kubrick, who died two years ago. It's called A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), from an old Kubrick script idea, and stars Haley Joel Osment, the kid with the sixth sense.
Rule No. 5: Tom Hanks. He makes a risky film; the smart people think this is the one that will tank; and it goes stratospheric. So look for Road to Perdition, with Hanks as a hitman, to be his 11th consecutive "surprise hit."
Rule No. 6: If you can't get new ideas, get new people. This year's hopes are pinned on the luscious Spaniard Penélope Cruz. She'll co-star with Johnny Depp (in the drug drama Blow), Nicolas Cage (in an adaptation of the novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin) and Tom Cruise (in Vanilla Sky, Hollywood's — hmmm — remake of an earlier Cruz thriller, Open Your Eyes).
Rule No. 7: Remember Lend-Lease! Britain owes the U.S., and now it's payback time. Tremble as Hollywood films two Brit fantasy classics. The Fellowship of the Ring, first book of the Tolkien trilogy, is being filmed by Peter Jackson (all right, he's a Kiwi) and an international cast. We'll cross our fingers, while fretting uncontrollably about the Harry Potter series that has been put in the care of Hollywood sentimentalist Chris Columbus. And if the U.K. isn't insulted yet, know that Bridget Jones' Diary is before the cameras, with Renée Zellweger — a slim Texan — as the plumpish Londoner.
So 2001 will be the year of sequels and remakes, Pearl Harbor and Penélope. All of this could be true — or none of it. Because there is one final Hollywood Rule, from screenwriter William Goldman: "Nobody knows anything."
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