business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make money'

[jefferiestubes8]

Scifi Scoop has a post called
Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make money. More please!

director Christopher Nolan came up with his Inception which can be termed as a challenging, daring, cerebral science fiction thriller. And guess what? It managed to earn as much as $60 million over the weekend, thereby hitting the high end of nearly every industry estimate for the film.

Perhaps we'll see more scifi films at the cinema in 2012-2016 (since Hollywood runs in cycles).
Of course they will be scifi action or scifi horror or scifi thriller films...
I'm going to see Inception with my brother tomorrow night and am pretty excited. I was told it kind of requires multiple viewings due to complexity of story elements. (That's one of the reasons I liked Primer.)

I'm already looking forward to next year's "Contagion" 3-D virus thriller dir. by Steven Soderbergh .

 

[bigdaddy]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

But it's not space opera sci-fi, it's barely even sci-fi at all. It's just a good movie and it proves good movies can make money.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

That's nice - but to me, the real problem is getting good sci fi on TV to make money.

But it's not space opera sci-fi

I'd call Avatar space opera, and I think it did okay for itself. Not to mention that lil Star Trek flick last year.

However, I don't see why a story about people manipulating other people's dreams is "less" sci fi than a story about people flying around in spaceships to alien worlds.

 

[bigdaddy]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

However, I don't see why a story about people manipulating other people's dreams is "less" sci fi than a story about people flying around in spaceships to alien worlds.

Avatar and Star Trek LOOKED nice, but story wise were jokes.

Because we are much closer to going inside people's dreams than we are to get on space ships. I doubt we will have space ships like Avatar and Star Trek within the next 100-150 years, but I bet we will be able to go into people's minds within 25. The only thing really stopping it is the ethics of it.

And I guess you never had a shared dream, we are already in the Inception world.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

to me, the real problem is getting good sci fi on TV to make money.

It is a major issue with scifi fans as we want more product on TV but the model is based on ratings. Sci Fi genre does not get great ratings.
Perhaps that will change with Nielsen's new abilities with DVRs and Hulu and network website downloads included in the counts for live+3 and live+7 day totals...
A channel that has a niche of Sci Fi refuses to program only science fiction genre television [COUGH] SyFy [COUGH] and include entirely unrelated programming.


In keeping with the thread title on topic I hope more scifi films get greenlit for the cinema. Maybe even some sci fi horror films set on space ships ala Event Horizon (1997) & the Alien prequel due after 2011.

 

[Rii]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

No shit?

The incessant whining of genre fans for 'more' aside, sci-fi is everywhere. And a lot of it is successful.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

Because we are much closer to going inside people's dreams than we are to get on space ships.

Near-future sci fi is not "less" sci fi than the wildly speculative stuff. I won't comment on the shared-dream stuff except to say that I suspect that did happen to me and someone I know recently...fairly innocuous but weirdly coincidental...

It is a major issue with scifi fans as we want more product on TV but the model is based on ratings. Sci Fi genre does not get great ratings.
Perhaps that will change with Nielsen's new abilities with DVRs and Hulu and network website downloads included in the counts for live+3 and live+7 day totals...

It'll do the opposite, show advertisers that sci fi fans zap ads. Then they'll all move their ads to the cop shows whose fans can't use a DVR.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

Yeah, just because it doesn't have ships doesn't make it any less sci-fi. Sci-fi incorporates many elements, many of them being contemporary. Sci-Fi is kind of like Science of the impossible, bringing ideas to life that would otherwise be impossible.

 

[bigdaddy]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

^ And what I'm saying is it's not impossible, thus making it science and not fiction.

 

[Samurai8472]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

Make way for "Inception" the TV series produced by Chris Nolan.

 

[Kegg]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

Inception is very much a sci-fi film; and as observed space opera (Star Trek) and its related genre of planetary romance (Avatar) did damn well at the box office last year.

A better point of comparison would be, say, The Matrix; a financially successful film that combined bending reality and fantasy with an action vehicle... only, candidly, Inception is a bit smarter then the Wachkowski opus. It's a proof that with the right action and statkes, even films that deal with psychological dream-based sci-fi can make money.

Which you know is a good thing.

 

[Mr Light]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

I do wonder how much box office grab Inception would have gotten if it wasn't by "The Director of The Dark Knight".

 

[Kegg]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

I do wonder how much box office grab Inception would have gotten if it wasn't by "The Director of The Dark Knight".

It wouldn't have even been made, quite likely.

 

[Samurai8472]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

I do wonder how much box office grab Inception would have gotten if it wasn't by "The Director of The Dark Knight".

The same could be said about having a batman film named "The Dark Knight"

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

But it's not space opera sci-fi, it's barely even sci-fi at all. It's just a good movie and it proves good movies can make money.

Uh... how is a movie about going inside other people's dreams not sci-fi? Avatar and Star Trek are also sci-fi. What, are we going to turn this thread into another pissing match about what can rightly call itself "sci-fi" and what can't, to placate the delicate sensibilities of a minority of elitist nerds? I'll pass.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Re: business aspect - 'Inception proves good sci-fi movies can make mo

Of course there is the flip side to this...
An article from today:

I've noticed over the past six months or so is a massive uptick in the number of sci-fi movies heading into production

Before you start thinking "there have always been a lot of sci-fi films," here's a rundown of the titles I'm referring to:

[see article]

I can't help but wonder what the marketplace will look like once James Cameron finally gets around to releasing Avatar 2 at the end of 2014.

Hollywood Has Sci-Fi On the Mind: Are They Risking Audience Fatigue?

We all know things come in cycles in Hollywood but sci-fi has always been a smaller audience.
It's sci-fi-actioners that become the Summer tentpole films and the article doesn't discuss that. It only mentions
comic book (sci-fi) type films as well as

More recently in the horror genre we had the "torture porn" phenomenon, where knockoffs like Hostel, Captivity and The Collecter shamelessly tried to capitalize on the surprise success of the Saw franchise. That seems to have passed now that Paranormal Activity has made low-budget found-footage ghost stories all the rage. Enter Area 51, The Devil Inside and Insidious.

What do you guys think about the actual sci-fi films and sci-fi action films in the next 5 years?