Mom, how do you make bad films?

If you ever take a class about the film industry or film distribution, there is something you will hear very often: despite the fact that it’s all about the money, no one sets out to make a bad movie. This is true. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to spend the next 3/6/12 months of his life working on something he will be ashamed of when the world will lays eyes on it. However, there still are a lot of people who go to bed at night knowing that they are more likely to get a Razzie than an Oscar.

So what happens, inside a studio, between the first words written with optimism on a blank page (more exactly a new Final Draft file) and that first screening that makes you understand you just threw away a few million of $?

Starocracy

As Ari Gold – Vincent Chase’s agent- once said in an episode of Entourage, "without Vince, this project is just a bunch of chopped up trees with words on them! Translation: at the Oscars, when they say a good script is essential for a film, there are very much full of crap. If a script -no matter how well-written- does not attract the interest of a famous actor or director, no one is willing to finance it. At first, this seems quite logical. If Jennifer Aniston, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher and the likes are interested in a project, it has to be a good one, right? Wrong. The main quality of an actor is to act. The main quality of a director is to know what to do with a camera. Recognizing a good story when you have one before your eyes is a more than an optional quality for many of them. Now you know how you get films like Love Happens, Bride Wars or What Happens in Vegas.

Idiocracy

I hope it’s nothing new for you when I say that a film doesn’t need to be intelligent for it to be succesful. After all, the world is not exclusively populated by PhDs in nuclear physics. And The Hangover is a prime example of a good movie that doesn’t cater to university professors. Unfortunately, there is a problem that producers, who are not stupid, have to face. What is the acceptable limit of stupidity that you cannot exceed? Because if you do exceed that limit, you’ll find yourself with Miss March, When in Rome, or Year One.

Merchandising (merchandising-ocracy didn't sound really good, so I stuck with a real word)

It's simple, instead of actually making a film, you just put together 2 hours of colorful moving images. Then you can sell toys, comics, t-shirts, key chains, caps, a new attraction in the park and all kinds of other stuff...
Example: Transformers, GI Joe, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Daredevil, Spiderman 3, Land Of The Lost
Coming soon: Monopoly movie, Barbie movie, Transformers 3

Sadly, the only solution to prevent these films from happening would be that ridicule could actually kill somebody. But according to my information, Michael Bay is not dead; he is actually a very rich man. The producers of Land of the Lost (a film that lost dozens of millions of dollars) are also alive and hope they will have more luck next time.

Are bad films going away any time soon?
No. Apparently, they’re not.