Why Hollywood Keeps Learning the Wrong Lessons

If you’ve studied writing for any length of time, you know that Hollywood loves formulas.

The second a movie succeeds, executives immediately start searching for the secret ingredient. Once they identify it, or think they do, studios spend years trying to replicate the result. Audiences, meanwhile, are subjected to a whole era of cinema defined by Hollywood’s new pet production strategy.

The process sounds reasonable. Yet the results often date themselves quickly.

Consider the visual differences between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. Or Tim Burton’s Batman and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

Those films look almost nothing alike. From their color palettes to their cinematography to their visual effects, they barely resemble one another at all.

Yet audiences embraced all of them.

And what lesson did studio executives take from their success?

Was it to let proven auteur directors pursue their creative vision? No.

Or that audiences respond favorably to beautifully photographed movies? Not so much.

Read the full post on Substack.