Transcript: Let's Hold an IP Swap Meet

Rob Long's lesson for Hollywood from his garage sale

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

The movie Snow White is apparently not doing well, and I have zero opinions on that, and you’re welcome.

I was mildly curious about the movie’s performance — I’m in the business, after all — and so I looked at the various reports about its box office take and I’m not really much clearer on the why’s than I was before, though I did learn that about 65 percent of movie ticket sales are in theaters in blue states, which sort of makes sense when you think about urban population areas and where they are, but that Snow White’s box office seems to come from more red states than expected. Which may mean that everyone who is saying that the movie is too woke is wrong, and that it’s not woke enough.

But as I said, I have no insight here, because I haven’t seen it. Older single man going to see Snow White alone in a theater is probably not optically good, so I won’t see it, and seeing it is really the only way to know why it works or doesn’t.

We always forget that part, when we start talking about box office or ratings or audience makeup. We always the forget the only part that really matters, the is it a good movie part.

But what does it represent, what failure of the process, when a movie doesn’t do well, or a bunch of movies from different studios seem to miss the mark? We take it for granted, all of us in the entertainment industry — and that now includes practically everybody, and the assorted shareholders and stakeholders — we all take it for granted that there’s a system here, a work flow that leads in a pretty direct line from deal memo to box office success.

When a movie doesn’t work — in Snow White’s case, some live action remake — there’s an urge to say, okay, well, now we know — live action remakes don’t work. Comedies don’t work anymore, I read recently, though I’m pretty sure they do.