Welcome to the Jamboree, my weekly series of quick(ish) takes on the industry’s passing parade. Below, we’ll get to my latest discovery of the Penske-led Golden Globes staging an event in a country with an authoritarian leader. But first, happier news on the home front:
Surprise Guest Appearance: Hollywood Showmanship!
I had a sort of semi-hallucinatory experience in the past week: In just the past few days, I saw not one, but two big-budget, sprawling, star vehicle, non-franchise movies on large screens.
I’m sure we have made some major epics outside of the “action comedy” sector sometime lately, but at the moment, I can’t think of them.
The two I’m referring to are Wicked and Gladiator II. No reviews here, but what a mildly astonishing week to have these two premieres.
Both, indeed, are based on IP from somewhere else; they aren’t scripts from whole cloth. But with one based on a Broadway play (inspired by an 85-year-old movie) and the other a follow-up to a best picture winner from 24 years ago, so long ago that it might as well be an alternate dimension, yes, they’re IP, but not exactly your latest Fast and Furious or Marvel installments.
Both have had grand marketing campaigns with product tie-ins and suddenly inescapable stars. G2 had a $30 million Pepsi-NFL tie-in featuring Travis Kelce.
Add a star-studded international tour of seven premiere cities, featuring among other things, the icons of Formula 1 in a Ferrari tie-in, and finally culminating in the biggest makeover of the Chinese Theatre I’ve ever seen, transforming the storied theater into the Colosseum.
At this same time, during the run-up to Wicked in the last month, Ariana Grande has become ubiquitous, with brand deals such as a capsule collection for her beauty brand r.e.m. beauty and one with Universal’s sister Comcast brand Xfinity:
Then there was the biggest viral phenomenon in SNL history:
All of it ultimately rolled up to celebrating the Wicked premiere at no less than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Some will like one or the other more, but both are cast-of-thousands epic movies designed to kind of awe you with every frame, built around real stars and neither are CGI/AI cookie-cutter versions of . . . every other action comedy out there. Both are things you don’t see every day.
Even better, they are coming out against each other — not to mention, Moana 2 is in the mix as well. That makes for a good old-fashioned shoot-out of giant Hollywood crowd pleasers. All of which could very well power the biggest holiday season in history before we’re done.
If the movies are going to claw their way back to the center of the public imagination, to make a new generation eager to put down their phones and join the journey, this is how it will happen — with a lot more months and big swings like this.
As for the Oscars race, which is looking like a reversion to the Spirit Awards form of late — if it doesn’t have room for a couple of big studio movies in the roster, then they can just re-embark on the cruise to oblivion they were booked on before last year.
It’s also interesting to notice that both Wicked and Gladiator hearken back to the very roots of Hollywood. G2 is a sword-and-sandal epic — practically the first-ever blockbuster genre Hollywood — and Wicked is a family musical fantasy working off one of Hollywood’s cornerstone defining films.
The hunger for great stories told on a scale that transports us out of the everyday is the fuel that built Hollywood and burns as bright as it ever did in the human heart. ’Twas a time when this industry had the moxie and showmanship to rise up and meet that need. Let’s see if we can get back there again.
The Week in Penskeonomics: Golden Globe Trotting!
It’s been a busy week in the Penske media monopoly, which shows ever-increasing signs of spinning wildly out of control . . .
Don’t stop here
Unlock the full story — and the no-spin reporting Hollywood trusts
Already a subscriber?
