Word: megahits
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Rule No. 1: Remake what worked before. So The Flintstones (live-action cartoon) begets Casper; The Crow (movie version of a comic book-sorry, graphic novel) sires Judge Dredd; the Ninja Turtles frenzy of recent yore gives way to Morphin endorphins. Four Hollywood pictures last year (the megahit True Lies, as well as the less successful Intersection, Mixed Nuts and My Father, the Hero) were based on French films; so is Nine Months, a comedy about an expectant couple (Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore). The high grosses of three Michael Crichton novels-into-films in two years (Jurassic Park, Rising...
...established franchises and accumulating new ones. Perhaps the most cunning Disney trick is to take fairy tales in the public domain and reinvent them as corporate property. A billion-dollar example is Beauty and the Beast, which has metamorphosed from a bedtime story known to every child into a megahit animated film (and an even bigger hit on video), a sound track, a theme-park attraction, an ice show, a lunch-box and T-shirt decoration and, as of last week, a Broadway musical. Actually, not just a Broadway musical but the costliest and most complex ever, not to mention...
This 1975 hit blazed new ground in music history. The first disco megahit, "The Hustle" features melodious horns and, of course, that catchy flute riff which compels you to swing your hips into a series of pelvic thrusts until the sweat is flying off your hairy chest and the strobe light beams off your faux gold medallion...
...that everyone's a postmodernist, even a straightforward summer megahit has moments of wry distance from itself: in Jurassic Park, a shot of merchandise at the Jurassic Park gift shop gets laughs from audiences aware that Jurassic Park toys and bubble bath are already on store shelves...
...couture for the masses: a cunning design, elegantly tailored. Spared no expense? Just ask the picture's sponsor, Universal, which has not had a $100 million winner at the domestic box office since 1989 (with the Spielberg-produced Back to the Future Part II) and urgently needs a megahit. Hence the marketing tie-in with McDonald's, the imminent Jurassic Park ride at Universal's theme parks, and the saturation of action figures, jammies and cologne. The director did cut costs with a decent, modest cast of nonstars, and he tried shooting every dialogue scene in no more than five...