The much ballyhooed remake came in a close second to ‘Real Steel’ at the box office, with a “prequel” to the 1982 horror hit ‘The Thing’ trailing behind in third place.

Will that stop – or even slow down – the number of remakes getting greenlit? Likely not, but it should. This year has already seen remakes of ‘Arthur,’ ‘The Mechanic,’ ‘Fright Night,’ ‘Conan the Barbarian’ and ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ flop. The public has spoken – remakes are even less likely to succeed than original fare, so why bother?

The success of the 2011 prequel ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ suggests a better way to squeeze every last drop out of an existing film franchise.

‘Apes’ built on the name recognition of that film series while instigating a fresh spin on the material. And ‘Apes’ bullied the box office competition for a $175 million haul, and counting. Compare that to director Tim Burton’s straightforward ‘Apes’ remake from 2001 which failed to recapture that “damn, dirty ape” movie magic.

Prequels, when done properly, let Hollywood bask in brand recognition – and the ability to repackage previous franchise installments on Blu-ray – while audiences savor original storytelling in a familiar package.

‘The Thing’ bumbled its attempt at franchise rejuvenation. It arrived in theaters billed as a prequel, but it essentially hit the same story beats from the 1982 ‘Thing’ feature. Audiences aren’t dumb. The trailers told us ‘Apes’ was a new story while ‘The Thing’ was a rehash, plain and simple.

Now, let’s see if Hollywood suits can accept the news that ticket buyers don’t want remakes when the originals are likely collecting dust in their movie collections – or awaiting an instant download.

IMDB News:

While [Hop's] gross was slightly below the $38.1 million recorded for Rango last month, making it the second-highest-grossing film of the year, it was far overshadowed by last year’s Clash of the Titans, which opened during the same weekend (Easter weekend) with $61.2 million.

Indeed, the total domestic box office this weekend came in at 29.6 percent below the same weekend a year ago. For the year, total box-office revenue is down 20.3 percent, while attendance is down 21.5 percent.

Anyone see anything on the horizon that might turn this around? Arthur? Scream 4? Hoodwinked 2? Thor? Priest?

One of the dirty little secrets behind the box office revenues of the last few years is that the year was saved by one humongous and somewhat unexpected hit: “Alice in Wonderland,” “Avatar,” “The Dark Knight.” One stumble, and instead of flatlining attendance, you have a calamitous year.

This year is packed with a record number of sequels, franchises, remakes, and remakes of sequel franchises. We’ll see. A healthy industry is good for everyone, but the industry isn’t looking too healthy right now and we’re already three months in.

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Tonight we’ve got the lovely Diana Falzone, the hilarious Paul Mecurio, the always delightful Chris Cotter – plus other stuff/junk and junk/stuff!

Sammy was a Bronx born actor and comedian who had some minor success in the 1950s.  He took his physical similarity to Jerry Lewis and ran with it.  He became known as the “fake Jerry Lewis” after creating an onstage and onscreen persona that mimicked Lewis’ shtick.  He even went as far as to hook up with a Dean Martinesque straight man named Duke Mitchell.  The real Jerry Lewis wasn’t amused and even went so far as to intimidate others in Hollywood not to feature Petrillo on their shows and bullied Vegas venues into blackballing his act. 

Most reboots are epic fails.

The point of bringing up Petrillo (besides encouraging you to watch his funny performance in “Bela Lugosi meets the Brooklyn Gorilla” on YouTube) is to illustrate that the “trend” of ripoffs, remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings is nothing new. Take it from me, the guy who shamelessly made “Transmorphers,” remakes and ripoffs are part of Hollywood history.  What is more depressing is the fact that re-imagining and remakes are also part of the political culture.

Our society has a sort of “political amnesia”; forcing us to repeat the same economic and policy mistakes every thirty years or so.  What else is the Obama administration but a “remake” of the Clinton administration (with almost half the original cast!)?  You can almost hear the pitch meeting.  “It’s FDR meets Clinton!  We reboot the franchise.  We forget about the Carter episode just like we pretended that Superman III and IV never happened.”

It’s the same tired ideas.  Same scripted attacks.  Same demagoguery.  Just listen to mental midgets like Paul Krugman discussing Keynesian economic models and talking about getting the “factories” started.  Hey, Knuckleheads, in the modern world the factories are all in China and Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest employer.  Let’s get “shovel ready” projects going so we can help out all those Starbucks baristas who are unemployed.  Let’s pretend that race relations today are only slightly different than they were in Mississippi circa 1950.  These clowns live in the past.

It’s maddening that this amnesia also affects our ability to learn from global history.  How well has pandering to maniacal, tin pot, dictators worked out in the past?  Why don’t we ask the Eastern Europeans how cool it was to have centralized everything and a government that spied on average citizens?  Yeah, that flag@whitehouse.gov thing was a great idea.

I’m sure that every evil dictator started out by laying out his case for evil fascism.  Stalin, Castro, Idi Amin, and yes I’ll go there, Hitler all showed up twirling their mustaches and telling everyone how great its going to be living in a statist hell hole.  No, it always starts out with smiley faces and unicorns, but it ends in bread lines and political prisons.

While I don’t advocate a wholesale freak-out at this point, a little perspective would be refreshing.  Anything resembling a massive clusterfark should ring alarm bells for all citizens, regardless on which side of the left/right paradigm they sit.  We should be past the point of deficit spending orgies, head-in-the-sand foreign policy, and irrational discussions about impending Christian theocracies.

I like to smack around my leftist friends by pointing out that since 1970, for the past 38 years, we’ve had 26 years of Republican administrations and 12 years of Democratic presidencies.  Yet, we don’t have prayer in school, forced Christian conversion, film and television censorship, book burnings, gay concentration camps or back alley, illegal abortions.  Still, you can bet that in early 2011, the news media and the wunderkinds of the left will start crying about Palin’s book banning, Romney’s Mormon proselytizing, and Huckabee’s closet desire to turn the airwaves into 24/7 Christian programming.  I can’t imagine what they will dredge up about my homeboy Bobby Jindal (oh, wait didn’t he perform and exorcism?  Frack!)

I’ve seen this movie before.  Several times actually.  It is old and busted.  Where is the new hotness?

There is a bright side.  The latest episode of leftist nincompoopery seems to be particularly inept.  Too many development execs and a weak, first time director.  They had a big opening weekend, but their box office is down, and dropping fast.  In 2010 and 2012 the other side may have an opportunity to return to the top spot.  The question for us is this; do we want another lame remake or sequel of our own?  Do we want our own “Transformers 2” or a remake of “Nightmare on Elm Street”?

I dig the original, but give me something new.

I vote that, at a minimum, we push for a re-imagining like “The Dark Knight.” I want familiar concepts and ideas but told with a new spin and by really talented people.  I want it to be multi-layered and complex.  I want a classic.  I want something with staying power that resonates for generations and changes the landscape for the foreseeable future.

Even better, I want something completely original and fresh that changes the political landscape forever.  Just look at the cinematic world before and after “Star Wars”.  That’s what I want for politics. A reformation.  I want to build on the successes of the past and avoid the obvious failures.

I want politicians who don’t want to be politicians.  I want senators and representatives who push for term limits, and drastically reduce their pay.  I want them all to understand the concept of “public service”.  I want a massive dismantling of our government’s bureaucracy.  I want a complete rethinking and overhaul of the tax code.  I want massive, massive privatization.  I want people of all races, creeds, religions, and sexual orientations to put aside their differences and join together under the banner of national pride.  I want politicians who not only preach the dangers of socialism, but also extol the virtues of liberty and free markets.  I want my fellow countrymen and women to understand that the true path to success for all people lies in self-reliance, responsibility and national brotherhood, not in the suffocating embrace of big government.

Any politician or movement that can capture that sentiment and actually deliver will get boffo box office.  I’m talking “Titanic” numbers.

After eight years of George Bush bashing, a financial meltdown and a general desire for “change”, the left waltzed into total control of the nation.  The right and the middle may find themselves in the exact same position in a very short time.  When we do, let’s not make the same mistakes.  Lets not accept another retread, no matter how nostalgic it feels, and demand something bold and totally different.

We are Americans.  We deserve nothing less.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You!

The idea of turning a board game into a movie isn’t earth shattering. Jumanji did it about a fictional game, and there are already deals on the books to bring Ouija Board, Candyland and Monopoly to your local multiplex. But when you mix the “you sunk my carrier” news with the scoop that Disney is making a movie of Tomorrowland as a follow-up to Pirates of the Caribbean, and toss in just a dollop of the ongoing march of mid-80s remakes like the approaching new Videodrome, Red Dawn and Fright Night, we must at least consider prosecuting for fraud anyone in Hollywood who calls themselves “creative.”

There are countless screenwriters throughout Los Angeles laboring long, lonely hours to produce original stories. Most of them are god-awful and deserve to fade into obscurity, but surely some are worthy of production. In fact, a small fraction of them could prove to be the kind of movies that inspire generations — like Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired my peers.

Give some thought to what’s in theaters these days that would ignite a kid’s imagination to want to pick up a pencil and write a short story or to grab a video camera and shoot a short adventure starring action figures. Where’s the next Matrix or Star Wars to blast young minds and behinds out of their seats? Will it be the big screen Land of the Lost? The remake of Bill Murray’s Meatballs? The re-telling of Red Sonja?

Hollywood is so terrified of failure and potential irrelevance right now, so desperate to snag a big opening weekend for any movie produced, and so cynical over the imagination and intelligence of moviegoers that studios rarely reach for anything that’s not a remake, prequel, sequel or based on a TV show, video game comic book, novel or short story. And now you can throw in amusement park rides and board games.

In other words, anything conceived and created originally for the big screen is almost certain never to make it to said screen. That’s tragic because there are some ideas that need to be movies and some concepts that could make legendary films if they’re fostered through the development process — while also making serious scratch for the scared studios.

But those studios aren’t in the business of developing anymore. They’re widget-makers now, filling theaters and DVD shelves with anonymous product that won’t inspire audiences to look back at the source material — let along urge them to imagine what spectacular and moving stories Hollywood could tell one day.

Fortunately, there’s got to be a tipping point coming in which audiences wave off the remakes and demand original material. Maybe there’s still a glimmer of hope that Hollywood professionals who love movies — and there are some out here — will realize that they didn’t sacrifice chunks of their careers to remake Porky’s. That’s when you might start seeing original scripts breaking into the cinema marketplace again.

Horror movies are almost all remakes now, and they fall almost exclusively into two big categories: Remakes of Old US Movies, and Remakes of Asian Flicks. Both tend to fail at the same rate in being great or even passable entertainment, and that rate is approximately 100 percent. Last year’s The Eye and Shutter were all remakes of Asian originals and all were pretty much forgettable. On the US side—and again, sticking just to 2008—we got Prom Night (which I thought was pretty good, but not many other folks agreed), and fresh (sic) installments of the Saw and George Romero’s …of the Dead franchises. Overall, these too were weak, and so were the dozen or so others I could have mentioned.

The Hollywood trend on horror (and pretty much all else) is to add on to a franchise or borrow a proven title on the belief that a previously proven premise is a safer investment than something brand new. The studio executives may be right: Horror movies are usually pretty cheap to make, so they can get into the black pretty fast. But few of these remake pictures are making crazy money (with the huge exception of the five–so-far–Saw films: $661 million gross on $37 million budget) and none of them are memorable entertainment.

Horror pictures have become an assembly-line operation. They rarely feature an original story and differ from each other only in the order in which they deploy the standard scary-movie tricks such as Loud Noise During Quiet Passage, Surprise Face In Mirror, Evil Child With Horrifying Prediction, and Creepy Image On Common Item.

There are young, will-work-for-cheap writers and directors out there who could have given Friday the 13th a surprising and engaging new direction. That would have been so much more exciting than the the slick, soulless 90 minutes this remake turned out be–a re-shoot incorporating the latest (and already exhausted) CG tricks. Absolutely any filmmaker’s product could not have been less stirring than this, and–here is the heart of the argument–the title alone would have brought in the same crowd in the same numbers, regardless of the content.

So going with some new idea means there’s not really a risk involved. Horror fans (I include myself in that group) will show up, regardless. Hey, studio heads, why not try something different next time? Who knows, you might actually end up with something different, something better, something that draws in folks who don’t otherwise care about the genre. Stranger things have happened–just not in the latest crop of horror movies.