You want to understand how bad things are in Hollywood right now—how stifling and airless and cautious the atmosphere is, how little nourishment or encouragement a good new idea receives, and how devoid of ambition the horizon currently appears—it helps to start with a success story.
Consider: Years ago, an ace filmmaker, the man who happened to direct the third-highest-grossing movie in U.S. history, The Dark Knight, came up with an idea for a big summer movie. It's a story he loved—in fact, he wrote it himself—and it belonged to a genre, the sci-fi action thriller, that zipped right down the center lane of American popular taste. He cast as his leading man a handsome actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, who happened to star in the second-highest-grossing movie in history. Finally, to cover his bet even more, he hired half a dozen Oscar nominees and winners for supporting roles.
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I try to keep a positive outlook on the future of Hollywood. We are (hopefully) coming off one of the worst economic periods of all time for US. It is hard to blame Hollywood executives for backing films that have a guaranteed audience to make their money back, even though the films themselves are of poor quality. In the years to come I hope we see this trend subside a bit. I, for one, will not be drawn to the theater easily for any of the comic book movies coming out in the next couple years. I'm not against going to see them, but I want to be sure my money is going to be well-spent.
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