What can we say about Season 27 thus far? It's not looking very pretty at the box office or in the critic's columns. Only three films have cracked the $100m mark at the domestic box office and only two have made more than $20m in profits. We'll talk about the anomaly momentarily but lets consider this problem for the time being. It is commendable that the studio is taking a chance on bigger budget original content, rather than relying solely on comic book films (although there's still plenty of those). We just haven't seen too many of those break out, with some becoming (Norse: Valhalla and Get Georgie) have been decent hits while others (Ruthersville, Brazil and Zero Hour) have failed to find an audience.
On the critical side, there have been a handful of very good films but a GRA ceremony of very good films isn't nearly as enticing as a line-up of greats. What do the biggest races - Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, etc. - look like at the moment? It's hard to diagnose. There are a couple of clear favorites but it seems like the ball is in the court of the season's second half. As others have pointed out, this season does feel like there has been a shift in strategy with more potential awards contenders being released in the first half. The only problem is that you don't know how actually well those films will do once they actually reach critics and audiences alike.
The one film that is a standout in terms of money and reception is our most recent release, Batman: Knightfall. APJ and Joseph Kosinski's latest collaboration is now the third highest grossing film in LRF history while also being the first MUST SEE film of Season 27. This should certainly warrant some discussion about whether or not this is LRF's most successful all-around franchise. New releases have been coming steadily since Season 4, spawning multiple spin-offs and seemingly still setting up for the future. A question that some in the industry are discussing is whether or not we'll ever see Gyllenhaal's Batman fully crossover into the larger DC Universe or remain his own thing. He's made cameos in films like Birds of Prey and Task Force X: Chaos and Madness but has yet to cross paths with some of the other major heroes in LRF's stable.
A recurring discussion throughout LRF's 20s has been the supposed Novel Adaptation Curse. I'm sure I have a colleague out there who's willing to do a deep dive into this phenomenon but, from my perspective, it is a bit complicated. Critics have often pointed to a main problem being the adaptation process - or lack thereof - where the films can feel like transcriptions of the source material, rather than adjusting it to fit the cinematic format. We've seen some successes as Revival won Best Adaptation a few seasons back and The Passenger this season found some love from critics. However, there have also been just as many examples continuing the trend with Home Before Dark and The Girls being criticized for how their story is told. Sometimes there is a delay in these kinds of trends. A film like Poison Ivy hits big and then we see a wave of erotic thrillers in its wake a few seasons down the line. Perhaps now the curse being so widely talked about means that we will see a different approach to these adaptations in the coming seasons.
But speaking of adaptations, this season has also been heavy on a much different source material than the novel: the video game. Most recently came Resident Evil 5, the latest installation in Carl Flimmer's long-running series. While those films have tended to do roughly the same business at the box office, this was the highest grossing and had the highest critical rating as well. Detroit: Become Human was a bigger swing, with the studio lining up Denis Villeneuve, Jennifer Lawrence, and Michael B. Jordan for a star-studded affair. All in all it was a decent success akin to Blade Runner 2049, with the film doing just well enough for the studio to make their money back. And we also opened the season with Wolfenstein, which made a profit and received good reviews. It was the latest in a series of collaborations between APJ and Chad Taylor, which will continue next season with Duke Nukem. So while it has been 14 seasons since the end of the studio's most successful game franchise (Mass Effect), the genre seems to be doing just fine for itself. (And if you're reading this, Seth Overton, we hope to see you return one day!)
Finally, I did also want to briefly comment on a more recent development. The studio announced a couple of days ago a new system that would offer packages that link talent with a pre-existing property or script. Judging from the response, it seems like this has been a great success thus far. We will see what happens with the actual films that get made from this (which could be interesting to track) but it is at least nice to see a potential influx of new takes on certain characters and stories from LRF's stellar collection of writers.
So that's it for me this time. I'll be back again at the end of the season and look forward to talking then!
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