Lords and superheroes: saviours of British film?

Having waited diligently for nearly a year, there’s a certain irony in the fact that, now it has finally been published, I’m too busy to write a decent post about the Lords Communications Committee report into the British film and television industries.

Fortunately there’s not a great deal to say. It’s a perfectly respectable report of its kind, full of facts and opinion, plus the familiar spectacle of well-intentioned hand wringing and exhortation. Just the sort of narrative one would expect.

Trouble is, it’s all so familiar. In cinematic terms, the Lords report is not so much a sequel to previous Parliamentary enquiries (like the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee report on The British Film Industry 2002/03). It’s actually closer in spirit to a remake.

Not a slavish shot-for-shot copy, like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (1998), or a pointless transposition like Stephen T. Kay’s Get Carter (2000). It’s more like James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) when held up against Delmer Dave’s 1957 original. Different, and not without merit, but the same.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Evidence was heard from many of the same witnesses, and the challenges besetting our home industry are well known and, it would appear, largely unchanging.

But I can’t help feeling an opportunity has been missed. The Lords Committee took nearly a year to arrive at its conclusions, and commendable though they are (extend the tax credit, outlaw camcording in cinemas, encourage more private investment in film production, invest more in training, secure greater support for British film by broadcasters etc.) I’d like to have seen evidence of more innovative thinking and some fresh voices in the public policy debate.

In short, I’d like to have seen a ‘reimagining’, not a remake; a report resembling the 21st Century Battlestar Galactica, not The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).

The Lords report is subtitled ‘Decline or opportunity?’, but there’s very little in it of real substance about future opportunities. The ‘coming of digital distribution could offer opportunities for a different distribution model’, states one of the report’s conclusions, but without any concrete detail about the form this might take, or how the British industry, as opposed to the US studios, might benefit. The Lords report simply echoes the earlier Commons report observation that digital technology will have a transformative effect on the business. And…?

On another tack, there’s an example of alternative thinking in the latest issue of Screen International, where Slingshot CEO Arvind Ethan David speculates on the lessons the British film industry might learn from Marvel Entertainment’s strategy of superhero franchise-building.

I don’t know whether the case has genuine merit (when I read the article, Stormbreaker [2006] came to mind, a British property made and distributed by UK indies that failed to take off as a franchise). But it’s surely worth considering within the public policy mix, along with other more radical perspectives that would benefit from an airing once in a while.

Comments

[Arvind Ethan David]

Thanks for referencing my article. On the STORMBREAKER front, first - it was a valiant attempt, it did $25m at the UK BO. That it didn't work in the US, was partly due to the vagaries of Miramax at that time, and partly cause its really hard. An example that worked was the German financed and independently (British) produced and directed RESIDENT EVIL franchise. So it can be done.

[Jim Barratt]

Yup, there's no reason why it can't be done, though as you say it isn't without challenges! I'd like to see an in-depth study of the barriers and enablers to achieving a successful franchise outside the studio system. Given the likely importance of multi-platform exploitation in such a scenario, maybe that's something for the UKFC's proposed Innovation Fund...