Hollywood Goes Into Apoplectic Shock When Duplass Brothers Turn Down Superhero Movie
Let’s start with the meat of this story, which is, simple enough… and yet mindblowingly unreal to anyone near the vicinity of Hollywood. Two guys (the Duplass brothers) told a movie studio of some stripe or other, no, when they were asked to helm a super hero movie. It’s unclear whether it was Marvel or DC, which is basically irrelevant. It’s equally mind blowing regardless.
If you are unclear who the Duplass brothers are… I have talked about them several times before and will continue I’m sure talking about these guys that are turning this movie paradigm on it’s head.
“It’s very easy to blow people’s minds in Hollywood,” added Jay. “Just say no. Now, if it were Batman and Robin as a 98 percent relationship drama in the Bat Cave…I would bet that’s 12,000 people’s favorite movie.”
Jay and Mark Duplass create dialogue, and idea driven movies on the cheap. Movies that they are certain will get made because they will make them on the cheap and without any involvement from the studios. That’s how we got the amazing idea for The One I Love – that continues to blow up the comments section here a year or two after my post was released. That’s how they’ve become an enormous name in Hollywood without any support from enormous money houses that turn ideas into commodities.
It seems as though audiences of movies the world over prefer the bombastic to the thoughtful. We prefer explosions to the alternative of clever writing and brilliant insights. Dialogue? That gets in the way of special effects and CGI. Plot twists and clever inside out thinking is too hard to understand and requires too much work.
And so when Hollywood walks up to anyone… even you, in order to hire you to create a 200 million dollar movie, you say yes. It happened to Trank. Yes? You know Trank? The creator of the greatest super hero movie this side of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight? Chronicle was awesome, and it was written and directed by Trank. And yet, he got chewed up and spat out by the big budget super hero world this past summer with the release of the Fantastic Four. No more movies for Trank. No more Star Wars (which he was on target to direct) no more super heroes. He’s done in the world of big budget Hollywood. But it’s Mark Duplass’ comments about how Hollywood studios view super hero movies that most adequately speaks to the problem of modern myth in our culture today.
<blockquote>”We said no. The thing that happens when you sign on to a $180 million movie is that the movie is not a movie. It’s a commodity. We’re not in that business.”</blockquote>
If you didn’t jump out of your chair, and frickin’ fist pump the sky after you read that quote you have no idea what is going on in this world. Duplass hit a trifecta of simultaneous homeruns with that comment.
- He called out that the emperor of Hollywood has no clothes
- Duplass tossed the big budget culture of movies under the bus
- Mark keeps true to the vision of what he does best
- Best yet, he didn’t cave to the enticement of bank
- And finally, they just said no.
Brilliance. Currently the Duplass brothers have something like 10 movies some stage of development. And they also have a pile of television shows getting worked on for production. And the best part about all this? Hollywood is dying to get a hold of their content. Don’t believe me? Watch this SXSW video – I personally watch it regularly just as an inspiration to keep doing what I want to do daily. To not fall prey to the false hope that the Calvary is coming.
