Veteran film director John Landis has few kind words for the modern film industry.
The director of movie classics like Animal House and An American Werewolf in London blasted modern film studios during an appearance at an Argentinian film festival this week.
Landis recalled how studios took risks during the early days of his career but now fall back on “brands” and sequels to avoid losing millions. The results aren’t pretty, he said.
The film studios are all now subdivisions of huge multinational corporations,” he stated. “Time Warner, British Petroleum, Sony — these aren’t companies, they are f—ing nations. They are these giant international things that don’t pay taxes! It’s ridiculous. They’re like pirates. It really has to do with desperation, because they don’t know how to get people into the theaters, so they bring back 3D and make all this kind of shit.”
“It’s very common now to spend more money selling a movie than making a movie. So the reason they make remakes and sequels is because they’re brands, like Coca Cola. They remake movies because they have presold titles. It’s tragic, because you have things like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is a brilliant movie, and yet the remakes have made a lot more money,” he added.
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