Jonathan Melville - Reeltime

Published on Tuesday 10 May 2011 17:33

"FORGET state of the art, go for state of the heart."

That was the message from former Columbia Pictures CEO Peter Guber to Rush Hour director Brett Ratner at a discussion on The Art Of The Sequel in Hollywood last week.

The pair were on stage at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles and the talk wasn't about golden oldies but brand new blockbusters in a year that will see a record 27 sequels hit multiplexes.

For the record, that's around one a fortnight.

Guber may not be a familiar name, but he's been a pivotal figure in our cinema-going over the last 25 years and is one of the people behind the creation of the aforementioned multiplexes.

According to Guber, the original plan was for new cinemas to be built and equipped with a dozen or more screens, which could then show every new film released.

Blockbusters would sit happily alongside art house and foreign films.

Sadly, and perhaps predictably, greed and avarice took over and the film distributors forced exhibitors to take fewer but higher grossing films.

That has led to the position we're in today where Thor and its 3D ilk are being shown over and over again while other films vanish without a trace.

The conclusion of the debate wasn't entirely positive, with 3D said to have pros and cons for our cinema's future.

The thing is, while it is often nothing more than a gimmick, the higher ticket prices are making cinemas profits, so the technique is likely to stay.

What was most thought-provoking, however, was Guber's comment that as films are getting bigger, the screens we watch them on are getting smaller, with iPhones and laptops increasingly popular.

Quite what that says about the sense in churning out bloated 3D epics is a topic for another column.

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