The Year of The 3quel
In very ancient Greece, Homer had a surprise hit. The Iliad was boffo, thanks to a strong revenge story mixing love, war and some fabulous poetic effects. So of course he thought of a sequel, spinning off one of the characters, Ulysses, into his own traveling adventure. Homer called that one The Odyssey, and it was an even bigger smash. Then, deciding he had exhausted the saga, he stopped.
That's the difference between Homer and Hollywood, where two is never enough--not if the original movie and its first sequel happened to be blockbusters. Intoxicated by the grosses of such threepeats as the final episodes of The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, both of which improved on the take of their immediate predecessors, the studios look prayerfully to this May. It's a perfect storm of threequels--three of them, natch--as some of the most lucrative series ever find out whether third time's the charm.
Coming to every theater near you on May 4: Spider-Man 3. (The first two films about the Marvel Comics kid with the gooey arms took in $1.6 billion worldwide.) Then on May 18, Shrek the Third. (Total gross of the first two chapters: $1.4 billion.) And a week later, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. (The first two earned more than $1.7 billion.) That's close to $5 billion for the six movies, not including the really easy money in DVD revenue. How big the bucks for Take 3 in each of the gigan-chises?
"The standards are sky high for this trio," says industry analyst Gitesh Pandya, editor of Boxofficeguru.com "At a minimum, each needs to break $300 million in North America to be considered a success, and they all have the potential to get close to $400 million. These films tend to do 60% of their biz overseas, so with worldwide b.o., DVD sales and TV rights, each film should earn at least $1 billion."
That--rather than the itch of some gifted writer or director to make an original statement--is the reason these movies get made. Audiences don't demand art here, just terrific entertainment. The first Shrek served that up in style; so did the first Pirates. But the second and third time around, the studio's need for a sure thing is matched by the moviegoer's desire for a familiar one. For all the skills on display, sequels are made primarily to satisfy the consumer's addiction for the same old, some new. Isn't that called TV?
In its pre-TV glory days, Hollywood made a few series--Andy Hardy, The Thin Man, the Bob Hope-- Bing Crosby Road comedies, and horror films with the whole Frankenstein family. But these were middling fare. The big-ticket items were singular sensations. Nobody made a sequel to Gone With the Wind, Casablanca or Ben-Hur. The industry didn't think in roman numerals until The Godfather, Part II in 1974. But with the triumph of special-effects fantasies like Star Wars, sequels became a smart way to print money. Now they are needed to turn bad years into good ones. The difference between the box-office slump of 2005 and the rebound last year can be attributed to one film: Pirates 2. That's why the trifecta of threequels is crucial to Hollywood's health.