Once upon time, well at least thats what people tell me since it was before my time, TV movies were awesome and well watched. They weren't discarded to the void, aka The Sci-Fi channel, and people actually enjoyed them. Having watched a few now from the mid 1970's and seen even more from the Sci-fi channel, I believe the root of all problems is as everyone knows already, Money.
Comparing today's TV movies to the blockbusters shows an obvious discrepancy of budget. Watching the Jurassic Park T-rex bite a man in half is almost believable; watching the sci-fi equivalent is like watching your little brother's play-do animation movie in comparison. Minus the few actors who stick with Sci-fi (or are they stuck due to contract?), none of them would even be allowed to be an extra on The Dark Knight. Over-all, its so obvious that the budget is massively different. And they are, the upcoming Sci-fi presentation about dragons, "Fire and Ice" is budgeted at $2million, meanwhile the blockbuster of this year, The Dark Knight, has an estimated budget of $150million, for the math impaired thats 75 times more. Simply put, no-one is putting any money into it.
Compare this to the 70's. Now, I'm not going to say the made for TV movies were amazing by today's standards, but when George Lucas' Star Wars (1977) can't get a blue screen right, we can't really expect much more from the made for TV movies. Hell, the acting in Star Wars isn't even amazing. The world was different, and so was the money dispersal. Unfortunately, the 70's didn't keep box-office prices of made for TV movies. But Star Wars did, and in '77 it was priced at $13million. Fire and Ice doesn't even have the budget of a 1977 movie pre-inflation.
Money killed the made for TV movies. Sure, the audience to want the big Blockbusters, but recently TV movies have been trying to make a comeback. But how can they be expected to do any good when the channels are simply not putting the money in. Come on Sci-fi, stop releasing a $#!+fest every week, and release one once a month and bam, you got about 10million into one movie that might actually attract an audience! TV movies were great when they were authentically trying and just not quite getting there...but now, they aren't even trying =/.
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3 comments:
Whoa...whoa good sir or madam I'm not at this point but lets face it, 2 million for fire and Ice is pretty dman generous. These mulitmillion dollar pictures that are set out onto the movie going public, lik e Dark Knight" would never get the funding if it weren't for the talent backing them. With a script crafted by the Nolans and the acting talents of Ledger, Bale and Caine behind it, yes the head honcho CEO's see this as a much more solid/ safe investment. And in any case, story reigns over all if the script is a turd you can only fund it so much before it becomes a waste...I mean look at Jumper.
A great example of money not being a factor is Buffy the Series. Sure they didn't have the biggest budget, and the monsters looked a little hokey, but fans were forgiving due to the fact that the stories drew them in. Ya heard?
It's perhaps more complex than just money. This is not the 1970s...and there are numerous implications in that statement, Audience expectations are different, television itself is different, production companies' motivations are different, advertisers are different, the way television narratives are made is different. IN the 1970s these films were made for major networks which were bound by very specific constraints of structure and content, not to mention censorship issues. Many of the newer networks are far more liberal with these factors.
oops posted before I finished...
The made for TV film has been more or less replaced by the very cinematic (and often very big-budget) extended mini-series formats...this includes shows like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Carnivale, Big Love, Deadwood, etc.
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