Comedies aren’t dead… streamers are just taking over Hollywood
Noel (John Cena) and Katie (Awkwafina) in JACKPOT!
A legendary filmmaker has weighed in on speculation that Hollywood is afraid to make R-rated comedies nowadays, saying it’s more of a case now that streamers want to take a chance on them.
Appearing on a new episode of The Plug podcast, Paul Feig – the director behind comedy hits like Bridesmaids, The Heat and TV shows such as Freaks and Geeks and now new blockbuster Jackpot! – discussed recent comments made by actor Vince Vaughn.
During a Hot Ones interview released earlier this month, Vaughn claimed that R-rated comedies aren’t being made anymore because Hollywood executives “overthink it”.
“The people in charge don’t want to get fired more so than they’re looking to do something great, so they want to kind of follow a set of rules that somehow get set in stone, that don’t really translate,” Vaughn said.
John Cena and Awkwafina in Jackpot!
“But as long as they follow them, they’re not going to lose their job because they can say, ’Well, look, I made a movie off the board game Payday so even though the movie didn’t work, you can’t let me go, right?'”
Feig – who’s filmography largely consists of R-rated comedies – said the record-breaking Deadpool and Wolverine pushes against that theory, saying: “Granted that’s got a superhero veneer on it, that’s a straight up comedy.”
“It just depends more who wants to make it and where it’s going to land end up,” Feig said.
“What’s happened over the past number of years is bigger comedies haven’t necessarily been doing that well at the box office, which always makes everybody in Hollywood go, ‘Whoa.’ That’s the only way to kill anything in Hollywood is not make money and then it’s all over.”
Jackpot!, which stars John Cena and Awkwafina, premiered on Prime Video last week and is the latest in a string of big comedy movies to premiere on streaming services in recent times, including the fourth installment in the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Ricky Stanicky and Netflix’s A Family Affair.
Feig continued: I don’t think comedy is in trouble, it’s just going to take things like [box office results] to get it back into theatres versus only on streaming. And I’m so grateful to Amazon for making [Jackpot!] because I’d rather have a movie made than sit around waiting for somebody to let me make a movie that’s going to be on the big screen.
Paul Feig on set of Jackpot!
“Movies are only in the theatre for a month or whatever. It’s always going to end up on the small screen, no matter what. And not only the small screen, it’s going to end up on people’s phones, you know? So, you just go like, ‘Let’s just make a great movie as good as we can.’”
It comes after Universal Pictures ANZ director of marketing, Suzanne Stretton-Brown, appeared on Mumbrella’s one-on-one podcast series earlier this year where she claimed the biggest challenge for the cinema industry was attracting fans back from the small screen to the big screen.
Listen to the full episode with Feig here.
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The volume of good comedy has definitely decreased. There are some good ones, but compared to 20+ years ago, there is a marked change.