At least a lot of Hollywood was willfully ignoring the potential of YouTubers here. There is that level of respect that I just haven't met yet. People have made movies before, just that it would be 'woefully unwise' to tackle writing, directing, acting and editing a movie myself.
At the box office earlier this month, four out of the five top-grossing movies were not from big companies. There was Solo Mio, an inspirational romantic drama starring Kevin James from the faith-based distributor Angel Studios; a filmed concert from the K-pop group Stray Kids; and a French adaptation of Dracula from the director Luc Besson that had already made big money overseas.
Video game adaptations are undergoing an interesting rift right now. In the realm of television, we're seeing the rise of high-budget, prestige-y adaptations like The Last of Us and , trying to replicate the hard-hitting emotion and complex ideologies depicted in their source games. In movies, on the other hand, we're seeing the exact opposite. Movies like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Sonic the Hedgehog took classic video game characters and transformed them into crowd-pleasing broad comedies with all-star casts.
The buried Roger Corman production was the stuff of pop culture lore for decades before anyone saw it. Tim Story's two titles from the 2000s were critical disappointments and poor representations of some of the comics' most iconic arcs.
When you're looking at movies, especially post pandemic, post 2020, a billion dollars just doesn't really happen as much anymore. To see 'Lilo & Stitch' getting very, very close to that, it really just shows that people, families are willing to go out and see movies, especially if they are IP, familiar property and they feel they're guaranteed to have a good time.
