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Hollywood film studios are putting the old adage to the test. An increasing number of book-to-film adaptations are being broken into multiple parts, a recent trend in blockbuster filmmaking. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" was one novel, but it was released as two separate films, the second half of which was released on Blu-ray and DVD in November.
Following the trend, "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1" hit the big screen on Nov. 18 and the second half is slated for a November 2012 release. This pattern, according to Wheeler Winston Dixon, a film studies professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is predictably a matter of dollars and cents.
"The Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins will reportedly be split into four movies. Lionsgate, the film studio behind the project, has not announced if the final book that will be split into two films. The first film will be released March 23, 2012. "The idea is not to make a movie, but to make a series of movies," Dixon said. "Each producer hopes their movie becomes a franchise." And in Dixon's mind, selling a film is easier if audiences are already familiar with the concepts, citing the popular "James Bond" and "Paranormal Activity" franchises. But not all view this recent trend as a blatant cash grab by movie studios. "It's a good way to make sure everything that needs to be there is in the movie," said John Jackson, a junior secondary education major at UNL. A reader of the Harry Potter series, Jackson believes that the lengthy books were better suited to be broken up into multiple films. As film budgets rise, movie studios need their franchises to take in huge returns to recoup a profit. The two upcoming "Hobbit" films, directed by Peter Jackson, will stem from the single book by J.R.R. Tolkien. MTV Movies reported that the combined cost for the two Hobbit films will be more than $500 million, making it the most expensive film production of all time (figures not adjusted for inflation). Legal fees around a dispute with the Tolkien estate, increased salaries for the cast and a bevy of visual effects have increased production costs. Director Guillermo del Toro entered and exited the project and Jackson, who helmed the original "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, finally agreed to direct. "The Hobbit" has been envisioned as two parts since 2006, but the content of the films has changed along with development. Originally MGM planned for the second film to be a "bridge" to take place between "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings." Now the story of both films will just be taken from one book, "The Hobbit." In the interim, MGM went bankrupt and the "The Hobbit" stalled in development no man's land until MGM reemerged in 2010. Whether the trend of splitting books into multiple films will continue is likely dependent on how well such films do at the box office. Lionsgate will closely watch "The Hunger Games" to see if making four films would be most profitable. For the time being, however, it appears studios will continue to make franchises that audiences already know. "People want something familiar, but only slightly different," Dixon said.
TOMHELBERG@DAILYNEBRASKAN.COM
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