It didn’t help that Kevin Feige’s Marvel Cinematic Universe smartly essentially fashioned itself on the stereotypical Paramount tentpole. But once folks mostly stopped showing up to “regular movies,” well, it’s been a very long five years. Likewise, while Paramount was crushing it in the mid-to-late 2000s with tentpoles, they could also push Failure to Launch to $130 million on a $50 million budget or the $25 million Cloverfield to $173 million. Those were, of course, star-driven, high-concept, adult-skewing (while mostly kid-friendly) movie-movies that were often more profitable than all but the biggest blockbuster toons or successful tentpoles.
While Disney was struggling with live-action tentpoles for much of the 2000’s (save for Pirates of the Caribbean), they could still make big bucks from “regular movies” like The Proposal ($317 million on a $40 million budget in 2009), Wild Hogs ($253 million/$60 million in 2007) and Bringing Down the House ($165 million/$33 million in 2003). The audience which once saw event movies and (relatively speaking) old-school studio programmers now saw the event films in theaters and either caught up with the rest via VOD and streaming or just binged the latest “Netflix obsession.” Second, just as importantly, the bottom fell out on non-event movies in late-2015/early-2016. Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, and then essentially swapped Indiana Jones for Jerry Bruckheimer in 2013. Disney bought Marvel in 2009, a deal which then saw Paramount selling the theatrical rights to the pre- Avengers IP ( Thor, Iron Man, Captain America) for around $115 million, a sum so paltry that I wondered at the time if it meant that Thor wasn’t very good. DreamWorks Animation departed Paramount in 2012 (following Rise of the Guardians) for 20th Century Fox.
First, obviously, Paramount lost two of their biggest brands. Laugh now, but this was right after Mars Needs Moms and John Carter. Paramount was so good at launching franchises or tentpole titles ( Transformers, Iron Man, Star Trek, Paranormal Activity, Thor, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.) that I wondered out loud in 2012 if Marvel was going to suffer by having to be marketed by Disney’s promotional team. The pundits mocked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in summer 2008 for earning less domestically ($317 million) than Iron Man ($318 million) almost ignoring that they were both Paramount Pictures. Abrams’ Super 8, an original 80’s-set Amblin homage which was sold as the “It’s a real movie!” counterprogramming option to their own franchise-specific summer blockbusters. They had so many “big” movies that summer that they also offered up J.J.
Paramount was the leader in global theatrical market share a decade ago, thanks to huge movies from DreamWorks Animation ( Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss N Boots), Marvel ( Thor, Captain America), and Hasbro ( Transformers: Dark of the Moon). Paramount has been struggling in the dark for the last six years. If that is true, it’s been a longtime coming, and not just because of Covid or the streaming wars. Moreover, The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit stated that, so says “insiders,” the move signals that (partially because Robbins has no working relationships with the likes of Tom Cruise or John Krasinski) Paramount will scale back its theatrical output, focusing on fewer tentpoles and more streaming-friendly IP. Robbins has been running Nickelodeon since 2018 and is seen as more friendly to ViacomCBS owner Shari Redstone’s alleged desire to emphasize Paramount+ as the center of the Viacom universe. Is this the end of Paramount as a major distributor of theatrical motion pictures? That was the question upon news that Jim Gianopulous was stepping down from running the studio (a role he took over from Brad Grey in 2017) in favor of Brian Robbins.