Hollywood's ultimate sin
We're in the century of franchises, no doubt about it: the highest-grossing films coming out of Hollywood tend to be prequels, sequels, remakes, reboots , etc. We're talking, above all, about family films, as well as the lucrative horror genre, which also suffers from sequelitis . Independent or arthouse cinema hasn't yet fallen into that creative hole. The reasons for this trend are obvious: to minimize risks with an already known product of proven profitability, which no longer needs to be sold or over-promoted. Nor can we downplay the role played, since the beginning of the millennium, by the boom in series. Based on stretching an idea to the impossible, they have accustomed the average viewer to seriality and have lured them away from the movie theaters, offering them a convenient alternative with almost no risks in terms of sales pitches: just press play and let the episodes unfold one after the other.
Read also An avalanche of sequels and remakes in theaters: 'Superman,' 'Mission: Impossible,' 'The Karate Kid'... Astrid Meseguer
However, cinema still has reason for hope. If the most worrying thing was the lack of great films for a mass adult audience, The Sinners has become the great black hope. This great African-American blues party, released by Warner, directed by Ryan Coogler, and set in Mississippi in the 1930s, allows us to dream of a better world: it's hypnotic, intelligent, very sexy, quite terrifying, and, of course, political, if we look in the direction of the White House. It's on track to gross $330 million worldwide. It has triumphed where Babylon (2022), a similar production, failed, despite featuring Margot Robbie, director Damien Chazelle ( La La Land ), and a highly appealing subject: Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties. It remains to be seen whether The Sinners paves the way for other ideas as risky as they are refreshing, or if we can just wait for The Sinners 2 . It will take more triumphs like this to change the rules of the Hollywood game again.
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