Horror Boom about to Bust?

The Los Angeles Times weighs in on the state of the horror film market:

So has the horror bubble burst?

Those who traffic in mayhem insist not, though almost everyone admits that this year's crowded market, filled with horror retreads, has left splatter fans unimpressed.

"There became a glut of so many horror movies, and I think the audience is oversaturated," says Dimension Co-Chairman Bob Weinstein, who launched the horror film craze with the satiric slasher flick "Scream." "Sometimes the industry has the habit of making the same movies over and over again."

Moreover, topping the last thrill is intrinsically hard. "There's nothing you can do to a human being on screen that is taboo anymore," says Oscar-winning writer-producer Akiva Goldsman. "Over and over again, people are breaking the boundaries of the body, hurting people, chopping people up, ravaging people…. For things to be truly scary, we're going to have to find new boundaries to tread on."

Undeniably, horror, one of cinema's most enduring genres, is having a spiritual crisis. Once the playground of such iconic directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, the genre has gone way down-market. Not that it's mattered much to the businesspeople who run Hollywood. Ever since 1996, when "Scream" snagged $100 million at the box office, the town's love affair with horror has been reignited. The films cost little to make and historically have delivered big returns. In recent years, whole divisions of major studios — Dimension, Rogue Pictures and Fox Atomic, to name a few — have been staked on horror's vitality.

For smaller studios, horror can be the IV that keeps their hearts beating. "It costs less to make a good horror film because you don't have big visual effects budgets or the $20-million stars," says Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical films at the independent company Lions Gate.

And expectations are more modest. As Joel Silver, who heads Dark Castle Entertainment, a genre label, characterizes the horror business: "We're only looking for doubles and triples. We don't need home runs."

Read the full article here.

Next Steps

After Red Wedding made the semifinals in the Slamdance Horror Competition, I received a half-dozen requests from producers, directors, and managers who wanted to read the script. I sent out copies and am still waiting to hear back.

Meanwhile, I'm considering producing and directing the film myself.

In researching my options, I came across filmmaker Scott McKinlay's blog, where he discusses the making and selling of his first low-budget horror film, Gag.

So, let’s say you are thinking about making a movie…first, and this is very important–unless you are seriously wealthy and don’t care if you make your money back and unless have at least a million dollars for a production budget AND at least one name actor to star or at least appear in your movie–you MUST make a horror film…like it or not, horror films are about the only movie genre people will see even if your movie is low budget.

Check it out at Gag the Blog.

The Elliott Wave Theory of Horror

The horror film genre is booming right now, as it does from time to time.

We've seen previous horror booms: the 1930s, for example, and the late 1960s to early 1970s.

Inevitably, the boom will crash, only to rise again like a mummy from the tomb.

But why?

What drives the boom and bust cycle in the horror genre?

Could it be tied to the stock market?

To social trends?

To general pessimism?

Robert Prechter thinks he has the answer.

It's called the Elliott Wave Principle, and it predicts not only stock market cycles, but social cycles as well.

According to the new field of socionomics, which is built on Elliott Wave theory, mass psychology rides predictable waves of optimism and pessimism, and these waves can be seen in outward phenomena such as the stock market, movie trends, women's fashions, presidential popularity, interest in political scandals, the rise of terrorism and warfare, etc.

Prechter believes that our economy is already in a bear market (despite the rise in the Dow), and says the horror boom is related to that. So is the Iraq war. And Bush's low poll numbers.

"All the popular, groundbreaking horror movies were produced in bear markets - Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, The Mummy, Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, all those were produced from 1931 to 1933, two short years during which time the Dow Jones Industrial Average was plummeting," says Prechter in History's Hidden Engine.

"You didn't have a situation like that ... until the late 1960s and then you had Halloween, Night of the Living Dead and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and all of these groundbreaking horror movies that were popular and you don't see that sort of thing in bull markets."

The fact that some of the most internationally successful horror films of recent times (such as The Ring (Ringu) series) have been coming out of Japan would seem to back this up. Japan has been stuck in a psychologically wearing bout of deflation for many years, a situation which occurs when money's purchasing power strengthens, and the onerousness of debt rises. Prechter has said that he expects that the crash in stock markets will be accompanied by a period of global economic deflation. As this takes hold it will cause suffering and socio-political instability.

He believes that you can already see this in the movies being produced. Writing by email he says: "We are already in a roaring renaissance for cutting-edge horror movies. The theme in the '30s was monsters; in the '70s it was zombies and slashers; now it's torture: Saw I and II, Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, The Devil's Rejects, Wolf Creek, etc. We are deep in a bear market psychologically, which also shows up in the President's low popularity. This is not unusual in bear market rallies, such as 1968 and now."

Read more about Elliott Wave Theory and the horror genre here.

Congratulations Slamdance Horror Winners!

The Slamdance Film Festival awarded its prizes tonight, and the winners for the Horror Competition were:

$10,000 Grand Prize and Production Deal
Bobby Darby & Nathan Brookes for Slaughter

$1,000 Creative Excellence Award
Adam Balsam for Blood-Sucking Leeches and Flesh-Eating Maggots

The Grand Prize Winner, Slaughter, will be produced by Angel Baby Entertainment and Maverick Red, and will premiere at next year's Slamdance Film Festival.

Congratulations to Bobby, Nathan, and Adam.

Get more info on the other Slamdance Film Festival awards here.

Maverick to Co-Produce Slamdance Horror Winner

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Maverick Films is joining forces with the Slamdance Film Festival and Angel Baby Entertainment to produce the winning script from the Slamdance Horror Competition:

The Slamdance Film Festival, currently taking place here, is getting on the contest bandwagon. Slamdance's Peter Baxter and Angel Baby Entertainment's Gregory Segal said Sunday that Maverick Films is lending its support to the Slamdance Horror Screenplay Competition. Maverick will annually finance and co-produce, with Slamdance and Angel Baby, a feature film based on the prize-winning entry. Maverick also said that it is launching a new division, Maverick Red, to focus on horror films. Maverick Films recently signed a deal with Angel Baby to finance and co-produce three films during a three-year period.

Read it here.

Slamdance Horror Top 5

The Top 5 Finalists for the Slamdance Horror Competition are:

Blood-Sucking Leeches and Flesh-Eating Maggots by Adam Balsam
Hunger by Latrisse Goffigan
The Shop Teacher by Joel Watson
Slaughter by Bobby Darby & Nathan Brookes
Torn Apart by Shaun O'Sullivan

Congratulations to all the finalists!

Especially to Shaun O'Sullivan and Bobby Darby, who've dropped by here and said hello. Now I have some names to root for.

Red Wedding did not make the finals. We'll see if my semifinalist status can help me get the film made.

I'm also hoping to see the rest of this year's Slamdance group get their films on the big screen.

Good luck to everyone!

Slamdance Horror Coverage

One interesting feature of the Slamdance Horror Competition is that you can request a reader's analysis ("coverage") of your script for an additional fee.

I didn't opt for this service, as I prefer cash to cavils.

Many years ago, when I sent out my first feature screenplay, one Hollywood agent sent back a copy of the reader's coverage. The reader included such salient comments as "this is the worst screenplay I've ever read" and "the grammar is weak, especially in the dialog" and "while set in the future, this story doesn't work as science fiction; the advanced technology is unrealistic."

I admit that my first screenplay was not great. It had a strong concept but weak execution. However, it did get me into film school at UCLA, so someone liked it.

I've also read plenty of scripts from friends and classmates, and I know how difficult it is to give good notes.

I do think it's great that Slamdance offers this service. Some people will find these notes very helpful.

Kelly Parks is not one of them.

Kelly's script, Ghoul, was a quarterfinalist for the Slamdance Horror Competition this year. He ordered coverage, but did not find it helpful.

If you'd like to see the feedback he received, you can check out his blog, where he's posted the coverage along with his own rebuttal.

Keep in mind, Kelly is already an award-winning horror screenwriter. Another script of his, Howard's Cross, won 1st place at the 2006 International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival.

So the guy's got some chops.

What happened? Was the script bad? Was the reader incompetent? Was it a poor match?

I don't know. I didn't read the script.

Sometimes these things are just the luck of the draw.

On Wordplay, Terry Rossio (Pirates of the Caribbean, Deja Vu, et. al.) once posted five coverages his company received based on the same script: Instant Karma by Paul Hernandez. Terry had loved the script and optioned it, but found that getting past the readers was, even for him, incredibly difficult. It's an excellent article, well worth your time, and you can find it here.

Also, I should mention that I did once pay for coverage, and found the script notes very intelligent and even a little helpful. I can recommend "the $60 notes offer" from Scott the Reader without hesitation.