sunday we'll be talking about reboots, retcons, and crisiseses... I'm pretty sure I know what I'll say regarding reboots in the film industry, and I've got one of my freelance inker friends talking about the various DC crises. however I'm not sure what angle to take when addressing retcons - given I'll have to define the concept for some of my listeners first, I'm blanking on good obvious examples of retcons that aren't complete reboots.
I'm going to address reboots in the film industry (and indirectly comics since they started getting taken over by film-industry execs) by using real-estate as a metaphor. the way I see it, to the current decision-makers under the business model they're running with, individual films are of a dramatically lower priority than the property itself. if you rent out a brownstone downtown and you get an occasional shitty tenant, it won't faze you all that much - in order for them to be there in the first place some amount of money's been coming your way. they were there, they trashed the place, now they're gone - you can afford to fix the apartment up before the next tenant shows up because you still have a fucking brownstone and you can still charge whatever you want even if some of your tenants are slovenly fucks. if you stop renting the place out just because it's getting trashed, eventually you won't be able to afford to hang onto it. you're getting some money either way, and at the very least you're almost always breaking even.
same thing in film - especially superhero films - these days. only it's worse because properties eventually revert if you don't use them. one of the guys who owns the smoke shop my sister works at bounces between cleveland and NYC, and he's buddies with brian vaughan. one of vaughan's sources of income right now is that he's leasing the film rights to y: the last man out to (I think) the third or fourth different production company. as it was explained to me, the film rights are bought out for six-month intervals, and if actual production hasn't begun by the end of that, the property reverts and brian still keeps his money (which I'm sure is still chump change to big-name studios). he's been pulling in about three hundred grand a year for something like five years now just off of these leasing agreements, and no one has yet started seriously working on a y adaptation. this is part of the business model - use it or lose it. even if the film is shit, you'll retain the rights because hey, sequels! if you lose too much goodwill, reboot and move over to the next craps table. at this point (and I think this was explained in one of mxy's articles as well) sony has to keep crapping out spodermens and fox has to keep crapping out x-men because if they hesitate, those properties slide over to marvel/disney, who at that point will essentially be printing their own money.
