Director Mike Nichols, the creator of The Graduate and Catch-22 and the brilliant television productions of Wit and Angels in America, opined a few years ago: "There was a time - some of you may have read about it - when people would ask, 'Was that movie good?' not 'What was its opening-weekend box office?' Those were happy times."
How last century. The truth is, no matter how good or bad Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 is, the question that will occupy the entertainment media and the blogosphere this weekend will be more about how much HP7 surpasses the $100-million mark in its opening three days.
In an era when entertainment and sport grow increasingly similar, we read the Monday-morning scores to see how our team, or franchise, is faring. By those terms, Harry Potter is up there with the Montreal Canadiens, New York Yankees and Manchester United. Within the next year, the Potter franchise should surpass the lead of Star Wars (about $2.2-billion) domestically. The Potter series already leads worldwide in non-inflation adjusted dollars with more than $5.4-billion.
Harry Potter, built to accord with author J.K. Rowling's reputation and her worldwide legion of fans, set the gold standard for movie franchises. Under the guidance of producer David Heyman, there will be a total of eight movies in one decade, with the same scandal-free young cast - and none of the films have been critical duds.
Even a rival studio head, Walt Disney Studios former chairman Dick Cook, who initiated the Pirates of the Caribbean series, says Harry Potter has "unequivocally been the best-managed franchise that we've ever seen, top to bottom."
To paraphrase Mike Nichols: Once we used to see movies, now we see franchises. Though there have been movie series since the 1930s (Andy Hardy, Ma and Pa Kettle), it wasn't until the eighties, when multinational conglomerates assumed control of Hollywood studios, that the word "franchise" started to appear. Movies were relegated to these company's "entertainment divisions," where they strove to sell entertainment with the same low-risk, predictable return of their other products such as light bulbs and soft drinks.
Those changes in studio ownership coincided with the rise of George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones epics, who provided the model for the new approach to making movies. Lucas also had the foresight to retain the licensing rights for Star Wars products, and his licensing division continues to retail about $3-billion a year.
Franchises are now the centre of major studios' financial strategies. With the exception of the James Bond movies, all the top 10 franchises began after 1980, with half of them ( Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, X-Men, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter) from the last decade.
There is one pre-franchise template here. Walt Disney. Disney's 1937 film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Here was a movie for children (who like repeat viewings), with a magical setting, romance, but no sexual content. Violence was stylized rather than graphic. Most important, the movie licensed books, toys and even the first "official soundtrack" before becoming part of the Disney theme-park attraction.
The only thing Disney didn't do, at least until the nineties, was to turn its hits into sequels. Otherwise, we'd be gearing up for this holiday's Snow White LXXIII: The Rise of Dopey. Instead, fans can raise a glass of butterbeer to Harry the Franchise Wizard's success. Enjoy it while it lasts, which should be until James Cameron unleashes Avatar 2 and 3 in the middle of the next decade.
Tangled (Nov. 24)
Mandy Moore voices the princess in the tower, Rapunzel, who falls in love with a bandit and comes down to earth to follow him in Disney's latest 3-D fairy tale.
Burlesque (Nov. 24)
Singer Christina Aguilera makes her star debut as a small-town girl who joins a modern burlesque revue under the tutelage of veteran Cher. With Stanley Tucci and Kristen Bell.
Love and Other Drugs (Nov. 24)
Edward Zwick directed this romantic comedy with a serious undertone about a playboy pharmaceutical salesman (Jake Gyllenhaal) who falls for an artist (Anne Hathaway) who has good reason to be commitment-shy. The script is based on Jamie Reidy's memoir Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman.
Faster (Nov. 24)
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson takes a rest from children's movies in this action flick about an ex-con who is hunting down his brother's murderer, while being chased by a cop (Billy Bob Thornton) and a hitman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen).
The Nutcracker in 3D (Nov. 24 in Montreal, Nov. 26 wide)
Not the ballet, but the story on which it was based. Elle Fanning plays a girl who gets a toy soldier nutcracker for a present from her uncle (Nathan Lane) and finds herself in a fantasy land fighting the evil rat king (John Turturro).
Waste Land (Nov. 25, Bell Lightbox in Toronto)
Documentary by Lucy Walker shot over three years follows Brooklyn-based artist Vik Muniz as he uses trash in his art, making portraits of Brazil's garbage pickers.
Made in Dagenham (Nov. 26)
Sally Hawkins stars as the person who leads a strike for equal wages at the Ford plant in Dagenham, England in the late sixties, with Bob Hoskins as a union hand and Miranda Richardson as the Labour Minister.
Cool It
Documentary filmmaker Ondi Timor's ( We Live in Public) global-warming doc focuses on Bjorn Lomborg ( The Skeptical Environmentalist) and his arguments against Chicken Little hysteria.
Liam Lacey