Mike Flanagan has now fully embraced IP.
The guy who made "Oculus," "Midnight Mass" and "Hush" (still his best film) used to actually care about doing his own thing. Now? "Carrie" is on streaming, the trailer for "The Exorcist: Martyrs" just dropped, he has two more Stephen King adaptations in the works ("The Mist" included), and in a Reddit AMA he basically admitted he's all in on franchises now.
I spent a lot of my career thinking I wouldn't do franchises or sequels, and – whoops – but I really love getting to play in a world I know and respect and adore, and put my own spin on it.
And then this:
Honestly, I wish to hell I could make a JAWS movie. Another example where no one will EVER get close to the original, but there is a ton of room for improvement on the sequels. A JURASSIC movie could be a blast too, I'd want to go really scary with it. A true dinosaur horror film would be a blast.
I mean, he's not wrong about the "Jaws" sequels. Jeannot Szwarc's "Jaws 2" came out three years after Spielberg's masterpiece and wasn't even in the same universe quality-wise. "Jaws 3-D" and "Jaws: The Revenge"? Those are some of the worst movie sequels ever made. You'd have to try really hard to do worse. Regardless, Jaws is a perfect film that should be left alone.
A scary "Jurassic" movie, I'll admit, I'd watch that. Those things have been glorified theme park rides for over a decade. A true horror take would honor Crichton's darker novels. That said, the mandatory PG-13 rating has its limitations, and David Robert Mitchell just delivered the best non-Jurassic dinosaur movie we’ve had in 30 years.
However, that's not my the point. The point is Flanagan used to not need a brand name on the poster to get people to show up. And in the span of a couple of years, has left original filmmaking, and now he's openly auditioning for Spielberg's leftovers on Reddit.
The system tends to eat many, eventually. I just didn’t think it'd get to Flanagan this fast.
Ten years after “13th,” Ava DuVernay is back with its companion piece. “14th” screened Friday at the New York Film Festival, and the conversation afterward wasn't really about the Fourteenth Amendment.