'Logan' is expected to be Hugh Jackman's final outing as Wolverine. Jackman first appeared as Wolverine in 2000 and for many it's become nearly impossible to imagine any another actor in the role of the iconic antihero. His final film in the X-Men cinematic universe does not seem to be a conventional Superhero Movie either. Scott Frank, the writer of 'Logan' recently appeared on an episode of "Recode Media with Peter Kafka," in which he discusses the current state of the movie industry and how 'Deadpool' helped greenlight his latest project.
Blockbusters make films more formulaic
According to Frank, the movie industry is not the same as it used to be years ago. This is mainly due to changes in the economic and marketing processes, which have had a huge impact on the business as a whole. While the creative people of the movie studios used to have the final say in terms of greenlighting a script, the marketing branch have become the decision makers today. Frank goes on to explain that so much money is put into marketing a film that subsequently the head of the marketing team becomes a major player when it comes to deciding which movie makes it to the big screen. They want to make sure that the money that they've invested into a film will be a returned tenfold.
"Marketing has sort of become the church for the business," Frank says in the podcast. As a result, artistic freedom has been severely limited according to the writer.
How 'Deadpool' helped greenlight 'Logan'
Frank says that most of his friends who're looking to create original content within Hollywood have all turned to a different medium, namely television.
"If you're working in the movies, you're doing big, giant comic book, 'Star Wars', broad comedy or family stuff. Some of that stuff is pretty terrific. But at the same time, if you want to do anything other than those things, it's harder to do it in the movies," he claims.
So how come the R-rated 'Logan', which seems to be much darker and grittier than the average comic book movie, was ever greenlit in the first place?
This is where 'Deadpool' comes in. Ryan Reynolds helped revolutionize the superhero genre by creating an unprecedented movie that was both very funny and very brutal at the same time. "I think when they finally greenlit the movie, it was around the time of 'Deadpool'. While we'd been working on it off and on before then, I think they saw: You have to evolve in some way, so maybe one evolution to play with is to make it a little deeper and a little darker and quite, honestly, a little simpler," Frank explains. So while Hollywood seems to have become more one-dimensional, game changers, such as 'Logan' and 'Deadpool', still exist in today's movie business.
