Paramount Pictures will need to change their business strategy as the enter the next decade, if the company hopes to be more successful in the 2020s than they were in the 2010s. The 107-year-old studio kicked off the decade with a massive box office haul in 2011. After that, though, their distribution contracts with DreamWorks Animation and Marvel Studios were up, immediately erasing the studio’s biggest sources of go-to box office hits. Paramount Pictures is in the unenviable position of having to compete with Disney, the company that earned 80% of the biggest box office movies of 2019.
Paramount Pictures has spent the majority of the last decade struggling thanks to a series of box-office misfires and a slew of movies that went drastically over budget. Early in 2017, the head of Paramount parent company Viacom expressed a desire for Paramount to shift itself more into the tentpole-fixated mold of Disney (via Hollywood Reporter), a sentiment later reinforced by new Paramount head Jim Gianopulos. Since he was hired in March 2017, Paramount Pictures has managed to turn things around somewhat thanks to it releasing a number of critically-acclaimed titles like Rocketman and A Quiet Place, as well as the studio achieving its first year of fiscal profitability since 2015 (via LA Business Journal).
Gianopulos’ new bold path for Paramount Pictures has only begun, however, with the studio’s slate in 2020 and 2021 especially looking like a major attempt to get the studio back to its glory days in the 20th-century when they were consistently releasing massive hits like Titanic and Beverly Hills Cop. There are a couple of maneuvers Paramount Pictures is employing in the coming years to help further reverse its fortunes, including adding more animated features to its release schedule and partnering with Hasbro.
Paramount Has More Animated Movies
Back in July 2011, the box office and critical success of Rango spurred Paramount to start up their own animation division entitled Paramount Animation. Originally intended to release annual fully-animated titles each year starting in 2014, the division was faced with numerous setbacks that saw key personnel leaving and titles getting constantly delayed. However, the new Paramount regime has already gotten Paramount Animation to commit to a consistent annual output that’ll allow Paramount to have a steady foothold in the world of animated family movie cinema.
To boot, Paramount is also engaging in extensive partnerships with other animation companies like Skydance Animation and Imagine Entertainment. Whereas previously there had been a seven-year gap between Paramount Pictures releasing two fully animated titles (Rango and Sherlock Gnomes), Paramount is now looking to make sure they have a steady stream of animated cinema being released from both within the company and outside sources. Reportedly, Paramount already has a Spice Girls animated feature in the works.
New Hasbro Partnership
At the end of 2017, Paramount signed a long-term deal with Hasbro that would see the movie studio adapting a number of Hasbro properties into movies. Whereas Hasbro’s Universal deal only resulted in a single finished movie (Battleship), Paramount is already more determined to get more actual motion pictures made. The studio has a Snake Eyes movie (a G.I. Joe spin-off) set for an October 2020 release, 2021 release dates for new film adaptations for Hasbro’s toy/game properties Dungeons & Dragons, My Little Pony and Micronauts, plus a whole slew of future Transformers titles. It remains to be seen if Hasbro can become Paramount’s equivalent to Marvel or DC, but Paramount is clearly going to put a mammoth amount of effort into this new Hasbro partnership.
Iconic Brand Names Are Being Revived
It isn’t just Hasbro brand names that are getting revived under the new Paramount Pictures management team. Basically every big Paramount title in their massive library (the studio has existed for nearly 110 years) is getting a revamp in the near future. We’ve already seen this affection for remakes of established Paramount features in 2019 titles like What Men Want and Pet Sematary, but that’s only the beginning. Beverly Hills Cop, Jackass, Top Gun, Paranormal Activity, Face/Off, Coming to America, 48 Hours, and so many more have been announced to receive either prequels, sequels or remakes.
It remains to be seen how audiences will respond to these new takes on classic material, especially after a holiday moviegoing season where people decided to spend money on original titles like Knives Out and Ford v. Ferrari rather than franchise titles like Paramount’s own newest Terminator movie. Still, Paramount is clearly committed to producing as many sequels to popular library titles as possible. Why else would they put into development a Grease prequel entitled Summer Loving?
Paramount Is Doing What They Know Best
While Paramount’s upcoming slate is heavy on the kind of animated movies and sequels that have made Disney such a box office juggernaut in the last decade, they’ve also got a number of titles on the docket that harken back to the older days of Paramount Pictures cinema. They’ll be releasing the next Scorsese movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro while they also managed to secure release rights to an Emma Stone/Brad Pitt project helmed by Damien Chazelle. To boot, they also beat out a slew of studios for worldwide rights to an original Chris Hemsworth/Tiffany Haddish buddy cop comedy. If that title were to become a success, it would follow in the legacy of numerous other successful Paramount comedies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Beverly Hills Cop and Tropic Thunder.
While much of Paramount’s upcoming slate is being modeled after the strategies employed by Disney in the present, a number of their upcoming titles smartly evoke Paramount Pictures projects of the past. Specifically, they evoke such films by relying heavily on star power and memorable original ideas. Time will tell if those projects, as well as the other moves being employed by the new Paramount Pictures management team, can fully restore this studio’s luster in the new decade. It’s going to be a mammoth challenge; however, a lot can change for a studio in ten years.
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