Why are the best film-makers signing up for franchise movies? Money might have something to do with it

After his success with The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola got to direct The Conversation. William Friedkin moved straight from The French Connection to The Exorcist. Michael Cimino won the best picture Oscar for The Deer Hunter and went on to bankrupt the industry with Marxist western Heaven’s Gate.

What is now a director’s reward for critical or financial triumph? A torrent of cash? Yeah, maybe. Keys to the studio? Well, not quite. They will get keys to one hefty corner of the studio – the corner that deals with cartoons, leotards and wizards. Film bores have, over the last few years, risked ocular hernia from rolling eyes at the high-budget projects offered to, and apparently accepted by, directors of promise.

Where to begin? Ryan Coogler went from Fruitvale Station to Black Panther. Cate Shortland went from Somersault and Berlin Syndrome to Black Widow. Chloe Zhao moved straight from Nomadland to Eternals. And that’s just the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Niki Caro, who broke through with Whale Rider, ended up on the dreary live-action Mulan. Patty Jenkins, underused since her Oscar-nominated Monster, directed the Wonder Woman films. And on and on.

The debate reached shouting volume when Barry Jenkins, among the most acclaimed film-makers of his generation, signed up to direct the pseudo-live action sequel to the pseudo-live action remake of The Lion King. Few recent pictures are more elegant than Jenkins’s Moonlight (winner of a best picture Oscar) and If Beale Street Could Talk (which brought Regina King the best supporting actress prize). What could have persuaded Jenkins to give so much of his time to another link in the franchise chain? We shall see when Mufasa: The Lion King emerges next year.

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This column became inevitable when, last week, news emerged that Greta Gerwig, poised to release her apparently postmodern celebration of Barbie, had signed up to make two Narnia films for Netflix

Then Deadline told us Sarah Polley, winner of best adapted screenplay, was “in talks to helm a live-action take on Bambi”. This column became inevitable when, last week, news emerged that Greta Gerwig, poised to release her apparently postmodern celebration of Barbie, had signed up to make two Narnia films for Netflix. “But that is different,” you may say. “Those are literary adaptation of works by CS Lewis. Nobody objected when Noah Baumbach, Gerwig’s romantic partner, directed her in a take on Don DeLillo’s White Noise for the same streamer. Isn’t this the same as her adapting Little Women?”

Well, only if Little Women opened up the possibility of six sequels featuring talking lions, gambolling fauns and flying horses. It might not be entirely accurate to describe Gerwig’s rumoured first Narnia film as a remake of Disney’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from 2005 – which took a massive $745 million off a $180 million budget – but everyone will be saying that anyway. If it walks and quacks like a franchise ...

So, what’s the problem? Aside from anything else, we have spent decades moaning about the lack of women at the top of the tree. And, as the (sorry) too-lengthy list above shows, many of these big-budget franchise films are indeed going the way of female directors. One is still tempted to joke that, when seeking out talent for their distaff adventures, the MCU must have approached every woman director short of highbrow Argentinian auteur Lucrecia Martel.

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But it seems they actually did ask Martel to direct Black Widow. She declined. “Companies are interested in female film-makers,” the director of The Headless Woman told the Guardian. “But they still think action scenes are for male directors.” She recently noted she’d watched a few Marvel films on planes. “I find the sound in them is absolutely in very poor taste,” Martel sniffed.

As late as the 1990s, the large operators could still spread a spectrum of entertainments before the talent

Well, okay, Lucrecia. But isn’t there a tradition of directors doing “one for the studio and one for themselves”? You take a lot of the studio’s money to make a Leopard-Woman film and then take somewhat less to make your drama about a romance between tollbooth workers. Those who put this case struggle to come up with examples of the practice delivering the desired alternation between idiosyncratic grit and big-budget splash. Steven Soderbergh does a bit of that. Chloe Zhao looks to be attempting the same. But the best way to make a second art house film is to make a first art house film.

What really grates about the practice – to get back to our opening case – is the lack of variety in the rewards available to the successful film-maker. During the golden age, a great studio could offer its pet directors high-end musicals, gangster flicks, westerns, romantic comedies, biblical epics, pirate flicks. Relatively few of these would be expected to generate a sequel. As late as the 1990s, the large operators could still spread a spectrum of entertainments before the talent. Now this is all there is: franchise content, continuing endlessly until the heat death of the universe. No harm to Narnia.