Amy Pascal has been with Sony for almost 30 years and has experienced first-hand, the upheaval of studio trends and staples. In our current era of reboots and remakes, Pascal along with Michael Lynton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer has managed to churn out a few noteworthy features amidst their tentpole franchises like Spider-Man, Men In Black and James Bond. Check out her interview below with The Huffington Post where she fields a few questions on this very subject.
Shia LaBeouf recently said he was "done" with big budget movies and referred to them as being artless. What do you say to people who tell you there's no art in big-budget movies?
Amy Pascal: I think here we try not to separate something good from something that makes money. That's the way everybody here feels. More than ever, because of social networking and everything else, things have to be good, they have to be good if they're big, otherwise nobody will go.
Why did the world need another Spider-Man movie?
Pascal: Peter Parker is one of the great modern mythological characters, period, in fiction. He falls somewhere between Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield and Hamlet, that's how I think of Spiderman. I don't think of him as a 'reboot' or anything like that. Peter Parker is a fantastic character that questions who to be in the world, I don't think there's anything that's more relevant.
Does she see it as retelling a story that's already been told?
Pascal: I don't see it that way. We told the story with Sam [Raimi] of Peter and MJ and Harry and that saga was finished, and I certainly wanted to talk about Peter Parker and the real identity of Spider-Man. It's very accessible, and good for the studio.
How does she determine what film property is worthy of a reboot/remake?
Pascal: I think you have to figure out what's relevant about the source material, what matters to people, regardless. It's like James Bond, it's no different than that. When the Broccollis [original producers of the Bond films] decide they're ready to make a change, and it goes from Pierce [Brosnan] to Daniel [Craig] and the pillars of the movie changed, it's the same thinking. They wanted something to be more realistic, be more grounded, it needed to feel more in the world that we're living in today. Those were the same questions they asked.
On the importance of the international market nowadays:
Pascal: We're an internationally skewed company. We were very well aware of what a big property "The Smurfs" was internationally. My partner Michael [Lynton] grew up loving The Smurfs, he's got Smurfs memorabilia all around the office, it's really hard to avoid. They are wonderful characters, and one of the things that's resonant about them is that in a world that's very cynical and grouchy, they always see the silver lining in everything. That seemed like a very accessible idea.
Also, these larger movies, specifically, family movies, they tend to do incredibly well overseas. We were really pleased. If you think of "Ice Age" or "Madagascar" or "The Smurfs," there's a huge market for family entertainment internationally.
There's a bit more at the source so be sure to click the source link below to read the full transcript.
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