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Studios are rewriting movies steered by Reddit. A dangerous development – or long overdue?
(www.theguardian.com)
Everything will be Boaty McBoatface.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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Movies
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Alternately: how is this different from letting LLMs drive the script?
Every movie is about to be the Schneider cut of itself.
What is Schneider
I was mistaken, it's actually Snyder. But basically a crunchier version of an original theatrical release.
So in a way, this comment is the Schneider cut of your initial comment?
It's this better or worse than the focus group testing they've been doing for decades?
If your story is well written, a plot point that is expected but well told is a good story. If a murder mystery gives the audience the clues for Whodunit, and they solve it before the detective has, that's a good movie.
If the movie gives the clues then changed it because someone in the crowd solved it, now it's a nonsense plot twist that has no merit.
Reddit was a disaster for media analysis and criticism. It's just CinemaSins the website.
If a murder mystery gives the audience the clues for Whodunit, and they solve it before the detective has, that's a good movie.
And this is why Glass Onion was a much worse movie compared to Knives Out.
Isn't Glass Onion more straightforward than Knives Out was? The latter actually changed scenes between the first and second time we saw them, so it was harder to put the clues together. Glass Onion didn't do that and played with an open hand from the start.
We must have seen different films or I'm massively misremembering. Glass onion actively hid scenes so you couldn't piece things together yourself, only showing those scenes when they wanted the big reveal.
Yes, it hid scenes (though arguably not ones that are necessary to figure out who the killer is). But Knives Out literally changed scenes, the ones we saw the first time weren't the real scenes. That seems much worse?
The ending of I Am Legend tells us all we need to know about letting focus groups dictate cinema.
Can you imagine a Tarantino movie being run through a popularity filter?!
I suspect the missing piece in a lot of cases is hiring writers/artists who are actually fans of the IP and want to do it justice. If you have that to begin with, you don't need fans to tell you what they want.
As someone who ghost wrote the hottest garbage imaginable for Sony pictures, I can confirm you are 💯% correct. The secret is studios just need to hire someone that gives a shit about the IP they're writing for. Watts gave a shit about Spiderman, and changed the story to improve his movie (after some good fan insight). Most writer hired guns do NOT give a shit about the IP they are writing for at all. cough Madam Web cough
Why do movies studios and directors let their audience tell them jack? I’m tired of watching the general public’s movies. I want to watch movies made by people, not surveys and companies.
Okay, but having Ugly Sonic be an out-of-work actor who was replaced with another actor was one of the funniest parts of the new Chip and Dale movie, which was full of very funny things.
While the right one is obviously way better, am I the only one who thinks it still looks nightmare-fuel-ish either way and that some things just shouldn’t be CGI’ed?
the funny thing is they changed the movie to be different from the predictions of reddit.
I think i still agree with you though, with millions of fans speculating online some are invarably going to be right. Just make the movie you want to make.
They want to make money, which is why they do test screenings and focus groups and whatever else. It tends to result in bland and mediocre movies that do really well financially overall.
The ones that we don't hear about being changed due to test screenings and executive meddling tend to be creative and interesting. Maybe they did do the test screenings and took the better feedback to improve some things instead of just going with whatever came back. There are multiple ways to use input including ignoring it when the feedback obviously missed the point of the movie, like when they panic and slap a happy ending on because the test audience didn't like a logically downer ending.
On the one hand, you're right. They (director and team) should make the movie they want to make, even if it has a complete downer ending.
On the other hand, if it has a downer ending, I'm not watching it. So there's a trade-off.
Because if I want to feel like the innocent suffer, the guilty are never punished, and life is unfair, I don't watch a movie. I read the news.
The studios shouldn't listen to people like you for most movies because you have an absolute preference for one type of ending that doesn't fit all movies. They should be filtering out your type of opinion when screening Se7en or Fallen or Hereditary, and thankfully they did, but unfortunately they often overreact and slap in an undeserved happy ending.
It is fine for you to have your opinion on what to watch. I like all kinds of endings as long as they fit. I'm complaining about the studios listening to people who aren't really the target audience of the movie being made if they want an ending that doesn't really fit.
Desperation for the unsustainable profit system they must feed in order to survive and ensure everlasting growth for the shareholders. Taking a chance on original content can be a loss and losses have market impact.
If reddit is correctly predicting where you're going with a movie then chances are your writers just aren't very smart.
If reddit is coming up with BETTER ideas than what's in your script, that's an even BIGGER problem.