Lightyear lesson: New-age spin-offs work better in series format on OTT than as theatrically-released films

The spin-off culture continues to be bigger than ever in mainstream Hollywood, which is why the lukewarm show of Lightyear , Disney-Pixar’s ambitious new animated follow-up to their iconic Toy Story franchise, has baffled trade pundits and the media alike. To recap, the film managed a global haul of $85.6 million in its opening weekend. With Jurassic Park Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick still continuing to rake it in, and with Thor: Love And Thunder around the corner, scoring blockbuster profits over its $200 million-budget could be a mighty challenge for space ranger Buzz Lightyear’s intergalactic caper. Look beyond Lightyear and spin-offs are commercially viable commodities that normally spell big money, more so in the post-Covid months when fans all over the world have reacted to such efforts with enthusiasm. Spin-offs come with a few ready advantages. For the creators, spin-offs are a convenient means to extend longevity of popular franchises by taking the story to a new direction without losing connect with the original context. The idea lets Hollywood studios rehash a formula that worked once with a new spin. Production houses, forever looking for ways to mint millions, have lately hit bullseye with around half-dozen big-ticket spin-offs. Unlike Lightyear, most new spin-offs have dropped internationally on streaming platforms and in the format of OTT series. These shows have translated to good viewership, and have also allowed the makers to push the limits beyond money matters. Since OTT is a platform that doesn’t directly have to fend against the pressures of opening weekend collections, the risk factor that come with being creative or paying heed to inclusivity and course correction is substantially lower. Disney’s decision to produce Lightyear, banned across 14 countries over a blink-you-miss Lesbian kiss, as a film for the theatres is surprising if you consider some of their genre-bending new properties have dropped on OTT in the form of spin-off shows. Over the recent past the studio has backed, produced or distributed series such as The Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian, which in turn spawned The Book Of Boba Fett, besides Obi-Wan Kenobi, a spin-off show that follows events of the 2005 feature film Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge Of The Sith. All these shows, continuing George Lucas’ Star Wars lore, have garnered a ready fan base on Disney+, just as two Marvel series — Loki and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier — released following the record-breaking success of the Avengers films. Spin-offs/reboots in feature film format such as Joker and Cruella have also clicked with fans and the critics alike, but these are rare instances (Cruella, incidentally concurrently dropped in OTT space, too). If more and more producers are falling back on the series format to produce spin-offs, the reason is evident. The primary requirement of a spin-off is to explore and extend a premise in a related manner but in a stand-alone direction. A storyline spread over several episodes allows the creators more space to develop plot and characters than a traditional two-hour feature film format. The notion brings back the popular opinion that Lightyear was an underdeveloped production with half-baked characters and an emphasis on CGI blitz over originality of concept. Perhaps, Disney were in no mood to take risks with their first major animated release in the post-Covid market. The decision to play safe with formula weighed down the film’s prospects, and the makers will now hope the film garners better eyeballs once it hits OTT domain. There is another commercial aspect, too, that might explain the tepid show of Lightyear at the global box office. It is a reason for which Disney themselves are to blame. Releasing a regular flow of spin-offs as show format on OTT helped Disney create a ready market for the franchise sub-genre. But there has been a flip side, too. The strategy has conditioned the target audience to accept spin-offs as freely available entertainment properties that drop direct to their home screens. The idea of a spin-off as a ticketed event, which a feature film is, is perhaps increasingly becoming outlandish. The studio, as well as Hollywood overall, seems to have realised as much, considering most of the spin-off stock lined up for the upcoming months are in series format for OTT platforms. There are a couple of exceptions, too. Minions: The Rise Of Gru is a feature film scheduled to release theatrically on July 1 while Dwayne Johnson makes his superhero debut in the Shazam! spin-off Black Adam, scheduled for an October release. To wind up, here’s a quick check on spin-offs scheduled to release in the coming months of this year. HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (series) Game Of Thrones may be long over, but the show’s overwhelming brigade of fans all around the world have been thirsting for more. Scheduled to premiere on August 21 this year, House Of The Dragon is a spin-off fantasy drama series created by George RR Martin and Ryan J. Condal, and is positioned as a prequel to Game Of Thrones. The story of the new HBO show takes place around two centuries before the events of the original series. THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER (series) The hype started building long before the show was officially announced, after Amazon Studios reportedly purchased rights for $250 million in 2017, for a five-season series. Touted to be the costliest show ever, The Rings Of Power is rumoured to be riding a production budget of a billion dollars. The fantasy series is based JRR Tolkien’s iconic The Lord Of The Rings trilogy and set in the Second Age of Middle-earth. THE WITCHER: BLOOD ORIGIN (series) The fantasy show is a prequel to the popular Netflix series The Witcher, and is based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s book series of the same name. The new show takes place around 1200 years before the events of the original series, and narrates the birth of the first Witcher besides exploring popular plot points as Conjunction of the Spheres and the Elven civilisation. BLACK ADAM (film) Dwayne Johnson makes his debut as a superhero with the film, which is a spin-off of the 2019 hit, Shazam! The film, scheduled for a theatrical release in October, is one of the biggest big screen attractions from Hollywood this year. Based on original DC characters, the film casts Johnson as Teth-Adam and the antihero Black Adam alongside Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari and Pierce Brosnan. MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU (film) The film is a sequel to the spin-off prequel Minions (2015) of the Despicable Me franchise. Set after the first film in the 1970s, the story depicts the adventures of Gru as a 12-year-old boy. The film is scheduled to release theatrically on July 1, and has a star-studded voice cast including Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin, Taraji P. Henson, Michelle Yeoh, RZA, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lucy Lawless, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, and Alan Arkin. Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR. Read all the  **_Latest News_** _,_  **_Trending News_** _,_  **_Cricket News_** _,_  **_Bollywood News_** _,_  **_India News_**  and  **_Entertainment News_**  here. Follow us on  Facebook_,_  Twitter and  Instagram_._