From the company that brought you (insert blog post you enjoyed here)
Hey all you bloggers out there (The A.V Club: keeping weird Hilary Duff-movie-related inside jokes alive since 2005)
Has anybody else noticed the strange preponderance of current movie ads billing joints like "Accepted" as "From The studio that brought you American Pie" and The Descent as "From the studio that brought you Hostel"? Doesn't that seem a little odd? I can understand why the ads for something like "Clerks II" would bill it as "from the creator of "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" because there's a clear authorial vision shared by all three films.
But does the fact that "Accepted" was released by the same soulless, monolithic corporate entity that put out an almost completely unrelated movie like "American Pie" seven years back really qualify as a big draw? Are there really people out there who are like, "Aw man, I can't wait to see "Accepted" cause there's a chance that the totally dope-ass executives who greenlit it totally funded "American Pie" as well! Those non-writing, non-directing executives only put out the dopest shit! Brand loyalty 4Ever! I'll see anything that multi-national corporation puts out cause they're always coming with the dopeness and the flava!"
It's one thing to bill a film as "from the producer of (insert popular movie title here)"–which is pretty damn sketchy to begin with, considering that these days producer credits are doled out as promiscuously as public nudity at Mardi Gras–but it's another thing for a studio to claim credit for successful movies probably made by an entirely different set of executives.
Granted, various studios throughout film history have had strong personalities discernible in many of their films (think Golden Age MGM or Hammer) but considering the insane amount of turnover among the executive ranks in Hollywood who's to say that anyone from the halcyon "American Pie" days is even still working at Universal?
Back when I worked at a video store with Keith I was amused to see a Mark Dacascos vehicle called "Boogie Boy" billed as "From The creator of "Pulp Fiction". Gosh, does that mean QT wrote or directed it? Hell no: the "Pulp Fiction" connection was derived solely from "Boogie Boy" being Executive Produced Roger Avary, who shares a story credit (and Oscar) with QT for "Pulp Fiction".
Is anyone else irritated by this "From the Studio that brought you" phenomenon? Discuss.