Last week I talked about taking a risk and how I got a big reward out of it. This Friday is the official release date for Joker Folie a Deux. For full disclosure I did not really like the first movie in this series but as I do not want to discuss things I did not like here, I would rather talk about one aspect of it I did like. At the time it seemed like it was taking a risk: most fans did not want a Joker origin story that did not include Batman in any way and it seemed a lot bleaker than other comic book success stories at this time, however with a budget of 50ish million it wasn’t a big risk, but it was a risk nonetheless.

If there was one lesson I would have Hollywood producers and the like take away from movies like this it would be that risk can equal reward, and bigger risks often can pay off with bigger rewards. In this case the movie pulled in so much money that every involved stopped saying there would never be any kind of series here, that this was a one-off and such and they got down to work on the very soon to be released sequel, which to be fair is something I would do if a dump truck full of money showed up at my door (I look out the window every day, but alas no money trucks for the poor metalworker).

The movie itself doesn’t have to be the big risky thing either. There ware many, many risks involved with movies that can pay off big time… or pull a swan dive into a full belly flop. At some point every great director was a risk before they got their big break, and many more went into a tailspin after. These days we get casting announcements and the like super early so the debate and discourse and childish name calling can get out of a lot of systems before we even see a trailer. And we haven’t even gotten into whatever Netflix is doing (best example here would be Carl Rinsch…)

Now all this being said, risk of course does not always equal reward, flops are still a constant thing in this day and age and bigger risks equals bigger losses when a flop movie gets involved, which may be why it feels like executives often do take the wrong messages from either the success or failures of movies in a monetary sense (it’s probably easier to scapegoat then admit that your mistake lost millions of dollars). It’s also an industry that can move pretty fast and developed the phrase ‘elevator pitch’ so I could see why they would be less interested in taking a longer approach to individual study. As such in the spirit of risk, riskiness, audacity and capacity for reward today’s prompt: What is a movie/film-making risk, big or otherwise, that paid off a great reward for you?

For my answer I have to return to the beginning of this semi-coherent ramble: Joker was still pretty low risk all things considered, it is based on an established character and franchise, had a big name actor in the starring role and a writer/director who was no stranger to big hits, so it was a little safe either way like I said, low risk. Big Risk is doing something that has never been done before. Big Risk is releasing something like the first ever full length animated feature: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Big Reward is Disney releasing over 60 full length animated features (and still counting) since that day.