Issues Facing Reality Film
The viability of reality films has been called into question. The Real Cancun was considered a flop at the box office, taking in $5,345,083 worldwide on a budget of $7.5 million. A reality movie based upon the Girls Gone Wild video series that MGM bought the rights to was never put into production and the Universal Pictures effort Drunken Jackasses: The Quest was delayed after the flop of Cancun and went straight to video. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, acknowledged the potential "for an entirely new form of filmmaking." However, noted Thompson, "people aren't watching Survivor just to see people in bikinis," and added that standard reality television techniques such as serialized suspense, "voting off" segments, and general goofiness should not be included in the films. One of the criticisms was that reality television allows viewers to get to know new people over time. With a reality film such as Cancun, "They transposed the format from television but none of the original characters," writes Sean Macauly in The Times. "With a film, viewers have 90 minutes to get up to speed with a cast of 16 partygoers. Rather than structuring their exploits like a soap opera and following them for a summer, The Real Cancun follows them for eight days." Paramount Pictures President Gail Berman stated that Jackass is "a great centerpiece for reality going to film" when asked about reality movies, but stated the question going forward is, "How do you get the exhibition experience of a movie to feel immediate and interactive with the audience?"
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