Business

Published on November 20th, 2018 | by Diogo Costa

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What is Wrong with the Hollywood Industry, according to Ryan Wiik

After creating his own company back in 2009, Ryan Wiik surely got a good glimpse of the Hollywood film industry. His (now former) company, WR Entertainment, focuses on producing films based on books, something that, according to Wiik himself, is something that Hollywood lacks: originality.

In fact, he says that the film industry revolves around remakes, and explains why:

“It is the fear of not satisfying people, that are being fed clichés for so many years, that they don’t even realize it anymore! And it is truly sad – you do not get to see original works anymore, just remakes of the remakes!”

In the 9 years Wiik was part of WR Entertainment, the company grew from zero to being worth $100 million. The reasoning for creating his own film production company is easy to understand: Wiik wanted to avoid depending on Hollywood’s inner industry, for it blocks the creativity of those who want to do things differently.

With this in mind, he still believes that being independent is still the way to go:

“You get to have both financial and creative independence. What you really get, is to bring onto the big screen, original, out-of-the-box movies. You get to give the power to the artists, and to the novelty, the fresh air of their creation.”

According to Wiik, original works (some being adapted from books) have the right recipe to become successful endeavors in Hollywood, and he supports this claim with a well-known example – the Twilight saga.

“I guess the best example is the Twilight franchise! I mean, Summit Entertainment is a mini-major, that experienced significant success, largely based on this one IP. They had a small portfolio of film investments – eleven or twelve – but they kept the idea and feel of the books, which the fans absolutely loved. The movies were quite original in their making, and sometimes in sharp contrast with Hollywood’s overflow of violence, sex and special effects.”

As someone who founded his own production company and has been inside the industry’s core, Ryan Wiik is surely knowledgeable about this subject, making his an important opinion about the world’s largest film industry.

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