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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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Maybe the people who have successfully made some level of youtube career out of condemning hated woke adaptations that disrespect the original material should pool resources together and try to create themselves some faithful adaptations, starting with less ambitious targets. The Critical Drinker who is a writer might be able to do something interesting.

I stopped watching a while ago so I don't know how it's going, but the person who seems to have found the most success building a platform for conservative/outsider film-making is Dallas Jenkins. But I don't know that you can generate that sort of grassroots enthusiasm for most stories, even Christian ones. I think people are specifically willing to pay for his (pretty fun) take on the Gospels in a way they wouldn't for other products.

The Daily Wire is trying, but it's not looking good when the very critic you cite (who they actively courted) was lukewarm on their last movie (Ladyballers). Maybe Snow White will be good because they'll stick to the source material but we'll see.

I just don't think they can play at the sort of scale that does certain movies/properties justice (The first Narnia cost $180 million...a couple of decades ago). There's a reason Hollywood has a chokehold on blockbusters. Luc Besson got $200 million for Valerian after a surprise hit in Lucy, in an attempt to have his own franchise. It bombed, he will never see that sort of money again. Very few entities can absorb those losses.

My inner LLM thinks this is where someone should bring up the possibilities of using AI to level the playing field, at least somewhat.