sharknado-attack

By Wheeler Winston Dixon.

“Anyone can make a $100 million dollar movie, but to shoot a feature film in 12-14 days, with a budget that’s probably less than the phone bill on a major studio film is monumental. To do it every four weeks and then release the film three to four months later is insane. But that’s what we do. Maybe they’re not Citizen Kane but we love making them […] and watching them […] and we think a lot of other people do too.”

 (Paul Bales, Partner, The Asylum Studios quoted in Johnson n.d.)

Some people get into the movie business because they have a passion for film. Some have dreams of creating the “great American movie,” or rising to the top of the Hollywood Dream Factory. But as mainstream films become ever more expensive, routinely costing $100,000,000 or more simply to produce, and then under-performing at the box office – Pacific Rim and The Lone Ranger are two prime examples – it seems that the old system of making movies is broken.

The risks are simply too great – a few bad bets can sink a studio. Low budget films like The Purge and The Conjuring, both made for a pittance, rule the multiplexes. Spectacle and special effects just don’t bring in audiences anymore; people want something new, and outrageous, for their entertainment dollar. And a relatively new studio in Hollywood, The Asylum, is dedicated to doing just that; giving the viewer something the majors won’t. Something like Sharknado (2013).

The Asylum is following in a long line of low budget Hollywood production companies. Independent film studios, like American International Pictures in the 1950s and 60s, and Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and Concorde/New Horizons in the 1970s and 80s, offered viewers something the mainstream studios couldn’t; films aimed directly at their target audience – outlaw movies that made up their own rules as they went along.

In the 1950s, American International broke the Hollywood studio mold by making films expressly for teenage audiences, which no one had exploited up until that time. With titles like I Was Teenage Werewolf, I Was Teenage Frankenstein, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Wild Angels and The Trip, to say nothing of their long running Edgar Allan Poe and Beach Party series, AIP made films that broke all the rules, shocked old school audiences, and made a fortune at the box office.

AIP also pioneered the concept of “saturation booking” – opening a film everywhere at once to forestall negative word of mouth – and used sensationalistic advertising campaigns and lurid titles to generate audience buzz in the pre-digital era. Shot on short schedules of 6 to 12 days, AIP’s films cost between $100,000 and $350,000, yet grossed millions, because they gave audiences what they wanted to see – not what mainstream studio executives thought they wanted to see.

In the 1970s, New World and Concorde/New Horizons followed much the same strategy, with titles like Night Call Nurses (“they’re always on duty”) and Caged Heat, giving young directors a shot at a Hollywood career on films that were made in a week, often back-to-back with another project to get the most out of the cast and crew, and began moving into the home video markets aggressively, in the infant days of the medium.

creatures5The maestro of low budget filmmaking, of course, is Roger Corman, who at 87 years of age is still cranking out low-budget films like Sharktopus, and though semi-retired, has served as a model for younger filmmakers who want to make highly exploitational films on non-existent budgets. There’s always a market for these films, but the major studios are usually behind the curve.

At the majors, there’s too much bureaucracy, and the studios are no longer independent entities – they rely on big name stars, directors and scripts, “packaged” by talents agencies such as International Creative Management, Creative Artists Agency or William Morris/Endeavor, which often wind up costing a fortune before they even go into production.

That’s why, as we enter the 21st century, the low-budget model of filmmaking continues to flourish – relying on unknown actors, up-and-coming directors and screen writers, and aided by the increasing sophistication of computer generated special effects, the exploitation film continues to offer something outside the box for audiences, most of whom now view their films as streaming downloads, video on demand, or on the Syfy Channel.

Seeing that there was a market for a new wave of viewer-driven genre filmmaking, three renegade producers formed The Asylum studio in 1997. David Rimawi, Sherri Strain and David Michael Latt all worked for Village Roadshow Pictures in the early 1990s, but decided to go out on their own, and begin producing and distributing low-budget features for the straight-to-video market. Latt became the head of the new company.

Latt was born in Encino, California, May 28, 1966. Attracted to genre films early in life, he made his first film at the age of eight, the Super 8mm short The Six Million Dollar Boy, a knock off of the popular TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. Latt played the lead role, and also wrote, directed, and produced the film. Clearly, this was a harbinger of things to come. After high school, Latt pursued a major in Film Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

Said Latt, “my favorite instructor answered a very popular question by freshmen students: ‘How do you direct a feature?’ He said, ‘You direct.’ That’s what I did” (qtd. in Brown 2004). Offered the directing job on Sorority House Party (1992) straight out of college, Latt then worked in distribution for Village Roadshow Pictures, but soon left with co-workers David Rimawi and Sherri Strain to form The Asylum Studios in 1997, with the idea of distributing and producing straight-to-video genre films.

Bellyfruit_keyArtThe Asylum’s first release was Kelli Green’s Bellyfruit (1999), a comedy/drama centering on teen pregnancy, recalling AIP’s Diary of A High School Bride (1959), which cost under $1,000,000 to make, but struggled to break even. Marketing – that was the problem. Nobody knew who The Asylum was. The studio had to establish a brand identity; it also wasn’t yet an actual production unit, and merely distributed films made by others. The Asylum had to find a better way of doing business.

It took two more years to get another film into release, the modestly budgeted romantic comedy Fourplay. Fourplay was a “pick up” film, this time from a British production company, and though it boasted Colin Firth and Mariel Hemingway in the leading roles, the film failed to make a dent with the public.

It was at this point that Latt hit upon the strategy that The Asylum has followed ever since. Find a mainstream genre/action film that’s in production, figure out a way to make an almost exact copy of it, and get it out to audiences before the big budget version opens in theaters. Sherri Strain also left the studio in 2002, and David Bales joined The Asylum as head of production. Said Bales,

“I had been working with SAG for almost 10 years and I was ready to do something else. When my friends David Rimawi (whom I’ve known since we were eight years old) and David Latt (we’ve been friends for more than 20 years) told me that their business partner (former Asylum executive Sherri Strain) was leaving the company and they were looking for someone to replace her, I jumped at the chance. I had become very comfortable doing what I was doing, but I really wanted a challenge. And I have to say, I certainly got one. Making a feature film each and every month for a fraction of the budget of a major studio film is difficult, to say the least.” (qtd. in Johnson, n.d.)

Latt welcomed Bales into The Asylum because,

“we weren’t doing much original content. As Syfy grew, we had the opportunity to have a real hand in creating what we wanted to see. So in 2002, we went from being a buyer of films to being a developer and supervisor of them. We’ve been so successful in the last dozen years that we’ve done over 200 of these now. And we have one unbreakable rule: if we don’t have a good title, we’re not going to make the movie.” (qtd. in Sellers 2013)

Piggy-backing on the promotional campaigns of the bigger budget films, and banking on audience confusion with titles that were almost the same as the original, The Asylum lured audiences into watching their “mockbusters” – as fans almost immediately dubbed the films – and soon the films, and the studio, had a cult following.

Vampires vs. ZombiesVince D’Amato’s Vampires Vs. Zombies (2004), the first film to follow this model, was a knock-off of New Line’s Freddy Vs. Jason – although the film’s poster boasted that it was a new film version of J. Sheridan LeFanu’s classic vampire tale Carmilla – with a poster almost identical to Freddy Vs. Jason, and despite a drubbing from even the fan critics, it made back its budget – becoming The Asylum’s first real hit.

The reviews were merciless: one critic noted that Vampires Vs. Zombies was made with “Grade-Z incompetence,” and suggested that it would best be used as “landfill,” while another complained that the film “took a premise that was basically guaranteed to make [the] movie an instant hit with the indie horror crowd in spite of his nonexistent budget, and […] fucked it until it bled,” (Vampires Vs. Zombies, Wikipedia) but The Asylum didn’t care. Vampires Vs. Zombies made money, and the studio was off and running.

But their biggest hit was about to come; seeing that Steven Spielberg was about to ramp up his big budget remake of War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, about an invasion from Mars, Latt took over the director’s chair himself to helm H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Latt’s “mockbuster” was released on June 28, 2005, one day before Spielberg’s film, and sold over 100,000 copies from Blockbuster upon its release.

In typical Asylum fashion, Latt not only directed the film, but also served as co-producer, co-writer, and editor on the project, which was shot in 12 days for roughly $500,000. Since the original material was in the Public Domain, there was nothing Spielberg could do about it, but he obviously wasn’t pleased. The public had confused one film with the other, and snapped up The Asylum version in record numbers.

C. Thomas Howell starred in H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds as astronomer George Herbert; his son in the film, Alex, is played by Howell’s own son, Dashiell, in a last-minute casting decision that also saved a good deal of money. Jake Busey co-stars as Lt. Samuelson, whose family has been wiped out by the Martians. With typical Asylum efficiency, although his role in the film is quite substantial, all of Busey’s scenes were shot in just one day.

Howell enjoyed the experience so much that in 2008 he directed and starred in The Asylum’s sequel to the project, War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave. Again, with a minimal budget of $500,000 and a 12-day shooting schedule, the film was also a hit, released direct to DVD, as well as playing on the British Horror Channel, and on Syfy in the United States.

tdtes_largeThat same year, Howell directed and starred in Asylum’s The Day the Earth Stopped (2008), an obvious knock-off of 20th Century Fox’s remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, much to 20th Century Fox’s dismay. Latt, Rimawi and Bales could see they had a winning formula, and kicked into high gear for production, now partnering with the Syfy Channel for television release, and Echo Bridge Home Entertainment for DVD and Blu-ray distribution.

The most surprising thing about The Asylum’s short schedule knock-offs is the high production values that the films have, the result of using armies of unpaid interns and film-school graduates on each production. The Asylum is not a signatory to the Director’s Guild, the Producer’s Guild, The Screenwriter’s Guild, or any other union except for The Actor’s Guild.

Thus, The Asylum can shoot for 20 hours a day if it needs to, until everyone drops from exhaustion – which often happens. When the Hollywood writer’s strike hit the industry a few years ago, The Asylum was unaffected; since they weren’t part of the Writer’s Guild, they could keep on cranking out scripts, and films.

Naturally, the major studios aren’t happy about this at all, but The Asylum is clearly reinventing the movie business, making up their own model as they go along. With the collapse of the DVD market, The Asylum now relies on streaming downloads and on-demand and cable television. Because their budgets are so low, they can make a boast no other Hollywood studio can match; they have never lost money on a film.

el_codice_da_vinci_2006With the success of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, The Asylum’s path was clear. In the next decade, the studio would make Snakes on a Train, obviously patterned after Snakes on A Plane; The Da Vinci Treasure for The Da Vinci Code; the thriller When A Killer Calls for When A Stranger Calls; Pirates of Treasure Island for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest; Transmorphers for Transformers; AVH: Alien vs. Hunter for AVP: Alien vs. Predator; I Am Omega for I Am Legend, and the list goes on and on.

Indeed, the Asylum seems dedicated to pushing the envelope as far as it can go, and then further, with such films as Titanic II, a riff on James Cameron’s much better known film made for a mere half a million dollars; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, made to cash in on the hit Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. franchise; the science fiction action film Battle of Los Angeles, an homage to the big-budget Battle: Los Angeles; The Amityville Haunting, whose origins are obvious; and even Age of the Hobbits, inspired by The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

In this last case, however, The Asylum encountered serious resistance to any film with the word “hobbit” in the title, and settled for the alternate title Clash of the Empires which, though it has nothing to do with the film itself, is an obvious reference to the major studio production Clash of the Titans. But even this was not the last title change; the film is also known as Lord of the Elves in some territories.

Central to The Asylum’s success are its digital special effects, created by Joe Lawson, who also serves as the head of Visual Effects for the company. In addition, Lawson directed Clash of the Empires (Asylum’s Hobbit knock-off) and the genuinely bizarre sci-fi horror film Nazis at the Center of the Earth, in which a group of researchers in Antarctica are abducted by a platoon of gas-masked soldiers and dragged into a hidden cave in the center of the Earth.

There, they discover that Dr. Josef Mengele and group of surviving Nazi soldiers are plotting an invasion of Earth to create a “Fourth Reich.” Amazingly, the film took only 12 days to make, and in Lawson’s own words had “a budget well south of $200,000” (Nazis at the Center of the Earth, Wikipedia). Despite the low cost of the film, it contains some effectively outrageous imagery, and has, of course, totally recouped its entire production cost through cable and video on demand release.

Indeed, Latt is cheerfully unapologetic about the studio’s approach to filmmaking, telling one reporter,

“we’ve gotten to where we can now produce tie-in films [a term Latt prefers to ‘mockbusters’] in three to four months. And just so long as we don’t mimic the promotional artwork too closely, the big studios don’t seem to mind. I’m not trying to dupe anybody. I’m just trying to get my films watched. Other people do tie-ins all the time; they’re just better at being subtle about it. Another studio might make a giant robot movie that ties into the Transformers release and call it Robot Wars. We’ll call ours Transmorphers.”

“We were planning on making The Apocalypse [2007; a knock off combination of Armageddon and Deep Impact] as a straightforward doomsday movie. But certain buyers told us they wanted a religious film. So we consulted priests and rabbis and made it into a faith-based film about the end of the world. We’ve created a Faith Films label to distribute religious-themed films, and this fall we’re releasing a new faith-based movie, 2012: Doomsday. Whether it’s giant robots attacking the Earth or something from the Bible, we’re just happy to be making movies.” (Qtd. in Potts 2007)

David Bales agrees with Latt, adding,

“it’s like any other marketplace. Instead of selling vegetables it’s selling crappy films. We don’t make a movie unless we know where we’re going to sell it. So we don’t even start to film until we have a good idea of getting money back. When an idea comes from one of our buyers, we have a good sense of things.” (Qtd. in Bradley 2013)

Reviews don’t matter, but viewers rule.

As an example of this, a Japanese distributor wanted a film about a giant shark battling a giant octopus. The Asylum immediately took them up on the idea. The result: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009), which became another big hit for the company, based in large part on the sheer outrageousness of the promotional materials.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

Jack Perez, the director of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus noted “they give you a title, a poster, a cast, and a formula, and then we shoot it in 12 days. We go from the idea of the movie to release date in less than two months!” (qtd. in Patterson 2009). No major studio could move that fast, or be that responsive to exhibitor or audience demand. Ultimately, The Asylum is really a studio for fans, many of whom – oddly enough – like their films better than the big budget originals.

The transparency of the studio’s hierarchy is also a sharp contrast to the button-down, secretive mentality of the majors. Simply by going to The Asylum’s official website, you can access the direct e-mail address for all the partners in the organization, unheard of in Hollywood.

The Asylum’s website also actively solicits pitches from screenwriters for upcoming projects, and posts openings for cast and crew with direct links to the studio’s employment office; and if Syfy or some other distributor comes up with a concept they’d like to see on the screen, The Asylum is more than willing to oblige.

While the recent film Sharknado is probably The Asylum’s best known film, and the company has been associated with a wave of disaster, mutant predator and action films, The Asylum makes movies in nearly every conceivable genre, with only one common denominator: they all make money. A partial list of The Asylum’s action films, for example, includes Snakes on a Train (2006), Street Racer (2008), Death Racers (2008), 200 mph (2011) and American Warships (2012).

Adventure films include King of the Lost World (2005), Pirates of Treasure Island (2006), 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007), Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls (2008), Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), The 7 Adventures of Sinbad (2010) and Almighty Thor (2011), all of which are based on other, better-known films in line with The Asylum’s guiding strategy.

MV5BMTg0NjYwNjYyNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjc5NzA2Nw@@._V1_SY317_CR6,0,214,317_Comedy isn’t really The Asylum’s strong suit, but they still have the rather sleazily comic exploitational films 18-Year-Old Virgin (2009), Sex Pot (2009), #1 Cheerleader Camp (2010), MILF (2010; a combination of American Pie and Revenge of the Nerds with the tag line, “They Really Do Know Best!”), Barely Legal (2011) and Bikini Spring Break (2012). Most of these films have received decidedly negative reviews; of MILF, one viewer said that “there is no plot development, horrible acting, bad writing, annoying characters […] It tries to be like American Pie, but is just a horrible, unfunny film” (MILF, Wikipedia).

Disaster films are The Asylum’s true calling, and bolstered by Joe Lawson’s expertise in low cost digital special effects, the company manages to get considerable mileage out of such films as The Apocalypse (2007), I Am Omega (2007), Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009), Megafault (2009), Airline Disaster (2010), Mega Piranha (2010), Titanic II (2010), Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus (2010), Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011), 2012: Ice Age (2011) and Sharknado (2013).

Many of these films, of course, are copies of mainstream studio projects, but in the realm of “monster mashups,” The Asylum has created a world all its own. Again, one must remember that each of these films is shot for roughly $500,000 in two weeks or less; the most expensive budget is still only in the $1,000,000 range. Adjusted for inflation, this is like spending $100,000 for a movie in the 1960s; it’s making a movie out of thin air.

Family films, a rather thin category for The Asylum at the moment, include only a few titles, such as Princess and the Pony (2011), which, like The Apocalypse, was released on their family friendly Faith Films label. Fantasy films, such as Dragon (2006), Merlin and the War of the Dragons (2008), Dragonquest (2009), Grimm’s Snow White (2012) and Jack the Giant Killer (2013) are popular with the “Dragons and Dungeons” crowd.

MV5BMTA0NDY2MzQxODheQTJeQWpwZ15BbWU3MDU3OTcwNjc@._V1_SY317_CR6,0,214,317_Horror films, another strong series of entries for The Asylum, include Vampires Vs. Zombies (2004), Scarecrow Slayer (2004, which David Latt himself stepped in to direct, simply to save money), Evil Eyes (2004), Legion of the Dead (2005), Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006), Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Curse (2006), Freakshow (2007, a remake of Tod Browning’s 1932 classic Freaks), The Amityville Haunting (2011), Zombie Apocalypse (2011), Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012) and others too numerous to mention here.

Add to this the suspense and mystery films The Da Vinci Treasure (2006) and Sherlock Holmes (2010); the science fiction entries Alien Abduction (2005), Invasion of the Pod People (2007), 100 Million BC (2008), Transmorphers: Fall of Man (2009), The Land That Time Forgot (2009) 2012: Supernova (2009), Alien Origin (2012; The Asylum’s version of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus) and the just released Atlantic Rim (2013), and even a western, 6 Guns (2010), and you have a pretty full slate of productions.

There’s even a stable of characters who have appeared in many of the company’s films, such as The Hillside Cannibals, Supercroc, Spideroid Aliens, Gatoroid, Robo Hitler and, of course, Bigfoot, who have their fans in the world of Syfy cable movies.

As Gabriele Pedullà and others have argued, theatrical exhibition of movies is a thing of the past. While box office grosses have been artificially amped up by 3-D movies, higher ticket prices, and the occasional blockbuster hit, more and more, filmmakers are bypassing theatres and going straight to streaming downloads or on-demand cable offerings.

Whether the film in question is a straightforward genre piece, or an art film, the theatrical distribution network is drying up. Films have to reach their audiences directly, using social media for advertising, instead of the traditional route of trailers, posters, a theatrical opening, and then DVDs later down the road.

Sharknado
Sharknado

Thus, the most revolutionary aspects of The Asylum are its embrace of the web, Facebook, Twitter and other tools to publicize its films; the incredible pace and simplicity of production, which sets a new model for the hyper-consumptive world of streaming, which demands more and more product every day; the company’s relentless focus on the bottom line at all costs; marketing by title, distributor requirements and audience demands; and the absolute transparency of the company.

This, then, is The Asylum; the renegade studio that changed the way Hollywood makes movies. With such recent releases as Atlantic Rim, patterned after Pacific Rim; AE: Apocalypse Earth for the Will and Jaden Smith film After Earth – both of which were more profitable than their big studio counterparts – to say nothing of the recent media sensation Sharknado (“it’s a tornado full of sharks!”), which has already spawned a sequel set in New York, The Asylum shows no signs of slowing down. Hollywood doesn’t normally make movies this way. But maybe, soon, it will have to.

Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Professor of Film Studies, Coordinator of the Film Studies Program, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and Editor in Chief, with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His newest books are Streaming: Movies, Media and Instant Access (University of Kentucky Press, 2013); Death of the Moguls: The End of Classical Hollywood (Rutgers University Press, 2012); 21st Century Hollywood: Movies in the Era of Transformation (co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster; Rutgers University Press, 2011); A History of Horror (Rutgers University Press, 2010; reprinted in 2011), Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia (Edinburgh University Press/Rutgers University Press, 2009), and A Short History of Film (co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster; Rutgers University Press, 2008; reprinted 6 times through 2012, with a new edition in 2013). His website, Frame by Frame, can be found here and a series of videos by Dixon on film history, theory and criticism, also titled Frame by Frame, can be found here.

Works Cited and Consulted

Adalian, Josh (2013), Sharknado Was Not a Ratings Smash, But It Still Won Anyway”, Vulture, July 12.

Bailey, Jason (2013), “Why the Sharknado People Are Doing Bad Movies Wrong”, Flavorwire, July 12.

Belloni, Matthew (2011), The Hobbit Producers Sue Age of the Hobbits Studio for Trademark Infringement”, The Hollywood Reporter, November 7.

Borelli, Christopher (2009), “Bizarro Blockbusters”, The Chicago Times, July 3.

Bradley, Ryan (2013), “The Amazing Movie Company Behind Sharknado, Fortune, May 29, 2013.

Brown, Phil Davies (2004), “David Michael Latt Interview”, Horror Asylum, August 11.

Fritz, Ben (2012), Hobbit Knockoff Release Blocked by Judge”, The Los Angeles Times, December 10.

Goldberg, Lesley (2013), Sharknado Producers Want Damon Lindelof, Johnny Depp for Potential Sequel”, The Hollywood Reporter, July 12.

_____________ (2013), Sharknado Director on Secrets, Sequels, and Success of the Social Media Sensation”, The Hollywood Reporter, July 12.

Gordon, Diane (2013), “Syfy’s Sharknado Engulfs Perfect Twitter Storm”, Vulture, July 12.

Hess, Amanda (2013), “Escaped From the Asylum!”, Pacific Standard Magazine, July 10.

Johnson, Dan (n.d.), “The Catch Me Interviews: Paul Bales”, Guestar.

Katz, David (2013), “From Asylum, the People Who Brought You (a Movie Kinda Sorta Like) Pacific Rim, GQ, July 12.

Matthews, Dylan, et al. (2013), “Twenty-Eight Possible Sharknado Sequels”, The Washington Post, July 12.

Neal, Meghan. “Why There Are So Many Terrible Movies on Netflix”, Motherboard, July 17.

O’Neill, Natalie (2013), “#sharknado Rules Twitter as Campy Shark Thriller Starring Ex-90210 Star Becomes Viral Hit”, The New York Post, July 12.

Patterson, John (2009), “Seeking Asylum: The Rise of Hollywood’s Z Movies”, The Guardian, July 30.

Pedullà, Gabriele (2012), In Broad Daylight: Movies and Spectators After The Cinema. London: Verso.

Perkins, Rodney (2008), “The Asylum and The Art of The Movie Knock-Off”, Film Esq., December 26.

Pomerantz, Dorothy (2013), “Meet the Guys Behind Sharknado, Forbes, July 12.

_____________ (2012), “Attack of the Mockbuster Movie: Hobbits, Zombies and 2-Headed Sharks”, Forbes, October 2.

Potts, Ralph (2007), “The New B Movie”, The New York Times, October 7.

Sellers, John (2013), Sharknado and the Syfy Strategy: ‘If We Don’t Have a Good Title, We’re Not Going to Make The Movie”, Vulture, July 12.

Simon, Scott (2007), “Movie ‘Mockbusters’ Put Snakes on Trains”, NPR, December 8.

Somma, Brandon (2013), “Masters of the Mockbuster: What The Asylum is All About”, The Artifice, January 4.

Suddath, Claire (2013), “Inventing Sharknado: Inside Syfy’s Booming B-Movie Factory”, Business Week July 12.

25 thoughts on “Inside The Asylum: The Outlaw Studio That Changed Hollywood”

  1. Major movie studios are not only blowing big bucks on giving people more of what they don’t want, they have to goad people into talking about upcoming features with contrived vital marketing campaigns. Asylum wins by taking what would seem to be a totally counter-intuitive approach—and that’s cutting films down to the core of what people actually watch them for: to be entertained. Really effective viral marketing has to be organic. When audiences are getting what they really want, they talk about it, no contrived hashtags or marketing gimmicks needed. That’s the genius of leveraging “so bad it’s good” to the extent that Asylum has.

  2. Excellent article, I must say. The credit of The Asylum’s success goes to David Michael Latt and his partners who dared to think differently and challenge the mainstream filmmakers and studios. The Asylum not only is minting money out of their “mockbuster” films, but also giving a fair opportunity for young and fresh film graduates, directors, producers, screenwriters and actors. Moreover the hype and marketing of their films is half accomplished as the film titles include buzzwords of their counterparts (like The Da Vinci Treasure has the word ‘The Da Vinci’ in it). And I must say, it is a very clever move to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to market their films. As far as the infringement is concerned, there are many others who do a similar work as The Asylum but none achieved the success as they did. So it doesn’t really matter 🙂 Because they are addressing the demands of the target audience; offering something new through these incredibly low budget films.

  3. Brilliant article, I had seen these one off movies in the rental stores but thought it was random duplicates not a strategy that was industry changing. I love that they have found a way to move faster and capitalize on their strength. This also provides for a richer marketplace and increased competition. When industries get stuck with one way of doing business the end result is not generally good for the customer. I really enjoyed the article and will be sharing. Thanks

  4. One thing you forgot to mention in your glowing review of The Asylum’s business is their highly illegal practice of hiring crew as independent contractors. This enables them to pay their young, inexperienced crew less than minimum wage, and work them dangerously long hours with no overtime payments.

    If that was happening in China, people would be screaming ‘sweatshop!’ and demanding boycotts, but according to you, it makes them Captains of Industry.

  5. Yes, they’re a not a union shop, and what you say is true. On the other hand, the majors get away with hiring college students as interns, and also working them to death — though this is lately coming under fire, thankfully — and The Asylum can also be useful as a resumé builder for those just coming into the industry. But nevertheless, your point is well taken, and it’s not as if their films make any real artistic contribution – it’s simply a way to game the system.

  6. This is an immense article with a lot to take in. I’ve read a bit here and there in the past about The Asylum, but never so much content in one place. On one hand I love this studio. They create excellent parody and B-movies. Sometimes the films are of a terrible quality, but it is a part of the allure. Laughing at how terrible a film is can make for a great night of drinking with friends. Of course, this recently happened with the latest flick Sharknado. Just in the past week I noticed more and more of these campy B-movies showing up on Netflix, and couldn’t resist the urge to watch a few.

    Still, while thinking of “parody,” it is amusing to think of how The Asylum is in itself a parody of Hollywood production companies. They are somehow able to scoot around labor laws, unions, and high production costs (to name a few things) and turn out immense profits. As a business, they are a curious entity. It’s hard to say that I “like” what they are doing: essentially ripping off other films with a lot of thought and energy being poured into their production and running their low paid actors ragged with 20 hour long shoots), but on the other hand it is entertaining. Sort of like returning to ancient Rome to watch the gladiators fight in the Colosseum. Except, while other production companies play nicely by the rules; The Asylum shows up with tanks and machine guns. As a business though, they win. They certainly are not dying, and are apparently here to stay in their niche of shoddy B-movies.

  7. I am interested in Chris’s point about Asylum itself being a parody of Hollywood, but as I understand it, Asylum is not making that great a profit in comparison with Hollywood mega-blockbusters. I don’t quite understand the mindset of this company though. One would think they might want to make money off shoddy films in order to finance small, really good films, at least once in a while. But it sounds like they are perfectly happy turning out garbage that is just good enough to dump on the market. I don’t really understand why you’d put all the effort into making these (mostly) terrible films, and truly not have any desire to use some of your profits to make a really terrific low budget film now and then. I guess they are even more commercially driven than Roger Corman, and I find that pretty sad and limited. Of course, they’d likely lose money on a good little indie film because they could not cash in on the advertising for the blockbuster films they are trading upon. Still, you’d think they’d at least have a DESIRE to make good films on occasion, but I guess that makes me sound naive and ridiculously optimistic.

  8. The crazy thing about The Asylum is they seemingly have no interest in making good movies. They simply want to make films as fast as possible to “tie in” with major studio releases, and make a modest profit on each title, and then make another low budget knock off. Genre filmmaking is inherently compromised, but you’d think they would have the ambition to make at least a few good genre films, but no — as The Asylum’s David Bales said, “it’s like any other marketplace. Instead of selling vegetables it’s selling crappy films.” That’s kind of amazing – manufacturing bad films on purpose, just so long as they’re salable.

  9. While major Hollywood studios have a tendency to spend a great deal of money to film movies that don’t connect with moviegoers, The Asylum aims to do the opposite, as evidenced by their recent release of Sharknado. Produced for a budget of under $1 million, Sharknado has caused quite the buzz after its debut on TV screens across the country.

    Sharknado is considered an outlaw movie, meaning the movie was not shot according to the traditional rules of Hollywood. It used non-union labor throughout, as others have commented, and actors who worked just a few days to bring the film to completion.

    The first film, Bellyfruit, struggled to find an audience. Two years later, The Asylum released a romantic comedy called Fourplay. Even with popular stars featured in this movie, it did not do well once released. This led The Asylum to the formula they use to make movies today, piggybacking on major studio film projects. But why won’t they make a good movie? Why always just cheap copies? That’s the part that I don’t get.

  10. The always entertaining and informative Wheeler Winston Dixon has once again alerted us to a phenomenon flying below the radar for many of us. And, as usual, he puts his observations in historical context. I like that he uses a light touch in assessing the quality of Asylum’s movies, leaving it to one of theHe lets one the the filmmakers who stated“it’s like any other marketplace. Instead of selling vegetables it’s selling crappy films.”

  11. I’m very glad to read this article, as I wondered just who/what The Asylum was. As a longtime fan of independent film companies like Troma, it’s interesting to compare their strategies. Whereas The Asylum ties its films to Hollywood blockbusters, Troma tries to market its own flagship series to subsidize its smaller titles–almost all schlocky, of course. It seems, though, that The Asylum has managed to establish more solid capital to keep it churning films out quickly, while Troma (and others) are always teetering on the edge of the abyss. One wonders, as you mention, Wheeler, if The Asylum will attempt to make a good movie one of these days. With the subsidy of Sharknado profits, perhaps someday soon we’ll see an atmospheric, character-driven film about giant hybrid eel-leeches. Leels vs. Eeches?

  12. Will, I wouldn’t hold my breath! The Asylum seems dedicated to making, in their own words, “crappy films.” I actually bought the DVD of their version of WAR OF THE WORLDS for one penny (!) on Amazon, where thousands of used copies of their films circulate, and trust me, it’s utterly unwatchable. They’re most interesting as a marketing phenomenon, but still, Corman made a lot of excellent genre films, at a a price — but The Asylum seems to simply want to churn out trash for cash.

  13. I too, enjoyed Sharknado, but it is just a parody of silly Hollywood films. I really want to return to Chris Romans’s fascinating point about Asylum being “itself a parody of Hollywood production companies.” I have been giving some further thought to this idea. Perhaps, as creepy as this may sound, Hollywood is just like Asylum, in that, for the most part, Hollywood production companies also turn out garbage, but Asylum is just way more honest about their bottom line ambitions.

    Granted, major league Hollywood production companies have the huge promotional budget and the increasingly ever-present promotional machine that is necessary to brainwash the masses into watching the latest excrement (or sequel to previous excrement) at the local megaplex or on another platform. But let’s face facts: behemoth Hollywood production companies rarely make any great or risk-taking films. They dump loud stupid junk on consumers, repeatedly tell them to go see it — and audiences obey, for the most part, if only to have something to talk about with others over the water-cooler, as many admit.

    Like Asylum, Hollywood execs have no interest in making truly exceptional films, perhaps because this entails considerable fiscal risk. They make films that are just good enough to get audiences into seats on that important first weekend. Box office rules all. It does not matter if it takes 3D, stupid excessive violence, routine misogyny, or the remaking the same old tired stories. It is all about filling seats and getting people to consume the product. Such a risk averse environment is NEVER going to foster the risk-taking work of great directors such as Denis, Dumont, Reygadas, Vinterberg, Moodysson, the Dardenne Brothers, Martel, Bresson, Cocteau, Renoir, Buñuel, and so many other truly great directors.

    It is very rare indeed that Hollywood executives green-light anything as challenging and astonishing as many foreign films or independent films, though they sometimes “pick up” and distribute a few nominally “better” films, mainly so that they have something to brag about during the nauseating self congratulatory awards season. Perhaps we should applaud the brutal honesty of Asylum in that they make no attempt to pretend to make great films, and they make no apologies for their bottom line driven success. They make rotten movies; parodies of Hollywood films that are just good enough to make their money back and make a bit of profit. If, as Romans argues, Asylum itself is a parody of Hollywood, I guess it makes no sense at all for any of us to wonder why they don’t even desire to make the effort (or take the risk) involved in creating or releasing truly great cinema.

  14. I love what Gwendolyn said above about both Hollywood and Asylum making crap movies but Asylum actually admitting–and playing up–the fact that they’re crap. Hollywood still labors under the delusion that it’s making something quality, but Asylum has discovered that you don’t have to spend a lot of money, time, talent (or anything else, really) to make something people will watch. It’s basic niche marketing. You spend less to target a smaller group of people rather than blowing millions on creating/marketing for “everybody”. While you may appear to make less, your bottom line is in fact healthier. I’m seeing two different types of people watching Asylum’s crap films: people who will watch anything anyway, and people who gleefully relish Hollywood’s having become a caricature of itself as Asylum serves up a glorious caricature of that caricature.

  15. We cannot deny the fact Asylum has flourish with its kind of movies. Its up to the people watching to know their movies.

  16. So, want to know what it’s like on the inside of an Asylum film? I work on these projects. No, I do NOTwork FOR Asylum…the original comment above about us all being freelance is true. However, the comment about us all being interns is completely false. I have worked in film and television for over 15 years. I am a member of the DGA and have a resume spanning feature films and television and worked with some of the biggest names you can imagine. During that time I’ve been paid a lot, done a lot…and hated most of it. Hollywood film making has in many ways become a soulless factory interested more in making money than quality films and they’re willing to do almost anything to achieve that goal..except innovate and imagine. Three years ago I wanted to quit. I was done. The industry here in LA was dying…I hadn’t been able to get a union gig in ages, and I was tired of working with people who were just as burned out as I was. Then I saw a posting on Craigslist looking for someone who could make some props for an ultra low budget film. I’ve done a little before, so I figured, why not… I applied, met with the art director, and before I knew it, had been hired as the prop master on an Asylum film. A week later I was wearing a wet suit diving into a masive water tank to try to figure out how to get $10 worth of aluminum foil to stick to a stupid foam rock that refused to sink. The hours were long, the locations were brutal, the script was…well, it was bad…but for the first time in ages, I was having a blast! The crew were all refugees from mainstream film like myself…and we all shared several common bonds, including a desire to do something fun for a change. Yes, the hours were long…but never so long as to make the amount we got paid dip below minimum wage. The Asylum may be cheap, but they’re not stupid. Sure, I was sacrificing my DGA paycheck for an Asylum flat daily rate…but in many ways, it was worth it because for the first time, I felt the same enthusiasm coming to work as Ihad when I’d first started out in Hollywood ages before.
    Since then I’ve worked on a number of Asylum films, including Sharknado 2. They’re all hard. They’re all ridiculous. And they’re all fun. It’s a bit like summer camp with a camera. You work your butt off but so does everyone else around you. An Asylum film is so lean that there’s no room for slackers on a set. You don’t pull your weight? You go home. Being a member of the Asylum team is its own badge of honor…and you earn every bloody bit…but along the way you learn so much about filmmaking that you’d never learn on a big film. Since I’ve been with them, I’ve done props, worked in the art department, helped production coordinate, worked as a set costumer, and most recently as a costume designer. Nowhere else in Hollywood will you find a company that not only allows people to job hop like this, but encourages it. I worked with a director who started as a grip, became an AD and is now helming his own features.
    Now, don’t get me wrong…the Asylum has its own share of problems and people willing to tell you they’re evil. And there are days when I get up and look at myself in the mirror and think “Oh boy…what today…” but it’s a bit like childbirth…when we’re all in the theater watching a shark get disembowled from the inside out, you’re not thinking about the time you almost cried on set because your budget for your department was only $1200 and it’s all spent and the director wants a fully custom item…in 15 minutes. No, you’re thinking…hell yes, that was ridiculous, but it was fun.
    So, both the name and company Asylum can be looked at from two sides…as the place where the crazies are sent to be locked up…and a place where those of us that are tired of the even bigger machine go to have a little fun..and seek our own Asylum.
    Oh, and if you do see that army of interns everyone keeps saying are doing all our movies…let me know. I haven’t run into one yet.

  17. Dear Tye Rannosaurus – thanks for your comments! It’s always useful to get an inside view of these things, and I agree, Asylum is what it is, and makes no pretenses about it. I must admit that I thought that SHARKNADO 2 played to exceedingly diminishing returns – even though it was a relative ratings blockbuster for SyFy – and I found myself fast forwarding through much of the film, but the insight into interns – pretty much what’s been publicly reported – is useful news indeed, and I appreciate it.

    As for conventional Hollywood being dead in the water, I couldn’t agree more. Something new has to happen to restart the whole process, because spending something like $200 million on the Johnny Depp version of THE LONE RANGER is utterly ridiculous. Really, I think The Asylum is roughly equivalent to Corman’s Concorde and New Wave companies in their heyday – making action and exploitation films for a price. And I must admit, I think The Asylum’s films are much more fun, and far less brutal, than the later Concorde films, which are all but unwatchable. So, if you’re having a blast, go for it! It does sound a very interesting, and challenging place to work.

  18. Tye Rannosaurus – your comment that “Hollywood film making has in many ways become a soulless factory interested more in making money than quality films and they’re willing to do almost anything to achieve that goal..except innovate and imagine” resonates with me deeply. A lot of friends of mine have read your post and talked with me about it. You sum it up perfectly. I know I agreed with you before, but I simply had to single that quote out for praise — it’s the absolute truth. You’re inside the beast, and you know how it works. Thanks.

  19. So, the question was posited, what will happen when The Asylum makes a “good” film, something character driven with a heart and soul. May I humbly offer that folks give “Ardennes Fury” a look-see when it’s released in October or November. It’s a World War 2 drama and while certainly not perfect there’s a LOT of heart and sheer effort that went into making it the best it could be in its short road from creation to release. I’ll be genuinely curious to see what the viewer reaction is and what it portends for future such storytelling from The Asylum. BTW, in the interest of transparency, yes I directed it, yes I’m the VFX supervisor at The Asylum so probably a tad bit biased and no I have no connection with the writer of the above article). https://www.facebook.com/ardennesfury

  20. Thanks for writing in, Mr. Lawson. I’ll certainly be interested to see what you’ve done here — your SPFX have always been remarkably good given the miniscule budgets that Asylum offers — but the films themselves have by and large been disappointments, more remarkable for their sheer existence in the face of overwhelming production shortcomings that anything else. In any event, I’ll certainly check ARDENNES FURY out, and I’m sure it’s a step up from NAZIS AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. As with all Asylum films, it seems that you’re having a good time making it, so go for it, and good luck.

  21. I think the error of the article is to think that The Assylum’s model is trully succesful an may be imitate by the major studios. Because, trully The Assylum barely makes its budget back. Yes, all its movies has profit, but probably 50 Assylum’s profitable movies produce less money than 2 or 3 major studio’s hits. So basically The Assylum’s producers and excecutives don’t have big ambitions for life. They’re not trying to be rich, they’re just trying to make a modest living that survives giving crapy films.

    On the other hand Gwendolyn said it, some other studios had make bad movies in order to have profit but with that money they produce once in a while a good independent artistic film, for example Uwe Boll, as terrible director as he is and how he has a scheme for taking money from Germany’s government doing bad movies at least he had also produce very interesting independent films and documentaries with acceptable quality.

    In any case, if The Assylum and Hollywood in general makes crap (and I agree with some comments above that without the money and advertising some big budget major studios’ movies will be ecually bad as Assylum’s, e.i. Michael Bay’s films) is OUR foult as consumers because if people don’t buy it they stop making it. If we start watching only high quality good movies then that’s on demand and Hollywood does it.

    Please spare my English, is not my first language.

  22. A movie doesn’t have to be expensive and with big budget and special effects to be good, take for example many sci-fi and horror b-movies, or the Kaiju films from Japan like the Godzilla and Gamera movies. But even with their low budget and campy effects their so fun to watch and so enjoyable that have a lot of fans and become cultural icons. The Asylum movies don’t have that charm for some reason, their kind of heartless and soulless, perhaps because their only made for profit, or because the characters in their script does not have the same humanity and cardboard characters, I don’t know. I’m not saying that the studios that bring you Gamera vs Bagaron were not trying to make profit but still something is different.

  23. Dear Johan – you wrote – “The Asylum movies don’t have that charm for some reason, they’re kind of heartless and soulless, perhaps because their only made for profit, or because the characters in their script does not have the same humanity and cardboard characters” – and I agree. They have no heart, and no soul, because they are all about money and nothing else.

    There’s nothing wrong with making a profit, and films have to, or the company won’t stay in business for long, but you can make low budget movies like MARGIN CALL, EL MARIACHI, CLERKS, Gareth Edwards’ MONSTERS, Chris Nolan’s FOLLOWING, and still make money and more importantly, advance the studio’s reputation. You can’t stay in the cellar forever, unless you want to be the new Monogram or PRC, and even they made some good films from time to time.

    I had hopes for Joe Lawson’s ARDENNES FURY, and the B&W Scope version of that film has some punch to it, but The Asylum seems dedicated not just to making low budget movies, but low budget CRAPPY movies, as they admit — see David Bales’ comment above – ““it’s like any other marketplace. Instead of selling vegetables it’s selling crappy films.”

    But why? There’s nothing wrong with making low cost films, which sell, and advance both the studio’s and the director’s careers. But The Asylum insists on turning out micromanaged crap, and nothing else. It’s amazing, when they could take a chance just once in a while — but they don’t, and it seems they won’t.

    I thank you for your comment, which really hits the nail on the head, and also, I am amazed that this essay is still getting comments after all this time – so thanks for that, and for your thoughtful response.

  24. If I was told that in hell people is force to watch the movies made for Uwe Boll, M. Night Shyamalan, SyFy Channel and The Asylum for the eternity no one would be able of take me out of a church

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *