Audiences are now driven to cinemas by franchises and famous characters, not the promise of seeing A-listers on-screen.
But if there is a single movie that’s going to usher in a resurgence, it’s The Lost City - a big budget, action-packed comedy sold on the strengths of its starry cast.
It’s a major blockbuster not based on pre-existing IP, and its success could calm the nerves of Hollywood producers dreaming of getting an original story of this scale made.
Adam and Aaron Nee, the brothers who helmed the movie, are particularly proud for this very reason.
“As much as we love these big superhero movies, and other franchises, I think we’re all hungry for an original, non-IP story about characters falling in love and going on adventures”, Adam told Zavvi.
“I think there’s an appetite among audiences for a big original film right now - I know I’m certainly hungry for it. It’s the movie we wanted to see, and we’re excited to be the ones who made it.”
The Lost City also sees the return of a genre we haven’t seen on the big screen for quite some time, at least on this scale: the high concept comedy. Here, Sandra Bullock stars as reclusive author Loretta Sage, a best-selling romance novelist who hates the franchise she helped create.
After an event to publicise her 20th book, The Lost City Of D (no, it’s not a dick joke), she is kidnapped by billionaire Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), who has bought a remote island that he’s convinced is home to the real lost city – and he needs Sage’s help to find it.
The himbo cover model of Sage’s novels, Alan (Channing Tatum), is too late to save her from the kidnapping, so heads overseas to come to her rescue, enlisting the help of former Navy SEAL Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt).
It’s a delightfully ridiculous premise, using the comic talents of its stars to help sell the adventure tale. Naturally, it has invited several comparisons to Romancing The Stone, the eighties classic that also married romantic comedy with Indiana Jones-style adventure.
The directors welcome this comparison to one of their key influences, something they make many nods to throughout: eagle eyed viewers will spot that the literary event Sage attends is entitled “Romancing The Page”.
As Aaron explains: “We grew up on movies like Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Romancing The Stone, these big sweeping adventures, so we already had this style of movie ingrained in our DNA. We’re both very excited to be getting the chance to tell a story like this, but we’re especially excited to be taking this genre, throwing a cover model and a romance novelist into it - two people who do not belong on this adventure - just to see what fun comes out of that.”
The Nee Brothers will be currently unfamiliar to many – this is the director duo’s first major studio project after previously making a couple of underseen indies. Naturally, this film has helped them capture the industry’s attention, and they will next be directing a live action Masters Of The Universe reboot for Netflix.
The pair’s journey to The Lost City started purely by chance. They were told about an adventure movie script by a friend who worked at Paramount and were given it to read without even realising they were being considered to make it.
“A friend from Paramount said, ‘we have this script with a Romancing The Stone vibe, Sandra Bullock is attached, do you want to read it?’”, Adam explained. “We obviously said yes, never thinking that we’d actually get the job - it just sounded like a good idea for a movie, and we wanted to read the script as fans of the genre!
"Even after that, we didn’t think it was possible we’d be brought onto this, but somehow Sandra and (producer) Liza Chasin had seen our last movie and wanted to meet us.
“We come from an indie background, but we’ve been working towards this for our whole lives. The job is exactly the same, the only difference is there are more people around - that’s a lot of people to convince with your vision on a daily basis.
"Luckily, we had the most amazing partners to make this possible. I only really got nervous about the size of this project when somebody read me the cast list back!”
Aaron added: “It’s the kind of cast that could be overwhelming if they weren’t so invested in the project and doing everything they can to make it work. They were so open and supportive of us and the vision of the movie.”
The biggest change that happened after the pair came on board was courtesy of the studio, who changed the title. If it wasn’t for that intervention, the movie would have been released as The Lost City Of D – and the brothers are thankful that they stepped in.
“I’m not disappointed that the studio changed the title”, Adam said. “It was very funny when we first read it, but as we got more invested, it started to make the film sound like a parody.
"And the movie is so much more than that - it’s very funny, but we wanted it to be able to live on its own as a classic, and not have people thinking we were parodying The Lost City Of Z when they saw the title!”
While it may look like the pair are treading new ground with a high budget project like The Lost City, it’s actually the logical next step for them. Their previous film, 2015’s Band Of Robbers, reimagined Mark Twain’s iconic characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn thrown into a contemporary crime comedy, which earned comparisons to the Coen Brothers and Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket.
In short: this is their second film in a row about a treasure hunt. “We only do movies about treasure hunts, that’s our one rule”, joked Adam. “Band Of Robbers was about a treasure hunt, this is about a treasure hunt, we’re always scanning all over Hollywood for the next big treasure hunt story.
"And that’s our take on Masters Of The Universe too: He-Man is looking for the lost treasure of Eternia, the entire film is just a treasure movie.”
With The Lost City, the Nee Brothers have crafted the kind of star-driven comedy that used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter, which now feels like a throwback to an earlier age of blockbusters. It’s one to treasure.
The Lost City releases in UK cinemas on 13th April.For all things pop culture, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
