Adult Swim: How to Make a Mockbuster (in Five Easy Steps)

Once, long ago, legend has it that someone sat in a movie theater watching a summer blockbuster and thought to himself, "I wish there were another movie almost exactly like this one – but really crappy." The cinema gods heard this person's plea, and prepared to deliver. Thus was born the mockbuster – a genre of film unto itself, in which Hollywood movies are imitated by a low-budget production company working feverishly to turn out a movie with a similar title, plot, and concept that will be ready to hit the DVD and video-on-demand market just as the Hollywood version is about to hit theaters. Because would you rather get off your couch and drive to a movie theater to watch a big-budget thrill ride about giant transforming robots that turn into cars, or are you cool with staying home, popping some Orville Redenbacher's, and checking out something called Transmorphers?

If you picked the latter, we'd like to introduce you to the men of The Asylum, the production company behind such not-hits as Transmorphers, Snakes On A Train, The Day The Earth Stopped, Paranormal Entity, and more. After this summer's successful – relatively speaking, anyway – productions Almighty Thor, Battle Of Los Angeles (not to be confused, obviously, with Battle: Los Angeles), and the Fast Five tribute 200 MPH, the guys from The Asylum agreed to share their secrets and teach us how to make Hollywood knock-offs the way the pros do it.

The Asylum doesn't strictly limit itself to summer movies, but it's a good place to start. "We go after the tentpoles – the big studio titles – for the most part," says David Rimawi, co-founder of The Asylum. "Those have the most audience awareness and interest, and it's unlikely that the release date will change." They also keep a keen eye on genres that work for them. "There are certain genres and types of movies that we stay away from," he says, like dramas and comedies. "Everything should sort of be action/adventure."

So, once they've found something action-y to target, the next step is to make sure that they're not going to get sued for it. That means they probably can't make a movie called Sergeant U.S.A. without getting slapped with a lawsuit from the studio behind Captain America, but it's totally cool to do Almighty Thor, because the ancient Vikings who created that mythology aren't going to sue them, and they can probably win an argument with Marvel about it. "We find out how much of the content of the movie is original, and how much can we base our movie on." When they made a movie called War Of The Worlds the same month that Steven Spielberg released a movie called War Of The Worlds, they could be all, "Eat it, Spielberg," because both movies were based on a novel in the public domain. All of which suggests that, if you're one of the three studios planning a Snow White movie next year, expect The Asylum to beat you to the punch.

“...if you're one of the three studios planning a Snow White movie next year, expect The Asylum to beat you to the punch.”

Oh, and one more tip -- pick something that you're pretty sure is going to be an actual hit. "People ask why we didn't do Cowboys and Aliens," The Asylum's Paul Bales says, "And we considered it for a while, but in the markets we have, genre-mixing doesn't work." In fact, The Asylum takes international genre tastes really seriously. "Disaster films work pretty much anywhere," Bales says, "But creature films only work in a few territories. In most of Europe, a big giant fish means nothing to them."

When we asked Rimali and Bales how long it took them to go from saying, "Yeah, we could totally make our own Fast and Furious movie" to that thing actually playing on your TV, the answer was kinda shocking.

"Usually about four months," Bales says. "From the point that we come up with a concept to the film actually being released, it's about four months." They usually have a finished script within 4-6 weeks, and then get going from there. How do they do it so quickly?

"We have a third partner who's – he's not a meth addict, but he does not like to sleep." This dude, apparently, gets people used to working The Asylum Way. "It's about working fast, and working within the restrictions of a limited number of takes. We tend to hire crews including directors and writers, who are just starting out, and they learn to do it at the pace that we require." Which means that they tend to leave the burgeoning auteurs at home, because who needs someone like that around when you're trying to make Titanic 2? "We run into problems when working with people who haven't had the experience of working at the pace we work at, because the average studio film shoots an average of half a page to a page a day. We average 12-15 pages a day."

“...the average studio film shoots an average of half a page to a page a day. We average 12-15 pages a day.”

Don't get gloomy, though – The Asylum dudes are totally into working at this pace, and they say that the actors they hire tend to like it, too. Which makes sense, if you think about it – if you're working on a big-budget Hollywood movie, and you spend most of the day sitting in a trailer, you will eventually stop being grateful that you have a job that doesn't involve busing tables or pumping gas and start getting bored. But if you're shooting 12-15 pages a day, odds are you are busy acting pretty much all the time.

Really, the only reason not to do a movie with The Asylum, if you're an actor, is if you don't want to be in a movie with a title like Two-Headed Shark Attack. (Note: actual movie coming out!)

Here is the best story from The Asylum, about their movie Snakes On A Train: They weren't even going to make a movie called Snakes On A Train, because Snakes On A Plane is pretty much already making fun of itself. But they had a project fall through the month that they ended up releasing Snakes On A Train, so they went with it. "We were kind of forced into making it," Rimaldi explains, adding that "Train rhymes with plane, and trains are cheaper to do," so it's not all bad or anything. Then, after completing the film, they went to Cannes with it, to sell it to international distributors.

"Our poster featured a giant snake eating a train, and the Japanese buyers came in and said, ‘Is there a snake that big in the movie?' At that point there wasn't, but we said ‘Yes!'" Rimaldi called the studio back in Los Angeles and said that they needed to hurry up and add a giant snake eating a train to make the Japanese happy, and if you pick up a copy of Snakes On A Train tomorrow, you will see a giant-ass snake eating the hell out of a train in the final film.

The Day The Earth Stood Still/The Day The Earth Stopped

So, The Asylum guys aren't trying to trick anybody. They aren't putting a movie out called Transmorphers 2: Fall Of Man because they think that someone who wants to watch Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is going to get mixed up and watch their movie by mistake. It's just that if you're the sort of person who wants to watch one movie about giant robots that turn into cars, you'll probably be all jazzed to learn that there's another movie about that.

The Asylum also does brisk business in non-mockbuster movies, and people get really excited about some of them. "Nazis at the Center of the Earth had a great response," Rimaldi says. The company's first real hit was Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus, and the story of how that one got made is a tale of subtle genius that struck a chord with people around the world. "Someone said, ‘Well, sure, you've got movies with one giant creature. But what about two?" The Asylum dudes are proud to report that the movie debuted in France on Christmas Day, and it was a smash hit.

“Well, sure, you've got movies with one giant creature. But what about two?”

And if making up movies about friggin' mutant zombie nazis who live underground or evil two-headed sharks doesn't sound like fun, then you are dead inside. "Sometimes you come home from a hard day of work and want to watch Mega-Piranha," Rimaldi says. "It's not brain surgery," to which David Garber, The Asylum's director of marketing ads, "If it's brain surgery, it's a lobotomy." Their director of marketing said that.

Here's the ultimate dirty secret about what The Asylum does: It sells. There are a zillion independent filmmakers running around delivering pizzas and swimming in credit card debt, but these guys get paid for what they do. They manage to do that because they aren't concerned with art, and they'll give people exactly what they want. Case in point: Sunday School Musical.

"That was our first attempt at a family film," Bales says. "We went to a seminar for marketing to a Christian audience, and the guy said that the perfect film would be a Christian version of High School Musical." The Asylum went for it, and made some good business deals to turn a profit on it right away. The movie turned out to be the best-reviewed of all of The Asylum's films – though the home video sales have been kinda sluggish, Bales says. "I'm not sure what to take from that except to avoid quality."

Well done, The Asylum. Well done.