
Back to the past : the emergence of nostalgic sequels to popular Flemish television series in Flanders' film industry
- Author
- Atalya De Cock (UGent) , Eduard Cuelenaere (UGent) , Gertjan Willems (UGent) and Stijn Joye (UGent)
- Organization
- Abstract
- ‘Recycle film cultures’ such as remakes, sequels, reboots, spin-offs and other forms of imitative filmmaking have become ubiquitous in commercial filmmaking worldwide (Forrest & Koos, 2002; Cuelenaere, Willems & Joye, 2021). Even in small European film industries such as Flanders, the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, this phenomenon has flourished. Especially sequels appear to have become a popular form of recycle film cultures. From the early 2000s onwards, Flanders started producing relatively high numbers of sequels, with many of them regularly becoming regional box office hits. Currently, popular Flemish TV series seem to be a prominent source for sequential filmmaking in Flanders, with for example the four follow-up films to long-running comedy series such as F.C. De Kampioenen (1990-2011), each managing to become the most visited Flemish film in their respective release year. For a film industry with a small domestic market that also has to rely heavily on government subsidies for financing films and has to deals with low ticket sales (Hjort & Petrie, 2007: 6), sequels seem to be perceived as a less financially risky option to receive commercial success (Cuelenaere et al., 2021; Hutcheon, 2012; Joye, 2009). The same sentiment about sequels’ perceived lack of financial risk has been a driving factor behind the lucrative sequel production in Hollywood for decades (Loock, 2017). Although producing sequels of popular IPs remains a popular strategy, in recent years Hollywood has seemed to gravitate more towards more nostalgia-driven sequels. Taurino (2019: 13) argues that nostalgia is generally not an essential element of sequels, though many Hollywood productions today successfully play into this longing for the familiar (Leggat, 2022), with the continuous stream of legacy sequels and requels being an example of this success. The terms requel and legacy sequel (or ‘legacyquel’) have been coined by the popular press and academics to refer to a type of nostalgia-driven sequel which frequently takes place decades after the original source film and combines elements of both reboots and sequels(Loock, 2020). Similar to reboots, these films aim to reinvigorate a franchise with new characters to attract a new audience, but, reminiscent of traditional sequels, they fall back onto the franchise’s original audience and its own cultural significance (Loock, 2020: 174). They achieve this by letting the legacyquel/requel take place in the same story world as the original, making the original actors return as their characters as a ‘sign of respect’ for the original IP, and/or making these sequels act partly as a homage to the original. With blockbusters such as Top Gun Maverick (2022), a legacy sequel to 1980s hit Top Gun (1986), the Jurassic World trilogy (2015-2022) and the recently revived Scream requels (2022-2023) dominating the box offices, this trend does not seem to slow down. Based on release schedules, Flemish filmmaking has joined the current trend of nostalgia and is reviving older popular media franchises. Recently there have been three cases where the interval between the source text and its follow-up film spans over several decades: The Mercator Trail (2022), a legacy sequel to a 1960s children’s series ‘Kapitein Zeppos’; De Collega’s 2.0 (2018), an ‘update’/requel of 1980s comedy series De Collega’s; and 8eraf (2021), a direct sequel to early 2000s young adult series W817. In contrast to Hollywood, these nostalgia-driven films are follow-ups to TV series instead of film franchises. Feature films inspired by older TV series most often result in remakes of the original text (Hark, 2010: 123-124), making the three cases stand out since they all are heavily intertextually dependent on their source texts. The case studies all explicitly reference them with recurring characters and reuse music and popular quotes both in the films themselves as well as in their marketing. This way, the three movies exploit their sources’ nostalgia factor, both on and off screen, to lure audiences to the cinemas with a presold idea: from original cast cameos to asking fans to crowdfund the film’s production. This raises the question of how these ‘belated’ sequels translate themselves to a regional cinema, on a textual level (e.g. intertextuality, formal characteristics) and on an industrial level (e.g. promotional material and press coverage). While nostalgia in Hollywood recycle films has been researched extensively (e.g., Jameson, 1984; Leggat, 2022; Loock 2020), studies on this phenomenon in European recycle film cultures, especially concerning smaller film industries, remain limited. Building on Higson’s (2014) definition of postmodern ‘atemporal’ nostalgia – celebratory nostalgia of a recent ‘attainable’ past – and Ryan Lizardi’s (2017) idea of transgenerational nostalgia, this paper will investigate which nostalgic aesthetic and marketing strategies Flanders’ film industry employs with its sequential filmmaking using a multimethodological framework. This includes conducting a textual analysis of the aforementioned three cases and an extratextual analysis of their promotional material and the press coverage following its production process up until its release. In addition, relevant local industry agents (producers and directors) will be interviewed to gain further insight into the longevity of nostalgia-driven follow-up films. Lastly, through a reception analysis based on online user reviews (Leterboxd and IMDb) and professional reviews, the paper will also consider how audiences and critics react to these nostalgic films and whether their nostalgia factor influences people’s opinion on the films’ quality. Further exploration The presentation at IAMCR by the paper’s main author Atalya De Cock will discuss the preliminary findings concerning the three case studies in more detail. However, as this paper is an early draft of ongoing research, certain angles of the paper still need to be explored. An important question that this paper hopes to get more clarity on is the longevity of this trend of nostalgia-driven follow-ups to older TV series. The three case studies we explored here constitute some of the only examples of this phenomenon to be found in Flanders. Due to the small number of examples, it is too early to tell purely based on the marketing campaigns and box office results whether nostalgic sequels could be more than a timely trend and if it could announce the start of a major new sequel strategy for the Flemish film industry as is the case with requels and legacyquels in Hollywood. Interviews with industry agents (the case studies directors and producers) will hopefully give us a better understanding of the impact of this recent trend. That said, it will be interesting to consider whether this phenomenon can be found in other (small) European film industries. Is this strategy finding footing in the rest of Europe as well? Are they similarly based on older popular tv series or do they revive film franchises? What is their target audience and do they reach them successfully? This paper will try to gauge whether the trend can also be seen on a larger European scale.
- Keywords
- Nostalgia, Flemish cinema, European Cinema, legacy sequels, sequels, remake, requel, adaptation studies, popular cinema
Citation
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01H77EHDJ2K0VEW5MJJ123TXN4
- MLA
- De Cock, Atalya, et al. “Back to the Past : The Emergence of Nostalgic Sequels to Popular Flemish Television Series in Flanders’ Film Industry.” Popular Culture Working Group : Abstracts of Papers Presented at One or Both of the 2023 Conferences of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, 2023.
- APA
- De Cock, A., Cuelenaere, E., Willems, G., & Joye, S. (2023). Back to the past : the emergence of nostalgic sequels to popular Flemish television series in Flanders’ film industry. Popular Culture Working Group : Abstracts of Papers Presented at One or Both of the 2023 Conferences of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. Presented at the IAMCR 2023, Lyon, France.
- Chicago author-date
- De Cock, Atalya, Eduard Cuelenaere, Gertjan Willems, and Stijn Joye. 2023. “Back to the Past : The Emergence of Nostalgic Sequels to Popular Flemish Television Series in Flanders’ Film Industry.” In Popular Culture Working Group : Abstracts of Papers Presented at One or Both of the 2023 Conferences of the International Association for Media and Communication Research.
- Chicago author-date (all authors)
- De Cock, Atalya, Eduard Cuelenaere, Gertjan Willems, and Stijn Joye. 2023. “Back to the Past : The Emergence of Nostalgic Sequels to Popular Flemish Television Series in Flanders’ Film Industry.” In Popular Culture Working Group : Abstracts of Papers Presented at One or Both of the 2023 Conferences of the International Association for Media and Communication Research.
- Vancouver
- 1.De Cock A, Cuelenaere E, Willems G, Joye S. Back to the past : the emergence of nostalgic sequels to popular Flemish television series in Flanders’ film industry. In: Popular culture working group : abstracts of papers presented at one or both of the 2023 conferences of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. 2023.
- IEEE
- [1]A. De Cock, E. Cuelenaere, G. Willems, and S. Joye, “Back to the past : the emergence of nostalgic sequels to popular Flemish television series in Flanders’ film industry,” in Popular culture working group : abstracts of papers presented at one or both of the 2023 conferences of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, Lyon, France, 2023.
@inproceedings{01H77EHDJ2K0VEW5MJJ123TXN4, abstract = {{‘Recycle film cultures’ such as remakes, sequels, reboots, spin-offs and other forms of imitative filmmaking have become ubiquitous in commercial filmmaking worldwide (Forrest & Koos, 2002; Cuelenaere, Willems & Joye, 2021). Even in small European film industries such as Flanders, the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, this phenomenon has flourished. Especially sequels appear to have become a popular form of recycle film cultures. From the early 2000s onwards, Flanders started producing relatively high numbers of sequels, with many of them regularly becoming regional box office hits. Currently, popular Flemish TV series seem to be a prominent source for sequential filmmaking in Flanders, with for example the four follow-up films to long-running comedy series such as F.C. De Kampioenen (1990-2011), each managing to become the most visited Flemish film in their respective release year. For a film industry with a small domestic market that also has to rely heavily on government subsidies for financing films and has to deals with low ticket sales (Hjort & Petrie, 2007: 6), sequels seem to be perceived as a less financially risky option to receive commercial success (Cuelenaere et al., 2021; Hutcheon, 2012; Joye, 2009). The same sentiment about sequels’ perceived lack of financial risk has been a driving factor behind the lucrative sequel production in Hollywood for decades (Loock, 2017). Although producing sequels of popular IPs remains a popular strategy, in recent years Hollywood has seemed to gravitate more towards more nostalgia-driven sequels. Taurino (2019: 13) argues that nostalgia is generally not an essential element of sequels, though many Hollywood productions today successfully play into this longing for the familiar (Leggat, 2022), with the continuous stream of legacy sequels and requels being an example of this success. The terms requel and legacy sequel (or ‘legacyquel’) have been coined by the popular press and academics to refer to a type of nostalgia-driven sequel which frequently takes place decades after the original source film and combines elements of both reboots and sequels(Loock, 2020). Similar to reboots, these films aim to reinvigorate a franchise with new characters to attract a new audience, but, reminiscent of traditional sequels, they fall back onto the franchise’s original audience and its own cultural significance (Loock, 2020: 174). They achieve this by letting the legacyquel/requel take place in the same story world as the original, making the original actors return as their characters as a ‘sign of respect’ for the original IP, and/or making these sequels act partly as a homage to the original. With blockbusters such as Top Gun Maverick (2022), a legacy sequel to 1980s hit Top Gun (1986), the Jurassic World trilogy (2015-2022) and the recently revived Scream requels (2022-2023) dominating the box offices, this trend does not seem to slow down. Based on release schedules, Flemish filmmaking has joined the current trend of nostalgia and is reviving older popular media franchises. Recently there have been three cases where the interval between the source text and its follow-up film spans over several decades: The Mercator Trail (2022), a legacy sequel to a 1960s children’s series ‘Kapitein Zeppos’; De Collega’s 2.0 (2018), an ‘update’/requel of 1980s comedy series De Collega’s; and 8eraf (2021), a direct sequel to early 2000s young adult series W817. In contrast to Hollywood, these nostalgia-driven films are follow-ups to TV series instead of film franchises. Feature films inspired by older TV series most often result in remakes of the original text (Hark, 2010: 123-124), making the three cases stand out since they all are heavily intertextually dependent on their source texts. The case studies all explicitly reference them with recurring characters and reuse music and popular quotes both in the films themselves as well as in their marketing. This way, the three movies exploit their sources’ nostalgia factor, both on and off screen, to lure audiences to the cinemas with a presold idea: from original cast cameos to asking fans to crowdfund the film’s production. This raises the question of how these ‘belated’ sequels translate themselves to a regional cinema, on a textual level (e.g. intertextuality, formal characteristics) and on an industrial level (e.g. promotional material and press coverage). While nostalgia in Hollywood recycle films has been researched extensively (e.g., Jameson, 1984; Leggat, 2022; Loock 2020), studies on this phenomenon in European recycle film cultures, especially concerning smaller film industries, remain limited. Building on Higson’s (2014) definition of postmodern ‘atemporal’ nostalgia – celebratory nostalgia of a recent ‘attainable’ past – and Ryan Lizardi’s (2017) idea of transgenerational nostalgia, this paper will investigate which nostalgic aesthetic and marketing strategies Flanders’ film industry employs with its sequential filmmaking using a multimethodological framework. This includes conducting a textual analysis of the aforementioned three cases and an extratextual analysis of their promotional material and the press coverage following its production process up until its release. In addition, relevant local industry agents (producers and directors) will be interviewed to gain further insight into the longevity of nostalgia-driven follow-up films. Lastly, through a reception analysis based on online user reviews (Leterboxd and IMDb) and professional reviews, the paper will also consider how audiences and critics react to these nostalgic films and whether their nostalgia factor influences people’s opinion on the films’ quality. Further exploration The presentation at IAMCR by the paper’s main author Atalya De Cock will discuss the preliminary findings concerning the three case studies in more detail. However, as this paper is an early draft of ongoing research, certain angles of the paper still need to be explored. An important question that this paper hopes to get more clarity on is the longevity of this trend of nostalgia-driven follow-ups to older TV series. The three case studies we explored here constitute some of the only examples of this phenomenon to be found in Flanders. Due to the small number of examples, it is too early to tell purely based on the marketing campaigns and box office results whether nostalgic sequels could be more than a timely trend and if it could announce the start of a major new sequel strategy for the Flemish film industry as is the case with requels and legacyquels in Hollywood. Interviews with industry agents (the case studies directors and producers) will hopefully give us a better understanding of the impact of this recent trend. That said, it will be interesting to consider whether this phenomenon can be found in other (small) European film industries. Is this strategy finding footing in the rest of Europe as well? Are they similarly based on older popular tv series or do they revive film franchises? What is their target audience and do they reach them successfully? This paper will try to gauge whether the trend can also be seen on a larger European scale.}}, author = {{De Cock, Atalya and Cuelenaere, Eduard and Willems, Gertjan and Joye, Stijn}}, booktitle = {{Popular culture working group : abstracts of papers presented at one or both of the 2023 conferences of the International Association for Media and Communication Research}}, keywords = {{Nostalgia,Flemish cinema,European Cinema,legacy sequels,sequels,remake,requel,adaptation studies,popular cinema}}, language = {{eng}}, location = {{Lyon, France}}, title = {{Back to the past : the emergence of nostalgic sequels to popular Flemish television series in Flanders' film industry}}, url = {{https://iamcr.org/node/32949}}, year = {{2023}}, }