Twenty years after the release of The Firm, Sean Fennessey asks why the legal thriller “has almost completely disappeared from the movies”:
Much has been made in recent years of the loss of the mid-tier adult drama, a category that the 30-to-49-year-old demographic once came out for in relative droves, to see their (beautiful) peers endure pain and loss in the face of love. For all the hand-wringing in Hollywood lamenting the loss of, say, a contemporary Terms of Endearment at the hands of Iron Man 3, the genres that have truly been shed are the legal thriller and its cousins, the erotic thriller (save the occasional Steven Soderbergh or Danny Boyle homage) and the rarely executed comic thriller. …
Fewer big-studio films are in production than have been in decades. It’s never been harder to get the somewhat expensive movies in the middle ground made without fantastical source material. This week, the New York Times reported that the number of employed screenwriters in Hollywood has dropped for a third consecutive year. The superhero economy has boxed out opportunities, to be sure. TV writing gigs, coincidentally, are up. That’s also where you’ll find all the legal thrillers. ABC’s breakout Scandal? Legal thriller. Homeland? Kind of a legal thriller. Castle? Believe it. The Good Wife? You get the picture. Though, harking back to Grisham is likely not the answer. (See: last year’s drab The Firm TV reboot.) Hollywood has long exploited the inefficiencies of storytelling, seizing on the hidden popularities of its stories. There’s room for a revival. Go make some more movie stars, and let them speechify.
Sharan Shetty argues the big-screen courtroom drama is in even worse shape:
The courtroom drama has been subjected to some misguided genre mixing, as in 2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which bizarrely used a trial as the framing device for, you guessed it, an exorcism. But even the comical takes that were big hits not that long ago–My Cousin Vinny and Legally Blonde, for example–have stopped getting made, and a movie like The Lincoln Lawyer, which Fennessey correctly praises, is an exception to the rule. The law film–whether legal thriller or courtroom drama–may make an occasional appearance, but its death sentence, issued some time ago by Hollywood executives, has clearly been passed. You’re more likely to find celebrity-centered courtroom drama outside the silver screen than on it.
The Dish 