The new The Hand That Rocks The Cradle gives a director a chance to make a Hollywood studio film – and those chances are diminishing. How is an upcoming director supposed to get a break in Hollywood, in the current era of mergers, cost-cutting and fewer films? I’ve been pondering that a little since the ... The Hand That Rocks The Cradle remake, and how do directors get a break?
The new The Hand That Rocks The Cradle gives a director a chance to make a Hollywood studio film – and those chances are diminishing.
How is an upcoming director supposed to get a break in Hollywood, in the current era of mergers, cost-cutting and fewer films?
I’ve been pondering that a little since the Amazon MGM movie G20 arrived earlier this year. Its director is Patricia Riggen, and she was unusually candid when I talked to her about the film earlier this year, giving answers to my questions that have stuck firmly in my head since.
She didn’t exactly throw the screenplay under the bus, but she did make the point that she’s not getting the scripts that people like Steven Spielberg gets. Instead, she receives what she receives, and if she signs on the dotted line, she makes the best of it. She knows she’s not going to get a perfect opportunity. She needs to work. She wants to make something good. She takes the ingredients she can get, and tries to make something more out of them. I’d imagine many filmmakers can relate.
For what it’s worth, I think she made a decent fist of G20, although I’m chuckling to this day about the plot device of a cryptowallet with a digital counter telling you how much is inside it. I wrote a review of the film here.
This week then, we get a new take on The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. I’ve shared some thoughts on the film in the video below. It tries to take a darker turn than the 1992 original, and to its credit, it’s far from a straight photocopy of the first movie. There’s been some attempt to do something within the constraints that it has to operated.
But also, it’s fighting against the fact that it’s a corporate product, working off a recognised name, to provide material for a streaming service. You could argue to a degree that G20 was in the same boat.
Specific to The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, 2025 vintage, the director this time is Michelle Garza Cervera. I wasn’t familiar with her work, so looked her up. She’s got a bunch of shorts to her name, and in 2022 directed her first feature, Huesera: The Bone Woman. I’ve not seen it, but reviews were very strong.
It’s a Mexican-Peruvian body horror, and clearly offered enough of a calling card to make meetings happen in Hollywood.
Yet it left me thinking: where’s the path for directors to try and make a mark in Hollywood now? To try and get noticed somehow, and be afforded some half-decent resources or an infrastructure in which to give them a chance?
In days of old, it was legend of low budget cinema Roger Corman who’d give filmmakers such as Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis and Ron Howard (all four of whom went on to earn Best Director Oscars) a crack at an American feature. Keep the budget low, you get creative control, don’t miss your deadline, and some decent films came out the other side. Moreover, some strong opportunities for filmmakers to make a mark.
The closest we’ve had to that in recent times was, I’d argue, the straight-to-DVD boom of the early- to mid-2000s, or the rush to make low budget cash-in sequels for streaming, but even those opportunities are dwindling.
Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego for instance had made a couple of American films, but was left working on Backdraft 2 in 2019. Five years on, he turned in the hugely impressive indie American Star, which deserved a much bigger audience, but it struck me that even a filmmaker who’s used what springboard they’re offered is still stuck near the start of the board.
Where, then, are the footholds? Say a promising young filmmaker gets on the radar of a few people. Outside of battling to get their own independent film made, where are the micro studios able to not only mount films, but get the movies and their makers noticed? Appreciating that things change and the business moves on, there is a consistent question: how does talent get in?
Well, I wonder if mandated movies for streaming services might, ironically, offer a glimmer of opportunity.
There’s a phrase currently doing the rounds: second screen movies. These are the film that are watched at home, generally with someone scrolling their phone or whatnot at the same time. As long, therefore, as the film hits the beats that the streamer in question requires, I wonder if there’s a bit of latitude in there for a filmmaker to do something interesting, in the clothes of a studio release.
Looking at the new The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, I come back to the point: there’s something more fighting to get out of the cage that I think the movie finds itself in. I don’t see much evidence of people phoning it in, even if I wasn’t really enamoured with the end result,
But I thoroughly respected the work that Cervera and her team put into trying to make it look and feel like an interesting thriller. The film feels, in that sense, ever so slightly more than the culmination of its ingredients.
We’re very aware then that we’re in an era where any studio that owns a streamer – and even those that don’t – will be pillaging its back catalogue. The Amazon-owned MGM is making Road House 2, Disney cranked out another Home Alone film, Amazon wants a reboot of Amityville Horror, plans remain afoot for Sister Act 3 and Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion 2. Heck, go down the Disney list alone – the company behind The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, after all – and bubbling away is a remake of 9 To 5 and a new Working Girl.
Are these, then, the footholds? Or with a squeeze on blockbuster films, is it a case of – if you want a studio movie at least – you take what you’re given, whether it goes to a cinema or not? It’s slim pickings certainly for those actively trying to make films and simultaneously keep a roof over their heads.
As much, therefore, as we may deride – with good reason – studios mining their back catalogue for unnecessary remakes, perhaps there is, on the quiet, a slight upside. At least it’s giving filmmakers out there a glimpse of a chance.
/**/
