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Frank Marshall has produced more summer blockbusters than just about anybody — this side of his wife, Kathleen Kennedy, and their frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg, anyway.
The Indiana Jones, "Back to the Future" and Jason Bourne series, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "The Sixth Sense" are among Marshall's 100-plus producing credits, as is "Jurassic World," last year's return to Spielberg's dinosaur franchise that became the highest-grossing ($652 million domestic, $1.67 billion worldwide) summer release of all time.
This season, Marshall has the fifth film in the amnesiac spy series, "Jason Bourne" (July 29), with original star Matt Damon and "Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum" director Paul Greengrass back in the saddle. There's also "The BFG" (out Friday, July 1), the Spielberg-directed adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel scripted by the late Melissa Mathison, which Kennedy and Marshall have been developing for two decades.
Speaking of development, Marshall is working on some modest entries for future summers, such as the 2018 "Jurassic World" sequel and the recently announced fifth Indiana Jones film for 2019. Considering all of that and more, we figure the 69-year-old producer might just be a good guy to ask what goes into making successful warm weather franchises.
"You have to have a story that's familiar but also fresh," Marshall says. "You have to have a bit of the old and some of the new to keep people interested and make it exciting. You can't just do the same movie again. You need to have surprises and things that are fun for people."
As for technology innovations, which have been a hallmark of many of his productions, Marshall cautions that that stuff must be kept in perspective so as not to overwhelm a movie's traditional virtues.
"We don't try to top ourselves but just do something that's fresh and new," he explains. "The advancement of technology and visual effects enables us to do lots of things that we couldn't do before, but you don't want to overdo it. It's another — now big — tool in our toolbox."
Both 2016 films represent what Marshall calls "getting the band back together, "Bourne" for obvious reasons and "BFG" because the previous Spielberg/Mathison movie was 1982's "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," which reigned for many years as the summer box-office champ (Marshall was production manager for that one).
Damon and Greengrass left the Bourne series after the original trilogy, based on Robert Ludlum's novels, concluded in 2007. Jeremy Renner starred in 2012's "The Bourne Legacy," but "Jason Bourne" had to wait for the world to make it feasible.
"It took so long because we had to find a story that was interesting and would fit into the franchise," Marshall says. "What would bring Jason Bourne back into the fray? Current events — WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden — gave us a clue as to what might be the seed to build the story out of. I guess you could say it is a story built around current events, issues of privacy, secrets, all things that have to do with the agencies that Bourne worked for.
"Matt left the door open," he says of Damon's possible return. "We all loved working together, but in the end we just didn't want to do a movie to do another movie. So we had to have a gem of an idea, which we found."
Marshall goes on to explain why he originally felt, rightly as it turned out, the Bourne books would make for a sustainable summer franchise.
"It was the characters, particularly Matt playing that character," he says. "He's interesting, sympathetic; you feel for him, the dilemma that he's in not knowing who he is or why he has all of these incredible skills. You like going on that journey to find out who he is in the spy world."
"The BFG" stars Mark Rylance — whom Spielberg directed to a Supporting Actor Oscar in last year's "Bridge of Spies" — as a Big Friendly Giant who bonds with Ruby Barnhill's orphan. Those ever-improving visual effects are what made this return to "E.T." emotional territory finally happen.
"Technology caught up with the story," Marshall observes, but luckily the director hadn't grown up in the interim. "We all still have a bit of a child within us, and I think that's what Steven was able to give you in this movie, like he did in 'E.T.' It's not a movie for kids, it's a movie for everybody, but it still has that childlike wonder in it."
And Marshall notes that, should "BFG's" box office justify it, there could be a sequel.
"World" was the producer's first dinosaur film, although he was involved in the early stages of "Jurassic Park's" development before moving on to other projects. He credits the 2015 film's massive success to a combination of good timing (it had been 14 years since "Jurassic Park III") and hiring Colin Trevorrow, whom he describes as the perfect mix of fine filmmaker and fan of the series, to direct. Marshall says the same is true of the sequel's recently appointed director, Spain's J.A. Bayona ("The Impossible").
And that's all he'll say about that one. Marshall isn't more revealing about Indy 5, except to adamantly reaffirm that Harrison Ford, who'll be pushing 77 when it comes out, will once again play the adventurer for director Spielberg.
Kennedy, who's run Lucasfilm since Disney purchased it from Indy creator George Lucas, will co-produce. And even though he won't be creatively involved for the first time, "George will always be there as the godfather of the series, so I don't think we're going to veer too far from what we did before," Marshall says. "Other than that, to be honest, I don't know yet. We don't have a playbook of things we're going to do. We kind of wait until it all comes together and then we start working on it.
"It's gotta be entertaining," Marshall concludes, drawing on another one of his summer movie success mantras.
— Contact Bob Strauss at bob.strauss@langnews.com and @bscritic on Twitter.