As more movies get branded, more audiences are going to feel burned.

If our movie successes aren’t what they used to be, then why are other industries so desperate to get into moviemaking? We keep hearing that our blockbusters are underperforming; there’s no such thing as “a sure thing” anymore; and you’ve got to be thinking that moviegoers aren’t looking for quality anymore when this is the big summer movie of 2006.

But still, what they all really want to do is direct.

First we had Starbucks getting into the act. And now Burger King - or, even worse, Burger King’s advertising agency - has a movie in development. And they’re not just sponsoring it, like Starbuck’s half-caffeinated effort. No, BK is going the double-whopper-have-it-your-way route, from writing the screenplay to shopping it around to major studios. According to Advertising Age:

“As for the upcoming movie, [advertising agency] executives have said they want to create a modestly budgeted (under $10 million) character-driven story that takes place in an apartment above a Burger King restaurant…Aside from the setting, the ubiquitous and controversial Burger King mascot would have no real role in the movie.”

This really can’t be a good thing, can it?

So now we’re ready to give free rein to fast food brands to drive the bigscreen stories that are supposed to thrill, transport and move us? And if the “controversial” (really?) Burger King mascot isn’t given a real role, can we expect instead that he’ll get inserted into the scene, Alfred Hitchcock-like, to no one’s amusement? And which filmmakers would we expect to embrace such high-calorie, low-artistic-integrity moviemaking? How amusing will it be when the Best Original Screenplay Oscar is accepted by Mayor McCheese?

It just seems as though the movie industry is in full-on desperation mode - embracing any new idea, regardless of how silly or how much it could dilute the nature of cinematic storytelling, just for the sake of dragging people away from their TVs, computers and DVDs. It used to be that, faced with competing media, filmmakers created new, innovative means to bring people back - like drive-ins, 3-D, Cinemascope, and Pauly Shore.

Now the only ideas being indulged are only going to lead to increasingly blatant commercialization of the movies. Is this progress, or was Mad Magazine simply way, way ahead of its time?