What Are Potboiler Films?

Don’t confuse this with a Pot Sticker. You might want to eat a few of those while you watch the film. Or perhaps not? Nonetheless, potboiler films represent creative works that are likely not top notch. And probably not even worth their cost at the box office. Sometimes referred to as popcorn movies. Potboiler films is a term that was provided to films or creative works that were produced for the sole purpose of generating payment for the creator’s daily expenses. So why call them potboiler films?

Origin of the Term “Potboiler” Films

To help you understand where the term potboiler comes from, and why, we’ll go back to the 1800s. In this time, referring to any artistic work as a potboiler, was deeply demeaning, and yet it happened rather frequently.

The term potboiler would be used to describe a film, novel, play, or opera that was created with no other purpose than to fund daily expenses for the creator. 

If you can envision what it might look like to “boil the pot,” a term that means “to provide for one’s livelihood,” you can better understand the meaning.

Basically, these kinds of art productions, whether film or a play or opera, were basically churned out without any real respect as to value or artistic creativity behind them. 

Not a Compliment

Filmmakers definitely don’t seek to produce films that are coined “potboiler films” but critics, outsiders, or anyone, really. The term is certainly not a compliment by any means and in fact represents a negative connotation.

Which gives rise to the inferior quality and lack of value or effort put into the work.

In other words, past representation or mention of potboiler works have not been in any instances of appreciation or quality compliments.

Just look at some of these past examples of the term potboiler:

• Publishers Weekly mentions that potboilers are fiction which “stacks bricks of plot into a nice, neat line.”
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• Lewis Carroll in 1880 mentioned to A.B. Frost that they may as well spend his advance pay from a previous work rather than be forced to “do a pot boiler for some magazine” in order to financially come out on top.

The Takeaway

So, what are potboiler films? Historically, the term potboiler was not a welcomed reference for a film. But has been given to lower quality fiction works, in film, novel, and other forms of art which are considered those which were produced purely for money, nothing more.