Are Studios Committing Movie Suicide?

[Octoberist]

I don't want to see X-Men First Class flop because of the talent involved. samething with Hangover 2.

 

[Figs]

I wanna see the political ****storm after Cap opens. I am looking forward to that the most.

That's what I'm going to avoid on the news, is all the PC anti-patriotic ******** that will probably come out after that movie.

 

[S.A.A.D.]

Even though I am not looking forward to Hangover 2 or X-Men:First Class,between the two of them I rather have Hangover 2 flop big time.

 

[Doctor Jones]

As much as the GA loved The Hangover, even they'll be like "Really?" I've told people about it and we all laugh about the first one and how good it is but once I bring up that they're doing a second one, their laughs turn to serious faces and say, "Are you serious?"

 

[Gabe99]

From Collider:
Disney Planning to Shoot PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 5 & 6 Back-to-Back

While Disney hasn’t even shown a trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the studio is already planning to shoot the fifth and sixth installments in the franchise back-to-back. According to Hitfix, the studio is “quietly telling cast and crew to set aside a major block of time in the very near future so they can shoot Pirates 5 and Pirates 6,” back-to-back. For those who don’t know, Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End were shot this way and despite their gargantuan budgets, they made an even bigger return. The Pirates series has become one of Disney’s marquee franchises so it’s no surprise they’re already planning out the new sequels.

Hit the jump to learn about Johnny Depp’s schedule, which will likely dictate when these bad boys shoot.

Depp is currently planning to shoot Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows and Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger in 2011. Depp has also expressed interest in starring in a re-adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man and has been in talks to costar in Kathryn Bigelow’s Triple Frontier.

There’s currently no word on whether Disney is trying to get Pirates 4 helmer Rob Marshall to direct the next two movies or where they plan to go with the story. The big question is whether audiences will still want to see more Jack Sparrow. We’ll get our answer to that question when Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides hits theater in 3D on May 20, 2011.

MOTION CAPTURED EXCLUSIVE: Disney will set sail for 'Pirates of the Caribbean' 5 & 6 back-to-back

 

[mclay18]

Shouldn't this news be in the POTC 4 thread?

 

[MadVillainy]

Fox just moved a bunch of their summer properties around

Rise of the Apes Pushed Back to Thanksgiving
Source: 20th Century Fox, Edward Douglas January 14, 2011

Just a few short hours after the big announcement that Ridley Scott's "Alien"-themed sci-fi flick Prometheus will be released on March 9, 2012, 20th Century Fox has decided to move a number of their 2011 releases around, the most significant one being pushing Caesar: Rise of the Apes, their prequel to Planet of the Apes back to November 23, Thanksgiving week, from its original summer release date of June 24.

Fox also pushed back the Chris Evans- Anna Faris comedy What's Your Number? from its upcoming April 29 release date to September 30, which in turn pushed the Justin Timberlake - Amanda Seyfried sci-fi thriller Now off that date to October 28.

In turn the Jim Carrey comedy Mr. Popper's Penguins has moved forward in the summer from August 12 to June 17, and David Gordon Green's The Sitter starring Jonah Hill has moved back to August 5 from its original July 15 release date. Selena Gomez's romantic comedy Monte Carlo was pushed back from July 1 to August 12, just one week later.

Lastly, they have placed the Owen Wilson - Jack Black comedy The Big Year onto the date of October 14.


Read more: Rise of the Apes Pushed Back to Thanksgiving - ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=73283#ixzz1B4BHnZND

Pretty good move. That Monte Carlo chick flick was coming out the same day as Transformers 3 and Rise of the Apes was coming out the same week as Cars 2 and the week after GL.

 

[MadVillainy]

Fox just moved a bunch of their summer properties around

Rise of the Apes Pushed Back to Thanksgiving
Source: 20th Century Fox, Edward Douglas January 14, 2011

Just a few short hours after the big announcement that Ridley Scott's "Alien"-themed sci-fi flick Prometheus will be released on March 9, 2012, 20th Century Fox has decided to move a number of their 2011 releases around, the most significant one being pushing Caesar: Rise of the Apes, their prequel to Planet of the Apes back to November 23, Thanksgiving week, from its original summer release date of June 24.

Fox also pushed back the Chris Evans- Anna Faris comedy What's Your Number? from its upcoming April 29 release date to September 30, which in turn pushed the Justin Timberlake - Amanda Seyfried sci-fi thriller Now off that date to October 28.

In turn the Jim Carrey comedy Mr. Popper's Penguins has moved forward in the summer from August 12 to June 17, and David Gordon Green's The Sitter starring Jonah Hill has moved back to August 5 from its original July 15 release date. Selena Gomez's romantic comedy Monte Carlo was pushed back from July 1 to August 12, just one week later.

Lastly, they have placed the Owen Wilson - Jack Black comedy The Big Year onto the date of October 14.


Read more: Rise of the Apes Pushed Back to Thanksgiving - ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=73283#ixzz1B4BHnZND

Pretty good move. That Monte Carlo chick flick was coming out the same day as Transformers 3 and Rise of the Apes was coming out the same week as Cars 2 and the week after GL.


Also Universal pushed Fast Five up to April. THey seem to be freeing up space

 

[xwolverine2]

i think whats more suicidal have been these past several and upcoming months with absolute **** movies.

sad end to 2010 and depressing beginning to 2011

 

[Tacit Ronin]

i think whats more suicidal have been these past several and upcoming months with absolute **** movies.

sad end to 2010 and depressing beginning to 2011

What are talking about? The last several months have been pretty decent.

 

[lespaul59]

I really don't see how all of these movies coming out so close together isn't going to cut into the box office. I also don't see the point of making the Hangover 2. I thought the first one was funny but for me it was only a 1 time watch, I've tried to watch it other times but I end up turing the channel. I just think with the jam packed schedule that if a movie slips even a little then more than likely the BO isn't gonna reflect the quality of the movie. I would even say the same thing goes if a movie is a hit then a movie that comes out after is slightly weeker then it's not gonna do good. In both cases I'm not really meaning if a movie is bad, I mean something more a long the lines of a movie being like a 7.5/10 being hurt by a movie that's 8/10 or a 9/10 hurting a 8/10 movie. But then again I'm not claiming to know a lot about how the BO works.

 

[jmc]

I knew someone would blink.

 

[matrix_ghost]

As i've said the Rise of the Apes thread , i think Fox pushing back Apes was due to 2 reasons
1) the movie just not being ready in time.
2) Competing with X-Men FC class.

Had FC not been scheduled for June , i think Fox would've kept Apes in the June slot.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

I don't think this will be the last film that will be pushed.

 

[mclay18]

I don't think this will be the last film that will be pushed.

Fox should move X-Men First Class to June 24th. Gives it more breathing room between all the other superhero films/tentpole films.

 

[Rez]

Not every studio has an Avatar to help them compensate for all their other movies in the red.

After this past year, where pretty much almost every single film with a tentpole budget either struggled to break even, under performed, or downright flopped, I'm very interested to see what happens next. This will likely continue through this year, and then companies are really going to be ****ting themselves.

If I were running a studio I'd start capping budgets at around 75 million tops, because as we're beginning to see, even with crazy inflated tickets movies are going to buckle under their own weight.

 

[jmc]

^ I believe this year when/if most of the films make mediocre box office returns, we might see that.

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

I do think that the ridiculously high ticket prices (particularly the 3D ticket prices) are going to end up bitting hollywood on the ass. That and the lack of interesting films. Notice that I didn't say "good" films, the audience likes bad, loud films but they have to be interesting. Like I don't care for Transformers but I can understand the appeal of it. It's a huge film about really big robots punching eachother. 300-400mil here we come.

The franchises like Transformers, Twilight and Harry Potter are safe but they need to make new huge (or buzzed about in Twilights case) starter films or they can't make sequels. Prince of Persia, The A-Team and The Sorcerer's Apprentice all failed to start franchises. Even Tron Legacy underperformed after 2 years of expensive overhype by Disney. The jury is still out on rather it gets a sequel or not. If it does, they better push for a real screenplay and director.

2010 was a terrible and underwhelming year for blockbusters (I dug alot of the smaller films) and it only hit 10 bil because of those 20 dollar 3D tickets. Ticket sales wise it dropped 8% from last year. If they drop 8% this year, hollywood is in real trouble.

EDIT:

And yes, the budgets have gotten way out of control. Almost every blockbuster cost 200 to 300mil now and I'm not joking either. I think that the 15-20million dollar paychecks for even the lowest "stars" are going the way of the dinosaur sooner or later.

 

[jmc]

Would be curious to see what the numbers would have been like without the likes of Toy Story 3.

 

[Rez]

Exactly. Directors and single actors getting paychecks in the tens of millions of dollars is rediculous.

It's even more frustrating when you see a film like District 9 come out, with a third of the budget of something like Tron, and the film is better in every way- including visual effects.

Hell, that guy made Monsters this year with less than 20 grand. There's people on the internet making visual effects improvements to the Star Wars movies for free.

We need to start seeing people use money effectively, rather than just using money.


Edit: You also make a good point about lack of money worthy franchises popping up.

There's Avatar, and that's about it right now. Everything else is on or extremely near it's last movie. Twilight, HP, Pirates, Saw, hell even The Fast and The Furious movies. We've seen a return to old franchises, most of which were either unsuccessful or designed as "The final film." Superhero films have arguably reached a point where they're about to start fizzling. After Batman 3 and the Avengers no one is going to give a **** for a while. Although it will be interesting to see how the new Spiderman does.

Of course there is always the chance of something unexpected happening. Avatar was supposed to be huge, but it's doubtful anyone realized just how huge. However, outside of the film itself, Avatar hasn't really set the world on fire. The toys didn't sell, and I didn't see 100 people dressed up as Navi for halloween. Twilight on the other hand rocketed to success faster than Harry Potter, and is a marketing juggernaught.

 

[dark_b]

Exactly. Directors and single actors getting paychecks in the tens of millions of dollars is rediculous.

It's even more frustrating when you see a film like District 9 come out, with a third of the budget of something like Tron, and the film is better in every way- including visual effects.

Hell, that guy made Monsters this year with less than 20 grand. There's people on the internet making visual effects improvements to the Star Wars movies for free.

We need to start seeing people use money effectively, rather than just using money.

and there are movies that were made for even less money and are better then D9. should i name them?

 

[BlackLantern]

3D will fall out of fashion soon enough, I do think things are getting a bit out of hand

 

[Doctor Jones]

3D can stay if they do it right. Not every film should be 3D. But when it's something like IMAX 3D Avatar then I'm fine with that. I much prefer IMAX than 3D. The problem is how they're doing it. They're abusing it.

 

[BlackLantern]

what happens is when people get lazy they use it as a crutch, and that is slowly starting to happen

im fine with 3D for kids movies, the crumbsnatchers love that stuff but there should be a bit more discretion with other films

 

[Rez]

and there are movies that were made for even less money and are better then D9. should i name them?

Feel free.. if you can point me to effect driven films with entire characters that are CGI for budgets of less than 30 million that turned out to be some of the best films of the year that I don't already know about, I'd be happy to see them. Which, now that I think about it, factoring in marketing D9 is more like a 10th of the budget of Tron.