Child 44

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

It's a damn sham because the book was superb, one of the best books I have read for a while, it could have been an amazing movie and series.

 

[Anita18]

Shame the movie doesn't look like it's half as good as the books.

This completely fizzled.

Those two quotes kind of explain each other.

I'm all for small art-house-ish movies succeeding, but Child 44 was really subpar. The only great things about it were the acting and the general atmosphere, and they can't save a movie by themselves. It failed at the script level. But the script was supposedly on some list for "awesome scripts that haven't been produced", so maybe they did some rewrites or edits that made it the incoherent mess that it is. I also have no idea (going off the article MrCandy linked to) if the script should have been so great if it contained 5.5 hours' worth of material....

http://deadline.com/2015/05/child-44-box-office-bomb-tom-hardy-soviet-noomi-rapace-1201419112/
Here is if anyone wants to read it.

I think the problem was/is pretty obvious. Lionsgate knew they had a misfire on their hands and they completely abandoned it. There was no advertising for it at all and none of actors did any promotion for the film.

This movie was simply in the wrong hands if you ask me, it should've been handed to somebody like David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, or Denis Villeneuve, not some popcorn action director like Daniel Espinosa.

The production values on the film weren't bad. I actually didn't know it was directed by "some popcorn action director" since it didn't look like it was trying to be a popcorn action movie. But I do agree it should have been handed to someone with more capability for story. A 5.5-hr first cut for something you know is supposed to be a feature film, is downright irresponsible. There's no way you could cut that down and make it anywhere good. I did get the feeling that lots of scenes were extremely truncated, while watching it for the first time. Things just seemed to happen in scenes it and didn't have any weight. Not surprised to read that it was cut down more than 50%.