The Full List of "Crimes" Committed by Fox's Tom Rothman

[Dark Victory]

Does anyone know where I can find the pic of Piccolo in the new Dragon Ball movie?

 

[dark_b]

He could just be being cordial, or he could legitimately like it.

i really dont think that J cameron is like that.
i think if he doesnt like a movie he will say it. not like a jackass but in a very polite way.

 

[[A]]

Does anyone know where I can find the pic of Piccolo in the new Dragon Ball movie?

 

[I Am The Knight]

Does anyone know where I can find the pic of Piccolo in the new Dragon Ball movie?

You don't want to see it. You so don't want to see it.

 

[jimmylace]

This is the man responsible for Alien V not happening with Cameron and Scott. Each of these directors filmed classics which still have fans some 25 years later. But instead, Rothman says yes to a PG Alien Vs Predator movie, set on Earth and directed by Paul W Anderson.

What a total git. I wish Fox would sell the rights to Alien and Predator to a studio that actually cares about its properties.

 

[Gilpesh]

Does anyone know where I can find the pic of Piccolo in the new Dragon Ball movie?

Google em.

 

[Anita18]

I don't think this has been mentioned. Remember when X3 was released on dvd and Fox wanted to put only half the deleted scenes on the US discs while the rest of the world got all 20 something? And then they accidentally messed up the discs here in the US and some had on 11ish while other had all 20 something? Another blatant double dipping scheme over a few crappy deleted scenes committed by Fox and no less under Rothman.

OMG, that's so and yet so at the same time.

Lets not forget the rumor going around in the Wolverine forums that Rothman had a set repainted while the director was on vacation because he thought it was too dark.

For realz?

If I'd been working on that production dept on any capacity, I'd quit that very day. If Rothman feels he can do a better job on art direction than the people he hired, he can go right ahead.

Only had one problem with X3.... and that was the sudden switch from Sunset to the dead of night during the GGBridge and final fight scene... and the fact that all the empty cars suddenly had thier lights one....

And lots of other plot holes. It's what made the movie fun to watch, by picking out how many you could catch on the fly.

but if Ridley Scott can get messed over by Rothman , then there really is no guarentee that Cameron isn't safe.

Exactly. It's one thing for a studio having oversight on relative newcomers Snyder and Nolan (or...not ), but another for a studio to come down on RIDLEY SCOTT.

 

[Timstuff]

Does anyone know where I can find the pic of Piccolo in the new Dragon Ball movie?

He basically looks like the villain from Wishmaster, only less wrinkly and without green skin.

 

[Jspider13]

I'm guessing this man is the reason Live Free Or Die Hard was pg-13

 

[Timstuff]

He was.

 

[Gilpesh]

Luckily for some of his crimes... DVD has made it so it's like he never existed.

 

[Dark Victory]

LOL I found the pic about two seconds after posting a day ago. My god Dragonball is gonna suck.

 

[matrix_ghost]

I didn't see this article posted in this thread.

Read it and also read Dave Poland's response .
Again not taking Rothman's sides here but every person should know both sides of a story

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2008/08/foxs-cruel-summ.html
Fox's cruel summer: Not a $100-million hit in the bunch

03:00 PM PT, Aug 11 2008
When News Corp. President Peter Chernin was taking a victory lap last week after the company reported a 27% jump in its fiscal fourth-quarter net income, he took pains to credit the 20th Century Fox Film Group for much of the good news. He also predicted healthy earnings in the future, pointing to such upcoming summer 2009 films as "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and "Night at the Museum II: Escape from the Smithsonian." For Hollywood insiders, it was telling that Chernin--perhaps the savviest showbiz mogul of our era--somehow failed to mention any of his studio's movies from this summer.

And with good reason. This is the first summer since 1997 that Fox hasn't had a $100-million box-office hit. For 10 straight summers, the Fox assembly line has churned out every kind of hit imaginable, from "X-Men" movies to "Dr. Dolittle" and "Big Momma's House" family comedies to last year's "Simpsons Movie." Even more impressively, in three of the last four summers, the studio had three $100-million-plus hits each year (perhaps its best summer being 2005, when it had "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith," "The Fantastic Four" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," which all topped $150 million in the U.S. alone).

The remarkable consistency of the Fox movie machine has made this summer's series of disappointments and flops even more of a surprising stumble. It's a shock to the system--like the New York Yankees not making the playoffs. Built around intense fiscal discipline and tight creative control, Fox has been a studio that rarely made a false move. But this summer has been different. Without a true tentpole film, the results have been dispiriting. The studio's biggest hit was "What Happens in Vegas," a forgettable comedy that grossed $80 million in the U.S. and roughly $215 million around the world. "The Happening," a poorly reviewed thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, topped out at $64 million (though it's performed better overseas). The other films have been embarrassments, especially by Fox standards.

"Meet Dave," a costly Eddie Murphy comedy, was a big bomb; "The X Files: I Want to Believe" had a weak opening and dropped off precipitously afterward, and "Space Chimps" barely made a ripple (though it wasn't financed by Fox). This coming weekend's entry, "Mirrors," is another film Fox is simply distributing (it was financed by New Regency), but it's still eating up time and money on the release schedule. According to tracking numbers, it's on course to be another loser.

Fox executives say that after 10 straight summers of success it was inevitable that they'd have an off year. Fair enough. But I say the cruel summer numbers are also the result of a rigidly constructed system that has driven away nearly all of the creative filmmakers and producers who once worked on the lot, putting the studio's movies in the hands of hacks, newcomers and nonentities who largely execute the wishes of the Fox production team led by studio Co-Chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos.

Rothman and Gianopulos (who would not speak to me for this story) have been running the studio since 2000 and they've run it as well as anyone else in the business. But by Hollywood standards, nine years is the equivalent of a couple of centuries. Is it time for some new blood--or at least a new approach?

When it comes to Fox's movie management skills, I've always been of two minds. The part of me who has to balance a checkbook every month is always impressed, since the studio rarely wastes any money, avoids colossal blunders and shrewdly steers all its risky art-house projects to Fox Searchlight, its specialty film division. But the part of me who loves movies questions whether a studio can go to such lengths to manage risk that it bleeds all the joy, spontaneity and art out of the business.

With the exception of James Cameron and Baz Luhrmann, who make movies once every millennium, Fox rarely hires a filmmaker with contractual rights to final cut or any strong creative point of view. With the exception of Shyamalan, whose career has been in a downhill slide ever since "The Sixth Sense," this summer's films were directed by guys who will only get invited to the Oscars as someone else's date. "Meet Dave's" Brian Robbins did "Norbit." "Vegas' " Tom Vaughan did "Starter for 10." "Space Chimps' " Kirk De Micco is a first-time director. This weekend's "Mirrors" director Alexander Aja did the horror film "The Hills Have Eyes."

It wasn't always this way. In the early years of Fox's $100-million streak, the studio still occasionally had the appetite for classy summer fare made by A-list filmmakers. In 1998, both Warren Beatty's "Bulworth" and Forest Whitaker's "Hope Floats" were summer films. In 2001, the studio released Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" and Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" in the summer. Even as late as 2002, it put out summer films directed by such distinctive filmmakers as Adrian Lyne ("Unfaithful") and Steven Spielberg ("Minority Report").

But having suffered through years of having their chain yanked by the studio's business affairs department and having seen virtually every creative decision approved by Rothman, top talent learned to avoid Fox like the plague. After making an "X-Man" movie there, Brett Ratner complained that Rothman even had approval of releasing key photo images from the film. Innumerable agents have complained to me that Fox doesn't want filmmakers--it wants no-name traffic cops to direct its movies. Here're the people who directed the studio's 2007 summer films: James Wan, Tom Brady, David Silverman, Len Wiseman, Tim Story and Carlos Fresnadillo. I bet some of them are genuinely nice guys, but there's not a Warren Beatty or Tim Burton in the bunch.

Fox also doesn't have any A-list producers, because the real producers of Fox movies are its executives. Other studios have deals with Oscar-winning producers like Brian Grazer and Scott Rudin, box-office behemoths like Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Silver and a host of knowledgeable veterans, including Neal Moritz and Laura Ziskin (at Sony), Lorenzo diBonaventura and J.J. Abrams (at Paramount) and Kennedy/Marshall and Scott Stuber at Universal. Fox's biggest producer is John Davis, the man behind the "Garfield" and "Dr. Dolittle" franchises.

The executive with the most influence on filmmaking is Rothman, who is a fascinating jumble of contradictions. He got his start as an executive in the specialty film world, running Goldwyn Films and launching Fox Searchlight, yet he's now the epitome of a commercial-minded studio boss. Rothman also writes his own thoughtful monologues as the host of "Fox Legacy," a Fox Movie Channel show devoted to the history of great films from the studio library. Of course the irony is that the program celebrates films like "MASH," "Wall Street" and "Phantom of the Paradise," all pictures made by prickly, hard-to-control directors that today's Rothman-run Fox wouldn't dream of hiring.

Fox does have a powerhouse lineup of movies for next summer, so I'm certainly not predicting any precipitous fall from grace. But if the studio really believes it can continue to compete, year in and year out, without regularly working with top-flight artists, I think it will eventually find itself in decline. For decades, studios have tried, in one way or another, to take the risk out of filmmaking, either by laying off financing to outside entities or employing various sorts of quality-control formulas.

But art is elusive. It rarely responds to or can be regulated by any sort of formula. When Fox made "MASH" nearly 40 years ago, it thought the film was a disaster because it felt so far out of the mainstream. It turned out the film was more plugged into the emerging new culture than any of the studio executives. The same could be said about George Lucas' "Star Wars," or James Cameron's "Titanic," which was written off as an epic blunder before anyone saw a foot of footage. Great films come from great filmmakers.

If Fox continues to hire pliable, easy-to-control talent, it may discover that today's youthful audience, always on the prowl for something exciting and new and strangely different, will have the studio behind. Investors love predictable quarterly earnings, but moviegoers enjoy surprises. An immensely bright if sometimes overbearing man, I think Rothman still has some of that maverick, movie-loving spirit inside him. It's time he embraced it.








http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotbutton/2008/08/
Taking On Fox... But Where's The Beef?
Well… I guess it‘s something to write about…

What is Patrick Goldstein’s problem with Fox?

Has Tom Rothman been refusing to buy him lunch?

If Goldstein or anyone else wants to take on a studio and how it behaves, please, have at it! But be fair in how you use your stats… or you are not doing the job.

Goldstein uses the most petty journalist trick in the book, selective box office information. He writes;

“This summer has been different. Without a true tentpole film, the results have been dispiriting. The studio's biggest hit was "What Happens in Vegas," a forgettable comedy that grossed $80 million in the U.S. and roughly $215 million around the world. "The Happening," a poorly reviewed thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, topped out at $64 million (though it's performed better overseas).”

Problems?

1) However forgettable What Happens In Vegas is, it is the #2 comedy of the year so far worldwide, behind only Sex & The City, with a reported $209 million to date. As a point of reference, only one Judd Apatow movie (written, directed, or produced) has EVER matched or beaten the WHIV number – Knocked Up – and then, by only $11 million. The #2 Apatow movie is $30 million behind.

I had no idea how very real the success of WHIV was… and if Patrick had his way, you wouldn’t either. Even offering the number, he chooses not to offer the perspective.

2) Worse, Patrick smacks The Happening without mentioning the worldwide number... only admitting “it's performed better overseas.” Yeah… about $145 million worldwide so far.

3) Likewise, there is the “summer only game,” which eliminates a relative bomb in America, Jumper, which is a $222 million worldwide hit, and allows him to overlook Fox’s animation strategy, which is to release in March, not the summer, which led to a $295 worldwide gross for Horton Hears A Who.

4) Finally, is Patrick really selling that idea that a studio MUST make a summer tentpole – a dead concept still used all the time by old media – to be doing the right thing? Would a smash hit like The Day After Tomorrow, a truly horrible movie in any season that made huge bank before audiences realized they were buying a pig in a poke, have made this summer a success in Patrick’s mind?

No. I don't think so.

See… what Fox is supposed to do is to turn it all over to producers with deals and directing talent that has minds of their own. Why? Could it be that the people who whisper loudest in Patrick’s ears are the people who benefit from this idea… an idea that died first at Fox, but which every studio in town is following?

And again, Patrick plays the dating game to manipulate his point, even within the confines of his own story. He writes;

“Here're the people who directed the studio's 2007 summer films: James Wan, Tom Brady, David Silverman, Len Wiseman, Tim Story and Carlos Fresnadillo. I bet some of them are genuinely nice guys, but there's not a Warren Beatty or Tim Burton in the bunch.”

Wait… weren’t we talking about the summer of 2008? The three $100 million-plus films of 2007 are the same as the no-$100 million summer of 2008? But I thought… uh… well…

And does Goldstein realize that his slap at Silverman is a slap at the guy that co-directed Monsters, Inc? Not good enough?

Is Brett Ratner - who cherry-picked the X3 job from a relieved Matthew Vaughn and went tens of millions over budget, but delivered the film in time for a pre-Superman release – really the standard bearer for good behavior while working for a studio?

He throws Forrest Whittaker’s Hope Floats into the mix because, what?, he won an Oscar for acting years later? It's not like it was a great movie or a box office smash. And no mention of First Daughter. Not to mention Whittaker’s inability to make things work with Bill Cosby, back-burnering Fat Albert, an eventual minor hit for the studio as directed by Joel Frickin’ Zwick, for a couple of years.

And who is working for Fox after this summer? The masterful B13 director, Pierre Morel, does his second feature for Fox. Gil Kenan has jumped into a live-action film with his sophomore effort after the excellent Monster House. Wes Anderson is doing a cartoon. They have John Singleton aboard. Baz Luhrmann is back. The Chris Wedge team is back again. And of course, Jim Cameron is coming back.

Plus, the studio hired the art-house director of Tsotsi (and unfortunately, Rendition), Gavin Hood, to handle their Wolverine franchise, much as they tried to hire Vaughn (the production dates did his involvement in), much as Bill Mechanic hired Bryan Singer for X-Men, who they chaperoned to two successes, which led directly to Christopher Nolan being hired for the Batman franchise at WB.

Boo on them! Hacks! Fools!

Are these hires Beatty or Burton or Altman?

Well, Beatty hasn’t directed a film since… and he acted in one, Town & Country, which is one of the three biggest money losers in the history of the industry.

Boo on them! Hacks! Fools!

And Burton, who I do think is brilliant, was an absolute mess on Planet of the Apes, went way over budget and schedule, and was at the low point of his personal issues that affected his career. Meanwhile, he continues to work almost exclusively at WB, where he has done 8 of his 13 films. (The ninth, Sweeney Todd, was co-funded by WB, which has the overseas distribution.)

Boo on them! Hacks! Fools!

And seriously… John Lesher was all Beatty and Burton and Altman types at Vantage and lost over $100 million in less than 2 years. Is that what Patrick wants?

“I say the cruel summer numbers are also the result of a rigidly constructed system that has driven away nearly all of the creative filmmakers and producers who once worked on the lot, putting the studio's movies in the hands of hacks, newcomers and nonentities who largely execute the wishes of the Fox production team led by studio Co-Chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos.”

Then how did all those years of success happen? And what will you say if they have a billion dollar year next year?

So....

What would I say is a reasonable position?

I would say that the idea that the Fox bad habit under the R&G regime, which is absolutely real, of working with mediocre directors who are willing to work under the hardly pressed thumb of management, does come home to roost now and again.

Tim Story, Rob Bowman, Raja Gosnell, John Whitesell, Andy Tennant are all in that group. Some of them have had some big hits. And that is what is difficult about arguing the choices that any studio makes about the level of talent with whom they work.

I would say that Fox has made some very bad calls about restricting some of the real talent they have had in place, like Ridley Scott and the release cut of Kingdom of Heaven… but that would require making an accusation not based on popular belief.

Was Kevin Reynolds’ teen version of Tristan & Isolde a worthy attempt at something interesting or a child strangled at birth?

Could they have picked a more difficult genius director to work with than Doug Liman... twice?

Are these the same dream killers who backed Sasha Baron Cohen all the way on Borat?

Where do you put Shawn Levy in all of this? Does anyone really think he is a quality director? But can anyone deny he is a cash machine and that Fox is his home studio?

I like Tom Rothman. But then again, I have never gotten spittle all over me from the screaming.

But you can make the argument when any studio head is having a down year that their style has become a problem. Every one of the people in that job has vulnerable points, even the mostly-liked Dick Cook, who has lived with accusations of being too much of a company man when Disney’s had down years.

With Fox and Rothman and Jim G, I look back at their last down year, 2003. They couldn’t get the Peter Weir movie, Master & Commander, over $100 million, even with an Oscar nod. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was weak in the US, but made up for it overseas (almost double domestic). Just Married was horrible, but made money. Peyton Reed’s ambitious effort with Down With Love went down in flames. Phone Booth numbers weren’t over whelming, but it was a strong money maker and established Colin Farrell’s box office potential as an above-the-title name. And there were classic image disasters like From Justin to Kelly and genre experiments Chasing Papi and Wrong Turn... but all were cheap.

A rough year… over 30% down from the year before and the next year would be more than 30% up.

But from that year, they got an Oscar nod… as they may this year with Australia (and don’t let anyone tell you that Baz is an easy ride for a studio). They extended the X-Men franchise more effectively than anyone expected (and yes, Rothman’s chase for the Memorial Day slot for X3 cost a lot… and they did, as it worked out, beat Singer’s Superman by $70 million worldwide), as they may this year with Wolverine. And they got Shawn Levy in place, who will pay off again this year with Museum II.

And as I indicated earlier… things got a lot better again the next year.
You could argue that it is time for Peter Rice, who is much smoother than Rothman, to take over… an argument that will turn Rice green if you suggest its inevitability. When he someday gets the job, he will be ready for the job. But part of why that works is that he is loyal to his current bosses and unflinching in sharing the credit. He is probably the next truly great studio chief and I look forward to his ascension.

But these August cheap shots that guys like Patrick love to take… they don’t hold up. If the year to come doesn’t lead to a domestic number of more than $1 billion, averaging $100 a releases over 10 releases, you can start saying, “This has been going on for years now... they took a strong shot this year and they failed.” Truth is, the two holiday powerhouses made 2007 look better than it had looked as well.

But if you want to make the argument, don’t back it up with the kind of off-the-cuff attacks that people throw around over – yes – lunch. It's not news or even thoughtful opinion... it's just gossip.

 

[Theweepeople]

Poland's response sounds like gossip. There's no disputing the facts of Fox's lackluster boxoffice office success for 2008.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2008&p=.htm

Fox is the only studio with one film to break the 100million barrier for this year. WB had 4. Paramount had 4. Sony had 3. Universal had 4. Disney had 2.

 

[dark_b]

it will never change. DB and now may payne realesed are proof.

 

[JoseMP]

DB will be a success despite Tom Rothman ´s stupid decisions.

By the way, why are you guys putting "Rothman" in red color?.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Edit.

 

[Doctor Jones]

DB will be a success despite Tom Rothman ´s stupid decisions.

By the way, why are you guys putting "Rothman" in red color?.

*Brims fedora, adopts a Van Helsing like voice*

Because he's the son of the devil.

 

[Mike059jig]

i heard he screwed up babylon A.D as well, that movie had so much potential

 

[Sawyer]

DB will be a success despite Tom Rothman ´s stupid decisions.

By the way, why are you guys putting "Rothman" in red color?.

If by DB you mean Dragonball, then you are out of your mind for thinking it will be a success. Every aspect of that movie (with the exception of James Marsters, of course) just screams "failure".

 

[Theweepeople]

If by DB you mean Dragonball, then you are out of your mind for thinking it will be a success. Every aspect of that movie (with the exception of James Marsters, of course) just screams "failure".

I'd have to agree. The script was put together in a few weeks before the writer's strike. The release date was extended 8 months to a later date because the production fell way behind schedule. The budget is estimated to be around 100million and no video game movie adaptation has come close to making that money domestically. The film has a historically bad release date. The trailer looks like it was made on a film with a budget of 5million.

If Fox expected this to be successful they would have started promoting this film 2 months ago. Instead they are probably going to hold off on releasing a trailer until a month before the release date because that's the only chance they have at making money off of this turd.

 

[Doctor Jones]

This movie will flop. I predict 40 million total.

 

[Gilpesh]

Have we added "Rapes babies" to the list of Tom Rothman's crimes?

 

[Sawyer]

Have we added "Rapes babies" to the list of Tom Rothman's crimes?

He doesnt just rape them... he destroys them.

 

[Gilpesh]

He doesnt just rape them... he destroys them.

By rape.