George Lazenby is James Bond
George Clooney is Batman
Y'know, I didn't say James Bond or Batman because it seemed too easy. Now you're using the franchise that successfully brought us Val Kilmer and successfully brought us Brett Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan to say that disasters do happen. Okay, sure, but how can you say that the recast caused a disaster when both of those franchises had recasts that were quite successful?
In what universe does the FF cast represent the "hottest young talent"? Mr. Jordan's an up-and-comer, but none of the FFINO cast has proven to be a box office draw. Again, Trank cares about making a good film, but he doesn't appear to have the slightest clue about making an FF film.
Hot talent, not hot names. Miles Teller from Whiplash and The Incredible Now, Michael B. Jordan from Fruitvale Station, Jamie Bell from Billy Elliot and Hallam Foe. In the world where great performances help make a great film, that's a really big deal. Pair that up with a director who knows how to make a great movie on a small budget, and you've got lightning in a bottle.
There's a lot to be said about why the budget for FF has to be small, but that belongs in another thread.
A limited budget "grounded" FF film is a terrible idea, especially when it is competing with big budget comic book spectacles from the major studios. If you had the slightest familiarity with the World's Greatest Comic Magazine you would know this. You may not have the lengthy occupational experience in setting and following budgets to understand that. But I do.
Except budgets have nothing to do with comic book knowledge, which has nothing to do with marketing. The reason a big budget FF is a bad idea is because the audience thinks of the FF films as bad movies, and so no matter how good or how expensive the next FF film is, it won't make much money. It's called brand damage, which is a marketing concept that I did not learn from my own budget experience or from the World's Greatest Comic Magazine.
So since FF is a damaged brand, in rebuilding the brand, you can't get big returns up front. If they spend $200M to make a great FF film, it will flop, because the brand is too damaged to make a $600M return. People won't be interested just because of the previous films. If you doubt this, do a focus group yourself. It's not just people are not interested and a trailer might win them over, they are disinterested. Your worldwide gross caps out somewhere between 3 and 400M. If you make that from a $200M that's a flop or at best a disappointing return. If you make that from a $100M budget... that's a successful film.
And your sense of competition seems to be weird too. The Dark Knight made a billion dollars, but that didn't prevent Chronicle from being a successful or great film at all. They're in competition, sure, but the competition isn't to have the most spectacle.
ASM experienced a massive 18.6% box office drop from the last one of the Raimi sequel, despite the benefit of 3-D and ticket inflation. The sequel doesn't look like it is going to reverse this trend. You may like to believe that the series can continue on profitably ad infinitum, but the numbers tell quite a different story.
Ah good call. If Sony can't turn it around, eventually they'll let the franchise go. Your positing about them rebooting if TASM3&4 do well still makes no sense though, and you've still provided no reason that they would recast.
And everybody uses James Bond as a character that has survived multiple reboots intact. You know how many James Bonds there are out there? One. Unless Arad is planning on having Spidey jet off to exotic locales and have indistriminate sexual relations with numerous beautiful women in future sequels, I don't see Spider-Man having the same long term success as a franchise.
Which would be awesome by the way. Still, that's not the only way to have continuous adventures, and James Bond has only been rebooted once. He's actually thrived in most of his recasts, and only had one bad one. But you also brought up Batman who had a successful recast and there are others, from Terminator leads to Spartacus and more, I suspect. It happens. If you're one of those 'Val Kilmer can never replace Michael Keaton, Keaton IS Batman' then oh well. Have fun with your doomsaying.
