Doing movie stuff somewhere else.

I really liked doing the movie predictions and dissection, but new movies come out too infrequently to be interesting enough to write about, and have a single weblog dedicated for it. I've decided to start doing these movie deals on my new main site.

Nothing new will come here, I'm sure, so go here instead!

BloodRayne redefines Bomb; Hostel choking?

Boxofficemojo has the Friday night estimates up already, and I smell the sweet scent of victory.

Firstly, the estimated marketing costs for Bloodrayne have been posted, running $22m. That's only $3 million less than the production budget, so it's going to nearly double the amount of money this stinker will need to reach the break-even point to about $94 million. Not only is that unlikely, it's impossible. The estimated take for Bloodrayne is only $450,000. I don't see this moving making more than $3-4 million total this weekend. When are people going to stop trusting Uwe Boll? It makes me wish there was a stock market for Hollywood. You could make an incredible fortune by short selling stock in his movies. Thank you, Uwe Boll, for being as predictable as a rock.

As a side note, for some reason Bloodrayne only opened in about 1000 theaters, rather than the 2000 I was lead to believe it would. But even if it does expand on Saturday or Sunday, or even next weekend, it won't matter to the bottom line here. This movie has bombed, and not even DVD's sales can save it.

Hostel's est. marketing costs have also been posted. They spent almost four times as much marketing the movie as they did making it, and sadly that's going to make it tougher for this film to reach the line. I think I need a new name for the break-even line. Let's call it the Mendoza line. It's a baseball term for this one old-school Yankees reliever, and I can't really remember what the hell it means, but it sounds really cool. That's all that matters, trust me.

$4.8m budget + $18m marketing * 2 for the theater sets the line at $45.6 million, rather than $9.6 for just the budget. I can't project these sorts of things and some movies never have their marketing costs given at all, and that can really screw things up like has happened here. This is excellent news for me of course, given that Hostel pulled in a respectable $7.5 million in it's opening day. It might make as much as $20-27 million over the weekend, but that's still pretty far from the Mendoza line. There's a real good chance it might not make a profit after all, and wouldn't that suck? I'd be wrong. That's impossible, you know, for me to be wrong. The universe would implode if I were wrong. Trust me, don't wanna see that.

Munich is falling below my own expectations now that it's expanded to 1500 theaters. It's not going anywhere, that's a solid win for common sense. Kong has dropped to fourth and is dying fast, that's another win.

There's nothing else going on this weekend, and I am sick of talking about the same handful of movies every time. Come on Hollywood, there's literally ten thousand scripts out there waiting to be made, GET TO IT.

Weekend Update

My handy dandy stats tracker seems to indicate that the nonsense coming out of my mouth is picking up steam this week. That's pretty funny since there's nothing of value here, just me talking smack about people who have the jobs I want. I suspect that people are hitting the search engines looking for factual and useful information on the new releases, but instead they got me. Well I'm sorry about that, but hey, at least you didn't pay $11 bucks to be disappointed by me, I'm doing it for free.

Kong Kong Kong Kong Kong Kong Kong. Not only will saying that shamelessly help me with the search engines, it's also foremost on my mind this past week, and probably far into the future. The $200 million they spent making it must be good for something, and apparently it's pissing me off. For some reason, this movie is still making money. It has already grossed $400 million worldwide. This makes me a sad panda. With that disgustingly large budget that could buy you 22.2% of a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine, it probably would have taken just about 400 to break even. From here on out, this movie is close to or in the black. While this is certainly frustrating for me, since I was rooting for it to fail so badly that I could buy my own piece of studio that made it in the bankruptcy firesale, it's still well within my predictions.

I seem to recall saying "It'll probably break even with costs when it hits DVD". I was off a tad, it's going to make a small profit while in the theaters, but it's definitely getting blown away by Narnia. This movie has been in the theaters for 5 days longer yet is consistently pulling in more money than Kong is. Sadly, that bank robber cost damn near as much as Kong did, and so to is making little profit for it's studio.

I really don't know what else to say about these two movies. If they had reigned in the budgets, things would be looking a whole lot better for these guys. But hey, look at the bright side, it's a new year which means you can get a fresh start losing money on even more bad remakes!

Bloodrayne and Hostel open up today, both in roughly 1900-2000 theaters, and Munich is hitting 1000 extra theaters. It should be evident really freakin quick if either of these movies is going to fail, but Munich has been around the block now and I can count pretty good with my fingers, so let's do some projections.

Munich cost $70 million to make. It's made $17 million domestic in 13 days showing in about 530 theaters. That's about $2,467 per theater per day average. Ramp that up to 1500, assuming everyone that has seen it goes to see it again (yeah, right), and you get somewhere around $48 million 13 days from now. Since that's never going to happen, I'd put it closer to $15-20 million, maybe as low as $10-15. I'll come back in 13 days and report on my psychic abilities. But figure it does haul in $48m, that's $24m after theaters take their share. Add in the $17m it's made so far and you're looking at a best-case-scenario of $32.5m for the studio. That's not even half what it cost to make. Whoops, somebody is going to have to give their Lear Jet back, and you can't have mine.

I don't see anything big coming out until the 20th, when Underworld: Evolution stinks up the theaters. Won't that be fun.

Wolf Creek has been out 11 days, probably sucks, has nobody in it, and it's probably making a bigger profit than Kong has. It's getting terrible grades on boxofficemojo.com, but at least it's not 3 hours long.

Syriana was a bizarre flick. I never could tell from the trailers just what the hell it was about, and it kind of looks like I wasn't alone. It's been out over a month and is looking at $40m domestic on a $50m budget. It's not even half way there. Hey, I have a suggestion: Don't put George Clooney and Matt Damon in it so the budget is $15-20m and doesn't make me want hurt rich people anymore.

Walk the Line, now there's a flick I really wanted to see. It's about $36m into profit and still going. Too bad it had that dual-role Writer/Director. I hate that.

Aeon Bomb is only making like $27,000 a day. Hahahaha.

North Country is only making like $7,000 a day. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I'm really tired, leave me alone. No really, please. I just want to sleep. Can't you let me sleep? WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME? CAN'T YOU SEE I TOO HAVE FEELINGS? *crashed out*

BloodRayne

Estimated budget: $25,000,000

They should rename this movie to Blood Bath at the Box Office. Though is has one hell of a cast, sadly, the entire budget was spent on it. I think they paid about five bucks for the script. Must have, maybe even three bucks. That's just the way Uwe Boll operates.

His last two flicks, House of the Dead, and Alone in the Dark, had a combined budget of $22 million. They made a combined $20.2 million in the theaters. That's probably closer to $10 million when you discount the theaters take. Man, that stinks. That's beyond bad. That's world-wide gross people, Alone in the Dark only made $1.2 million outside the US. Pathetic. And those movies had real casts, shockingly as it may seem.

Kristanna Loken, Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, sorry people. You can't save this movie. Don't you people have agents? I can be an agent..

DON'T EVER DO MOVIES LIKE THIS.

Man, that was easy. I demand my 10 percent.

What's Working

• Very well known cast which probably ate the entire budget.

What's Not

• Uwe Boll made it. That should scare you more than this film.
• An actress who thinks she's a writer (script? we don't need no stinking script!)
• This budget would be a plus for someone else. Anyone else. Just not this guy. Uwe Boll could make a $50 movie flop.
  
• It's based on a video game. Number of movies based successfully on a video game: 1.
• Again with the scary/horror/gore movies right after Christmas. You people are just dumb, do you know that?

Guinevere Turner wrote the script. She's written 7 films, including two adaptations. She has however acted in 19 different projects. Stick with what you're good at.

Result

Flop. Uwe Boll makes flops on purpose, it's some German tax loop-hole. They invest and fund production, he makes really bad movies, somehow they profit. Go figure. It won't even come close to making back it's buck.


Originally posted on: http://moviesavant.blogspot.com

Hostel

Estimated budget: $4,500,000

Another horror movie right after the Christmas and New Year holidays? What in the world are people thinking. Maybe they aren't thinking. That would explain a lot.

Here we have another low budget no-where flick. These aren't any fun because it's almost impossible for a movie this cheap to not make a profit, and since the same guy wrote and directed it, I smell somebody's half-baked pet project. A little inspired entertainment would be nice, please.

What's Working

• For the price of this movie, you could produce about 4 1/2 hour long episodes of a TV show.
• The trailers give the impression that it's a Quentin Tarantino film.
• The cast is full of nobodies, which means there shouldn't be any spoiled attention whores disrupting things. Plus they double as cooks, valets, cleaners, personal assistants to the cleaners, and if necessary, you can use them to hold the sets up.
  

What's Not

• It's not a Tarantino film. He's listed as an Executive Producer, one of three, along with 3 normal Producers, 2 Co-Producers, and the Line Producer (who probably did more than all of them combined.)
• The acting cast has no proven talent.
• The director is also the writer, this is almost always bad. Without someone to tell you no, you get things like the Star Wars prequals.

Eli Roth's professional history does not impress me. He may in fact be a very talented person, at what, I haven't quite figured out yet. He's been a production assistant (get me coffee, double strong, double sweet!), animator, actor, director, writer, producer, and an editor. That's 8 projects as an actor, 7 as a director, and 7 as a writer.

Something tells me this guy is either Jesus on the set, or he thinks he is. I have never heard of anything the man has done, with the exception of Donnie Darko, though his soul credit to this film is a "special thanks". Okay then.

I know nothing of this films plot, other than it's supposed to be scary and a gore fest. This will not play well right after the big Winter holidays, doesn't sound like a good story, doesn't have much of a budget, and is being dishonest in it's portrayal of Tarantino's involvement with the film.

Result

Fiscal success. At $4.5 million, it would be virtually impossible to not make it's money back. Too bad it'll suck.

Wolf Creek prediction; Kong, Munich updates.

I'm tired right now and have more pressing things to be doing, so this will be very quick.

Wolf Creek advertises itself as one of those "based on true events" movies, which means it's actually not. "Based on a true story" is what you're looking for, those are real. Based on events mean if the director saw a bird take a crap on his windshield in the studio parking lot, and he put that in a movie where aliens invade the Earth and destroy all human life, it's still technically "based on true events". Give me a break.

This movie is based on not one, but what appears to be three different events that happened in Australia. Totally unrelated and happening in different locations at different times, and probably even those are different than what actually happened.

Estimated budget: $1,000,000

What's Working

• Someone figured out you can make a movie just with the money often found in Britney Spears couch.
  

What's Going Wrong

• Written and Directed by the same person. Unless you're one of a few elite people talented at both, this is never a good thing.
• The Writer/Director only has one previous credit to him, a short. How the hell does that happen?
• Based on multiple unrelated events patched together and sold as if it were one. Outright lies are bad, mmkay?
• Written by a neophyte.
• A horror movie released in between Christmas and New Years. Retarded. Simply retarded.
• Weak cast. Only one actor has significant experience, while two have a moderate amount, several more are making their debut in this movie.

Results

Profit. With a supposed budget of $1 million, it's already made back it's production costs after just 3 days, pulling in almost $14 million world-wide. It was never possible for this movie not to make a profit given it was produced on slave-labor wages. This is one of those rare occasions where a movie should fail, and fail badly, by all rights. Let this be a lesson to the major studio's however, sometimes when it comes to budgets, smaller is better.

Kong, Munich
After two full weeks, Kong is still fighting for it's life to stay on top of Narnia, a film that's been out a week longer and with a lot less hype. At $128 million domestic, it's still got a long way to go towards showing a profit here at home. Overseas plus domestic brings the total closer to $280 million, leaving the epic at least $120 million away from showing a profit. It may yet make it into the black, but if it does, it'll be by a short margin. This is a long way away from setting the record for biggest take ever, which Universal arrogantly claimed it would. That $280 million is a far cry from the $1.8 billion that Titanic ended with.
Munich is not yet in wide release, showing in only 532 theaters. It's 5-day take so far is around $7 million domestic, with a production budget running about ten times that number. That's pretty pathetic for the first 5 days, but it's not unexpected with that few theaters showing it. Yet, at the same time, with those kinds of numbers, it's not exactly enticing more theaters to show it either. My prediction stands, it's a flop. I'll put in one more update on it in the next week or two when it opens wider.

Quickies
Memoirs of a Geisha: More like Memoirs of a Flop. $85m? Should have bought a jet or something.
Aeon Flux: Theron goes from Oscar to flop twice in the same year. Incredibly hot girl that can do splits no substitute for a good story.
North Country: Only mentioned because Theron was also the star of this, and that's not the only thing they have in common. Cost: $35m, Revenue: $18.1, Profit: $-25.95m. They both bombed.

Next time I'll do Hostel and Bloodrayne (that should be amusing), and later Munich, since I see it's expanding to 1800 theaters on the 6th of January.

Munich predictions.

Estimated budget: $75,000,000

The script was adapted from a book by George Jones by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth. Kushner is a well regarded playwright who adapted his own play into the highly acclaimed "Angels in America" mini-series, and may be the one saving grace of the project. Though his lack of experience -- he has only 3 screen credits to his name -- raises questions about his ability to adapt others material.

Eric Roth's big credit comes from penning the script for Forest Gump, and that too was an adaptation, though a very well done piece. But the fact it's an adaptation means that at best, you can expect the best screenplay possible from the existing material, and that can't do much if the source fails to impress, or translates badly to the screen format.

The large budget will mean the film must take in somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million to break even. Israeli discontent with the accuracy of the film (as not surprisingly the book it was based on) could badly curtail overseas take, and I don't see this film being much of a domestic hit.

What's Working

• It's an event that the entire world remembers.
  
• Stephen Spielberg's name will draw people no matter how bad the movie is.

What's Going Wrong

• It's an event the entire world remembers, if you're in your 40's. Maybe.
• It's not a happy movie.
• The lack of big special effects that seem the staple of movies these days makes a strong script absolutely critical.
• The seventy-five million dollar budget is excessive.
• Really stupid time of the year to open a movie like this.
  

Results

Failure. A weak domestic showing for a story the US audience cares little about, coupled with a sad story released over Christmas means the producing studio won't be seeing a profit from this one.

Kong post mortem.

The industry guesses were "based on ignorance," he added, since there are few precedents for a film like "King Kong," which is neither part of a franchise nor based on a literary property.

One wonders if Marc Shmuger, Vice chairman of Universal, is even cognizant of what business he's working in. A remake, taking little creative effort, is par for the industry over the past few years. It's hard to imagine just what would qualify as a precedent if that doesn't. The budget isn't a consideration, with other bank busters abounding this year doing well.

What went wrong.

• As critics have noted, this is not a film for children. Word of mouth is good, word of mouth that says keep your kids away from this film is not.
• Too long. What were you guys thinking? Did the last 40 years of cinema teach you nothing?
• Special effects are no replacement for a good story.
• A high profile director, even a very talented one, is no replacement for a good story.
• There's no such thing as a sure bet, so stop being so liberal with budgets. This fiasco would hurt a heck of a lot less if studios showed some fiscal responsibility.
• Never, under any circumstances, believe your own hype.
• Don't remake a movie just because you can (that goes for you too, Steven.)
  

What went right.

• It'll probably break even with costs when it hits DVD.
• It's probably a good flick, just not stellar.

This blog didn't exist until right now, so I can't claim credit for calling this failure in advance. I did, but it's not here so it doesn't count. I'll check the slate of upcoming films and see where the industry is headed.