Your personal feelings don't make a movie a success. A bomb is a bomb.
2011's biggest bombs
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And ignores all the movies that have made a lot of money despite rather damning reviews (can anyone say Michael Bay & Transformers).
No. Green Lantern was AWFUL. It was truly a bad movie.
No, GL was too smart for its own good. It's actually a very complex and well structured movie with a rich and layered subtextual message that is lost on most people.
Yeah, quality and success are not necessarily bedfellows. Look at half the hit shows on TV right now.
Back on the international box office discussion, history is littered with cases where regardless of a show's success in the UK or Europe, if it doesn't do well in America, it's not considered to have done well anywhere. A slightly obscure example from the 1960s is Patrick McGoohan's Danger Man TV series; when it debuted on UK TV and in Europe in 1960-61 it was a huge success and made McGoohan a superstar. But it bombed on CBS in the US, so it was cancelled. (Only to come back a couple years later). The Avengers was cancelled not because of lack of support at home, but because it didn't do well up against Laugh-In or some such show on US TV.
So Mars Needs Moms could have made a billion dollars in Japan or Germany, but it flopped in the US, so therefore nothing else matters.
Alex
Well, there are also examples that show the opposite. Recent examples are "Prince Caspian" and the first Percy Jackson movie. Neither of those two made its budget back domestically, but both made enough internationally for a sequel. Similarly, although it's called a lot of things, nobody would describe "2012" as a flop - but that's only thanks to its massive overseas take.
An example where international box office is keeping a franchise alive is the Resident Evil series.
While marginally successful in the US, all have made a lot more overseas, in particular Resident Evil: Afterlife, where it mades it's budget back in the us but then made $263 mil overseas.
Mind you, I don't know what that says about the movie going public outside of the US...
While marginally successful in the US, all have made a lot more overseas, in particular Resident Evil: Afterlife, where it mades it's budget back in the us but then made $263 mil overseas.
Mind you, I don't know what that says about the movie going public outside of the US...
The film that perplexes me is The Golden Compass, which was a terrible domestic failure, but made $300 million overseas. A poor decision to sell off the overseas rights to the movie destroyed New Line Cinema, but I never understood why Warner Bros. (New Line's parent, into which it was folded) never continued the series.
Bad vibes, probably. And the film wasn't particularly well-received with audiences.
I kind of liked GL. I certainly liked it better than I thought I would from the reviews. Reynolds wasn't bad as Hal and some of the special effects were good.
But...subtext? What was the subtext? Was the giant glowing green boxing glove a symbol of man's inhumanity to man or something?
How any studio exec. with a pulse thought Bucky Larson would do well is beyond me.
I think I figured out why happy feet failed.
It's a movie targetted at 4 to 8 year olds right?
So almost all the kids that liked the first one are too old for the sequel, and all the parents who had to sit through endless reruns of the DVD, want no part in sitting through endless reruns of the sequel with their next batch of younglings.
I mean it's like when your kid gets hooked on heroin. Sure that kids a right off, but you have to look at the triggers to make sure that your next darlin' wunderkind approaching that fork in the road doesn't make the same choice, picking the needle over University.
I saw Shrek II about 200 times.
Every fucking day for months, multiple screenings.
I have not seen Shrek 3.
It's a movie targetted at 4 to 8 year olds right?
So almost all the kids that liked the first one are too old for the sequel, and all the parents who had to sit through endless reruns of the DVD, want no part in sitting through endless reruns of the sequel with their next batch of younglings.
I mean it's like when your kid gets hooked on heroin. Sure that kids a right off, but you have to look at the triggers to make sure that your next darlin' wunderkind approaching that fork in the road doesn't make the same choice, picking the needle over University.
I saw Shrek II about 200 times.
Every fucking day for months, multiple screenings.
I have not seen Shrek 3.
Mind. Blown.
Studio Execs: Huh? What?
Studio Execs: Huh? What?
Originally, IRC, the theory with sequels was that they were supposed to do only a percentage of the original's box office. Since the rise of the franchise that has changed. However, I think we now might have the opposite problem: studios ASSUME that a sequel will do better and overspend on creation and promotion.
They wanted to continue their relationship with Adam Sandler, probably (his production company produced the movie). Despite being comedic kryptonite (IMHO), his films have often been big successes, and the studio wouldn't want to risk that relationship. Besides, Bucky Larson was so inexpensive to make that it will likely break even with television and home video sales.
^ I've liked (some of) his movies for their heart more than their humor. The scene in the rain in Click is one of the saddest scenes I've ever seen; his non-goodbye to his father earlier in the film gets to me every time I'm reminded of it.
Its user ratings on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are roughly equal to those of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (slightly lower on Rotten Tomatoes, somewhat higher on IMDB). The user averages at rogerebert.com and Metacritic are similar: 3 stars/6.2 of 10 for The Golden Compass (Ebert gave it 4 stars), compared to 2.5/5.4 for The Lightning Thief.
Looking into it, it seems that Warner Bros. canceled the sequels in late 2008, either because of the global recession (the studio's version of events) or because of pressure from the Catholic Church (Sam Elliot's and Philip Pullman's version, corroborated by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights). It could be either, or both. The odd thing was that the movie didn't seem particularly anti-Catholic, despite the widespread assertions that it was; maybe I don't know enough about Christianity.
Its user ratings on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are roughly equal to those of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (slightly lower on Rotten Tomatoes, somewhat higher on IMDB). The user averages at rogerebert.com and Metacritic are similar: 3 stars/6.2 of 10 for The Golden Compass (Ebert gave it 4 stars), compared to 2.5/5.4 for The Lightning Thief.
Looking into it, it seems that Warner Bros. canceled the sequels in late 2008, either because of the global recession (the studio's version of events) or because of pressure from the Catholic Church (Sam Elliot's and Philip Pullman's version, corroborated by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights). It could be either, or both. The odd thing was that the movie didn't seem particularly anti-Catholic, despite the widespread assertions that it was; maybe I don't know enough about Christianity.
They did their best in the first movie to keep the religious stuff in the background (and also replaced "God" with "Authority" in at least one scene), but that would have been impossible with the sequels. Of course, they sould have known that in advance, since the movies are based on books and there are places were you can buy and read them, but I guess that's not how film studios work.
The whole "Magisterium" is quite blatantly the Catholic Church.
That said, I have a very hard time believing that the Catholic Church has that kind of leverage over a studio, enough to make it turn away from potentially hundreds of millions in profits. If they did it would come into play a lot more.