So that's how Asylum does it

[The Squire of Gothos]

I wondered how they got away with films that bore such a resemblance to their Hollywood counterparts, such as Transmorphers/Transformers.

A brief article from the Beeb on the studio;

But, in the era when lawsuits are rife - particularly in the US - how does this small independent company avoid legal action?

"We have lots of cease and desist letters," laughs Rimawi.

"They are threatened lawsuits from some of the most serious studios that basically say 'stop doing this or we will destroy you'."

But as yet, the company has avoided the court room. Instead deals and "pay-offs are made behind closed doors", Rimawi says.

"We get down to the details, like what does the artwork look like, what font is used for the titles and we find a way to work together," he adds.

 

[Pingfah]

My favourite quote:

"Likewise, we released a movie called Sherlock Holmes at the end of last year and Warner Brothers put theirs out too. A lot of people said ours was better. They certainly said that ours was closer to the ideas of the original, even though ours has dinosaurs and dragons and robots in it."

 

[Broccoli]

Ha! Who are "they"?

 

[Gaith]

^^ So long as theirs doesn't have Watson gratuitously punching Holmes in the face, "they" are probably right. I haven't seen the Downey SH, and maybe - just maybe - it holds it own as a lightweight action flick, but all that talk about being faithful to Doyle's characters was obviously self-serving, selective bullshit. Just because you play up the one or two Canonical references to Holmes' fighting abilities doesn't give you license to piss all over Victorian culture and still claim fidelity.

 

[Aragorn]

Ha! Who are "they"?

The people that post on The Asylum's website?

On IMDB, you can find people who post great things about The Asylum's movies and actors... and when you look at that poster's history, it's all pro-The Asylum.

 

[Owain Taggart]

^^ So long as theirs doesn't have Watson gratuitously punching Holmes in the face, "they" are probably right. I haven't seen the Downey SH, and maybe - just maybe - it holds it own as a lightweight action flick, but all that talk about being faithful to Doyle's characters was obviously self-serving, selective bullshit. Just because you play up the one or two Canonical references to Holmes' fighting abilities doesn't give you license to piss all over Victorian culture and still claim fidelity.

Yeah, that peeved me off too, although I still enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Just didn't like their attitude towards details like that. Just because it's hidden somewhere in the literature as something minor doesn't mean it was a major trait, but they treated it as such.

 

[Pingfah]

OK, out of pure morbid curiosity, and the desire to ignore a hangover I watched the Asylum Sherlock Holmes movie.

You know what? I'm not going to rag on it, for a half a million dollar movie they actually did an OK job, the sets and FX are OKish, they picked a lively British cast including Dom Keating and Gareth David Lloyd, they filmed the movie in the UK rather than from a studio in the US and the acting, direction and script are all passable for a company that is renowned for producing unadulterated nonsense.

There were some annoying extended scenes of running that seemed added to make time up, but for the most part it was quite enjoyable in a schlocky 50s B movie kind of way. And despite the ridiculous sounding plot (dinosaurs etc) it probably was closer in tone to the books than the expensive movie.

And really, you've not seen anything until you've seen Sherlock Holmes launching a mid-air machine gun attack from a hot air balloon, on Malcolm Reed in a fire breathing mechanical Pterodactyl/possible dragon over Big Ben.

If you're really bored or ill, you could do worse than this movie

 

[Trekker4747]

I'd be awesome if Rifftrax started taking on the Asylum movies.

 

[Broccoli]

Eh...it'd just be more money ultimately for Asylum, and they'd love it.