Biggest Movie Bombs of 2011

I think Tintin will go past 100m with ease in the US...

 

Do you mean 200 million? 20 million will be a big disaster.

 

Nothing would be more tragic than cutting edge artists sucumbing to expectations. All I ever expect from either of these two is to be challenged as a lover of film. They rarely let me down. Would we want to change the ending of 2001 and tie it all up with some dramatic resolution or emotional closure?

Of course he didn't. All the stuff on the beach was a visual metaphor. Bafflement would have been completely inapropriate for that scene.

I would disagree that it was any sort of conceptual failure. And I'm not sure what the word of mouth was but if you check Rotten tomatoes you will see that the movie did quite well with critics and really not so bad with movie goers. For a movie that is so far from the beaten path, so removed from formulaic conventions I would say it did very well with audiences.

The limited release is not a reflection of it's artistic success or failure. Many great movies were bombs. Did you know The Wizard of Oz was seen as a box office bomb? Also we have yet to see if Tree of Life has run it's course at the box office. It is getting heavily promoted for awards.

 

Phil's referring to comments Penn made about the movie after its release, not his thoughts when he shot his performance:

"I didn't at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the most magnificent one that I've ever read. A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What's more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly."

 

I don't see how the end was any sort of conceptual failure at all. Did Penn really not understand the scene on the beach? That's a bit surprising.

 

Yeah, exactly. I pay about 7 bucks for a ticket regularly with student ID, then if I go on Tuesdays it costs me $3.50 since Hollywood Theaters gives half off on Tuesdays. Just saw The Muppets for $3.50 and I'll probably go see Harold and Kumar next.

 

Well Penn does know what he is talking about but I would respectfully diagree with him. His presence represents a very real world possible result of a life lived in that time. He represents the damaged human that we see in childhood throughout the main narrative. Also there is much to be said of the setting his character is set against.

 

Tintin will do very well, I know lots of people who want to see it (it's actually probably the most anticipated movie that's coming out this year) and with Spielberg and Jackson's names, I don't think a bomb is even possible.

 

It's possible. They have both put their names on recent bombs.

 

There's a reason there hasn't been a Pippi Longstocking film made for U.S. audiences. There is NO audience for a Pippi Longstocking film in the U.S.

Speilberg and Jackson are in on Tin Tin because of it's built in European audience. Any amount made in the U.S. is just gravy.

Also, most motion-capture films look "creepy". See "The Polar Express" for a good example.

"Tin Tin" will do good first weekend business, but then the moms and dads that take their kids to EVERY kids film that opens each weekend will say on Monday: "Little Joey got confused with the plot, was bored with the characters and fell asleep half-way through."

 

I dunno. With the group of people I was with, Tree of Life was very effable. In fact, most of us were muttering "what the Ef is this?" throughout the last half hour.

I agree 1000% with Sean Penn.

I suspect Tintin will do OK but not great. The overseas box-office will make it profitable, but I don't see it anywhere near a blockbuster (like Transformers money).

 

Red Riding Hood:

Budget $42 million
Box office $89,162,162

We have Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas, Julie Christie but not a lot has been done... except for Seyfried and a beautiful cinematography, a totally forgettable movie

 

It's not a good movie, but I don't think it qualifies as a box office bomb. It made more than twice its budget, so it did okay...

 

I think Tintin will make someone a lot of money, but probably those people will be mainly Spielberg and Jackson.

I'm reading a fascinating if gossipy book right now called The Men Who Would be King by Nicole LaPorte. It's all about the near disaster that was Dreamworks....

Anyway, even before then Spielberg had the power to have his contract for Jurassic Park say that he got 15% of the famous first dollar gross--the one that Vidiot gave us the exact phrasing for a little while ago.

So, out of Jurassic Park's $914 m worldwide gross 20 years ago, Spielberg got about $140 million--enlarged, according to the book, to $300 million for this one film when you count merchandizing, homevideo, and video games. But for accounting purposes that 140m gets retroactively added to the costs of the budget. This is part of why Dreamworks never made much real money. Spielberg and others made sure they were paid before the company got to bank profits. More power to him.

But he's got to have at least as good a deal on Tintin. And Jackson probably gets 10% for producing and helping with the special effects at Weta. And so for the studio to ever see a dime this would have to be huge.

My guess is that worldwide Tintin will be about $600 million, or something like that, when all is said and done. That means maybe 90m for Spielberg, 60m for Jackson, but I'm not sure much for the studio after the budget and publicity are paid for....

I sense a blockbuster that won't make much for Paramount....

 

As far as I know, the Dreamworks bosses pay themselves very low salaries. They get their money by other means. Dreamworks do make money, lots of it. Shareholders expect them to do so regularly too but Dreamworks' predictions are always off. Case in point was Shrek1 DVD release which broke the record but the figure was below expectation so the share price went straight down.

 

Interesting points Scott, and all have some validity. However, bear in mind MGM pulled the plug on Kubrick and 2001's ending may represent less his grand design than running out of $

I guess one can't objectively prove TOL's ending is a conceptual failure, but even if I'd buy into the metaphor (of what I think it is), the staging is so awkward and discordant to the grace and poise of what's preceded it, that I think it is in fact a conceptual failure. It certainly registers as one with me. That doesn't it had to end in any kind of conventional sense. There had to be some substance, some indication Malick was resolving the narrative threads, or at least aligning them somehow.

And look: I think "Thin Red Line" may be the best movie ever made (well, after Chinatown). Even as the baton was being passed from character to character thru much of the movie, there was an emotional momentum that kept one engaged. I thought TOL became dramatically inert in the last 15 minutes (though it would make one hell of a commercial for some rarefied french cologne).

The "word" in my world was friends and colleagues who are very film literate and informed. Their opinion correlated with mine.... good movie, worth seeing (if you could), but not essential. I really do think the ending is what lost a lot of viewers.

 

Yeah, there were some bad hitches on the Dreamworks deals. I was always disappointed that Spielberg never got to actually build his movie studio in Playa Del Rey. That was a huge mess. The Dreamworks video games and TV shows all piled up a lot of red ink (with rare exceptions like E.R.). This list of Dreamworks TV shows is illuminating in terms of how many bombs are there.

If Paramount makes 15-20% net profit on Tintin, they'll do OK. Famously, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone slammed Tom Cruise after the accounts figured out that Cruise made as much (or more) money than Paramount on Mission:Impossible. Even Spielberg and the other A-list guys realize that there are limits to how much money they can chomp off.

A lot of these filmmakers and stars get paid on a sliding scale. Maybe they get 5% of the initial gross up until the movie makes $200M (a break-even point); after that, maybe they get 10%. Then if the movie makes $500M, they get 20%. I think Spielberg had a deal like that on E.T. in 1982: one of the trades reported that after a certain number of weeks, he was getting $1,000,000 a day at the height of E.T.'s release that summer, totalling well over $50M. He subsequently lost a lot of that in his divorce settlement.

That's not what I remember about 2001. I think Kubrick ran out of time more than he ran out of money. I don't think MGM pressured him at all about the money. The movie had to get into theaters by April, 1968, and Kubrick just couldn't figure out how to show the aliens that were in the script (which is widely available). It was easier just to cut that part out, leave the ending vague, and let the audience draw their own conclusions. Piers Bizony's 2001: Filming the Future goes into this in great detail. 2001 also grossed more than five times its $10M budget, which back in 1968, was considered to be a blockbuster.

 

I see your point, I've never heard of most of these (exceptions: Spin City, F's & G's, Band of Brothers/The Pacific, US of Tara) and I can safely say I have never seen a single episode of the ones I am familiar with.

 

for me those scenes were among the most important and most moving. I would liken the beach scenes to the last act of Our Town only it plays as a pure visual. I thought it was amazingly rich in emotional content. i found it quite emotionally fulfilling as an end to that movie. I saw it as a most elequent comentary on human connection and the desire for something better than real life in our relationships. It felt like a wish, like an imagined state of grace that we never achieve.

 

Interesting stuff....

If that book can be believed, not only is Spielberg not paid on a sliding scale, but his standard rate has gone up to 20% of first dollar gross. He does modify this at times.

For instance, when Amistad lost money he gave up most of his take to reduce the losses.

For Saving Private Ryan at first he asked for 20% and so did Hanks. But 40% off the top was too much even for the studios to take, and so under threat of nixing the film they reduced themselves to 17.5% each. That still adds up to 35% obviously, and so although the film was a big hit, when all was said and done Dreamworks barely covered the cost of the movie and marketing. The big profits went to Hanks and Spielberg. That's in a nutshell one reason why Dreamworks never succeeded--beyond animation--in creating a new studio. That top talent paid themselves first rather than helping to build the place. Not even the old Moguls enriched themselves that way, which is how they were able to build up Warner, MGM, etc....But that thought was gone by the 90s......Understandable. But there you are...

 

I think it also changes compared to domestic vs. foreign, and home video vs. theatrical. The sliding scale deal can work fine, as long as the studio breaks even. I don't see why Spielberg and the other A-listers could complain getting 40% of the profit after the movie is 100% paid for. I believe this is Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, and (used to be) Eddie Murphy's deal as well.

But Spielberg has had some huge bombs (aside from 1941, which is the one most people know about). Always, Amistad, and Munich did not do well. Maybe he should stay away from movies with one-word titles...

The trades report that Tin-Tin has already made $221M overseas, so I think it's pretty close to breaking even already. But for it to be a blockbuster, it's going to have to double that.

 

Vidiot is surely right that for most people they vary the first dollar gross formula, but for Spielberg and Jackson not so much, at least if wikipedia can be believed:

But in August 2008, a month before principal photography would have begun, Universal turned down their option to co-produce the film, citing the low box office of Monster House and Beowulf as well as the directors' usual request for 30% of the gross. Paramount Pictures (DreamWorks' distributor) had hoped to partner with Universal on the project having spent $30 million on pre-production. Spielberg gave a ten-minute presentation of footage, hoping they would approve filming to begin in October. Paramount offered to produce if the directors opted out of their gross percentage deals: Spielberg and Jackson declined,[11][21] and negotiated with Sony to co-finance and distribute the first film by the end of October.[35][36][37] Sony only agreed to finance two films, though Jackson said a third film may still happen.[6]"

So, it appears Sony finally gave each of them 15% of first dollar gross

 

This has happened before. The studios constantly change management, and just because (say) Warner Bros. made a deal with Spielberg five years ago doesn't mean the new guys will do it this year. At some point, they have to say, "this deal makes no sense for us."

When you get down to it, all movies are a gambling bet. When you give filmmakers a huge chunk of money up front, you're gambling that the movie will eventually break even. But after a certain point, the studios are better off investing their money in gold or real estate or something.

BTW, note that The Adventures of Tin-Tin is a co-production between Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures; and if I read the credits right, Dreamworks isn't in on it at all. Instead, it's an Amblin Entertainment production (along with The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Nickelodeon Movies, and WingNut Films).

I still want to start a production company and call it "Too Many Logos Productions."

 

lmao!

Well, I've finished that book....By a few years ago it says Spielberg was worth c. 2 billion. I wonder why he doesn't just pay for a movie himself someday? Maybe he will.

I do admire that he makes both good serious films and popcorn entertainment--and sometimes things that are in between.

I'd say that his two best sci fi films are AI and Minority Report. Both quite strong, imho. Classics really. I've enjoyed the books since I was a kid and I'm not sure if I want to replace what I have in my head with this movie. Maybe I'll see War Horse instead...

But War of the Worlds? Not so much. Crystal Skull. Nuking the fridge...(is there a director's cut of that one that makes more sense?)

Some early reviews are saying that Tintin is an endless rollercoaster ride of action, which is not necessarily a good thing. Two hours of that can become tiresome.

 

Back to the topic....Has this one already been mentioned? Lotta red ink here....I actually heard it was an ok movie. Anyone seen it?

Barney's Version (U.S. only)
Distributor: Sony Classics Release Date: January 14, 2011
Genre: Comedy / Drama Runtime: 2 hrs. 12 min.
MPAA Rating: R Production Budget: $30 million
Domestic: $4,439,201 52.5%
+ Foreign: $4,016,256 47.5%
= Worldwide: $8,455,457