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Didn't Darth Vader actor David Prowse tell us that Return of the Jedi also never made a profit?

So box office returns are below estimates. But we still have to go through the PPV, the DVD/BD disc releases, streaming service, TV, then there's all the merchandise/toys, etc. etc.

That was because of hollywood accounting, this is because disney have royally fucked the job.

So box office returns are below estimates. But we still have to go through the PPV, the DVD/BD disc releases, streaming service, TV, then there's all the merchandise/toys, etc. etc.

Remember, though: the original Star Wars was an homage to the space opera serials of the '30's and '40's. That's why it started at 'Episode IV'. There was no intention ab ovo to make it a franchise. It was more of an inside joke for movie geeks that happened to work out well for them once they realized the marketing potential of the universe.

'Episode IV' was not part of the 1977 theatrical release opening crawl. Those bits were added after the commercial success guaranteed that there would be sequels.

http://www.slashfilm.com/original-star-wars-opening-crawl/

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Not to mention Jessica Alba's fake nudity.

http://www.slashfilm.com/jessica-albas-nudity-in-machete-was-computer-generated-is-film-nudity-dead/

So why, after all these years of feeding off his father's works, and hamstringing further attempts at filming his father's works, does Christopher suddenly give the ok to film other stories, to his old nemesis New Line, of all people?

Christopher Tolkien is resigning from his position with his father's estate. A new regime is taking control.

From the interview (scroll to third subtitle).

Our hit ratio is way too high right now,” Hastings said. “So, we’ve canceled very few shows I’m always pushing the content team: We have to take more risk; you have to try more crazy things. Because we should have a higher cancel rate overall.” It’s not that Hastings wants Netflix to purposely make shows that are unsuccessful, though. His logic: By taking big swings, “you get some winners that are just unbelievable winners, like 13 Reasons Why. It surprised us. It’s a great show, but we didn’t realize just how it would catch on.

Mark Hamill apparently completely disagreed with how Luke Skywalker was written in The Last Jedi. Seems to me that a lot of the newer chefs in the kitchen think they can improve the original, actually universally loved, characters and stories. I wonder if that was at play here.

If you want to tell a Star Wars story that really diverges from the past, that's totally fine. Get the studios to actually give you a semi-blank canvas that is set in that universe. Everyone will be better off for it.

I guess NASA was right after all.

Why not make it $500, at least if you're intention is to charge a wishful price that nobody is going to pay anyway.

FYI, Prima Cinema charges just that plus a $35,000 initial fee. It's how millionaires watch same day cinema releases without the plebs bothering them. Maybe that offer and this offer isn't for you...

Agfachrome boxes were orange, and when their adverts touted 'better blues begin with orange', they weren't talking just about the orange colour associated with Agfa - they were alluding to the slight orange shift in their film which, because it was complementary to blue, made that colour snap a little more.

So that's where the dirty little buggers get it from.
http://www.slashfilm.com/orang...

Was it a real IMAX though? http://www.slashfilm.com/qa-im...

Well, technically they didn't abandon it - they just turned it into iMovie Pro

Movie adaptation forthcoming: http://www.slashfilm.com/the-m...

Yeah, just like Return of the Jedi is still not profitable.

Go fuck yourself and your Hollywood accounting skills you shill.

DVDs? How about Disney's Frozen on VHS? http://bitcast-a-sm.bitgravity...

(and, yes, http://www.slashfilm.com/froze...)

If this is true, why then is Outerwall Inc. (owners of RedBox) doing well with just $1 day rentals?

Um... every statistic has it's outliers? Or maybe, just maybe, you didn't do your due diligence researching before you posted; For example, I'm guessing you didn't read Outerwall, Inc.'s company profile, which states:

Outerwall, Inc. is an American company with a network of movie and game rental kiosks as well as [CoinStar] coin cashing machines.

As far as I know (having not read the company prospectus), they run Redbox at a loss and fund it with CoinStar profits.

The "content cartels" aren't complaining.

You know this how? Have they praised Redbox publicly or something? Because I found this article which would indicate otherwise.

Your research skills could use a bit of honing, Grasshopper.

If you follow the "source" link to http://www.slashfilm.com/legendary-plans-first-quarter-2014-shoot-for-warcraft/ , it appears the movie (temporary) title would just be "Warcraft".

It seems the guys at mmopage don't know their video games. What a shame.

nobody is going to make The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars in their basement.

Monsters was made for $15,000. Watch it. It's quite good. Most of the cost for big budget movies is payed to people who aren't really necessary for making the movie and/or are way over payed for what they contribute.

Also in the same way that Return of the Jedi didn't actually make a profit according to the LucasFilms...

realorfake3d.com (the html source is interesting, too)

SPEAK history of 3d movies

Personally, I'm sick and tired of small theaters only offering you the 3D version of a given movie

If you're sick and tired of "only 3D", maybe you'd enjoy 4D:

It wasn’t too long ago that good 3D felt like cutting-edge technology, but apparently those three measly dimensions are no longer enough to impress the moviegoing public. At least, that’s the thinking of the South Korean conglomerate CJ Group, which plans to bring its 4D system to our shores this year....

Exactly, according to them they couldn't make a profit from revenues of almost 1 billion USD (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I'm starting to believe that Hollywood really doesn't want to make money. After all, why else do they not want to put their films on the UK version of Netflix, when they're available on the US version? In the hope that we'll buy them on DVD instead? Good luck with that one.

They are breaking profit revenue records year after year.

Sorry, had to fix that for you. No movie ever made has ever turned a profit, none. In fact, some world famous movies are such colossal failures they weren't even able to pay the actors who starred in them.

I actually would very much like that model.

Would you also like to buy some shares in some select bridges in New York City? Trusting publishing houses not to rip you off on DLC is like trusting movie studios to pay you a cut of a movie's profits.

LucasFilm Tells Darth Vader that Return of the Jedi Hasn't Made a Profit!?

Why can't he release a detailed list of every edit he made (allowing someone else with a nonlinear editing suite, lots of time on his hands, and fewer qualms about BitTorrent to piece it together)?

The article is actually a good overview of the resulting movie and major edits made. Granted, there's a lot of work if anybody wants to try to use it as a guide for a similar edit, but it's at least a starting point.

Alamo was the model of the future and in my opinion is still one of the best theatre chains out there. I trek to one at least once a month, despite the ~50 mile round trip. They have the world's best "no really, you aren't talking during the movie" policies ever: you will be booted with no refund after one warning for talking or texting. Period. End of story. They regularly feature fun events like quote-alongs, sing-alongs and MSTK 3000 style mocking by Master Pancake Theatre. As well as oddball events; everything from showings of Crispin Glover movies, complete with poetry readings by Mr. Glover himself, Jay and Silent Bob Watch a Movie, to showings of cult favorites.

Unfortunately half of the experience is food, and the food quality plummeted after their old CEO came back. To allow growth Mr. League washed out the regional differences in each location, but it just means their food menu is consistently mediocre now and ADH no longer feature great seasonal beer selections. I still wish Mr. League well and will certainly frequent his new Alamo Drafthouse closer to my house when it opens, but there's room between Alamo Drafthouse's good film selection but mediocre food and Sundance's mediocore film selections and high end menu. As others have stated, movie-going audiences need a compelling reason or experience to justify the premium; home theater TVs are getting better all the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch#The_De_Laurentiis_films.2C_Dune_and_Blue_Velvet:_1983.E2.80.931986
http://www.slashfilm.com/david-lynch-talks-about-not-directing-return-of-the-jedi/

The term "failure" certainly can be applied if one is discussing opinions on quality film making. If we're discussing how to make a boatload of cash, OTOH, then of course failure would not describe his outcome. You're correct that in his own eyes he's done a great job of making movies; it is painfully obvious that even the collaborators on his films (watch this) feel he has not. I agree with elrous0 - he failed to live up to the expectations and hopes of those of us who spent our formative years watching his first films and dreaming that we were a part of the story.

Shrek is Dreamworks, not Pixar. Here.

I haf duble hiz talends.

Quentin Tarantino makes a point of not doing any product placements in his movies. If one of his characters is shown buying a pack of smokes, or pouring cereal into a bowl, it's always a fictional brand.

Morgan Spurlock made a documentary about product placement, and in it he interviews Tarantino, who explains "that he has been unable to get product placement in his films (he tried to shoot scenes for Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction at Dennys, but they didn’t want any part of the films)".

Don't worry, movie executives are working to close this hole as soon as possible:

Studios May Delay Netflix/Redbox Movie Rentals Even Longer; Offer Fewer Watch Instantly Choices on Netflix
http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/11/03/movie-studios-delay-rentals-fewer-choices-watch-instantly-time-warner-premium-vod-2/

That was a close call -- for a while, people have been able to get the content they want how they want it, but the industry is taking appropriate steps to end that and make sure that consumers can only view content when the industry wants them to and how the industry wants them to.

The vast majority of movies either lose money or break even,

Like how "Return of the Jedi" hasn't made a profit?

Business is not, entirely, about rational financial decisions. If a team of people work on a big, complex project for 3-4 years and when it launches, 90% of players are pirates, that takes a serious emotional toll as well as a financial one. The next project, whoever is in charge may well look at PC game development, the piracy rates, the extra server and support costs involved in supporting the pirates etc and say "fuck that".

Like how id has released all of their basic engines under the GPL? Now, admittedly, that's different than a full game, but it seems to me that those were big, complex projects that they worked on for several years, and then they gave them away. Or how about something more appropriate, like all the original Half-Life based games? Remember how they used to come on CDs, then you could install them and run some simple CDKey program and suddenly have an entire computer online in a TF tournament? Yeah, we pirated it, cause it was easier than everyone bringing their CDs. But we all had copies, because we all played at home, and we all wanted to be sure we could start a match whenever, wherever. Out of my group, we were 100% pirates, yet 100% owned the game as well. I guess that takes an emotional toll, but it sure didn't take a financial toll.

What a load of crap. Film technology has been advancing rapidly for more than three decades, but I fail to see movies produced in peoples bedrooms taking over the cinemas. After all, isn't the most successful movie yet made also one of the most expensive?

Like "Paranormal Activity"? Or "28 Days Later"? Or the freaking "Blair Witch Project"? Even "El Mariachi" falls into the category. If you read Rodríguez's book, it was difficult, though not impossible, for him to obtain editing equipment for free. Nowadays, every piece of editing equipment he used can be replaced with an iMac and a DV camcorder (he shot on 16mm film, when you send that film in to be developed, they send you back a miniDV tape with the footage on it, plus your negative, so all you have to do is transfer from the tape into iMovie...).

Sorry dude...you're just sorta repeating the Hollywood line.

Star Wars sucks anyway. Well, the new ones do. http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/17/watch-this-70-minute-video-review-of-star-wars-the-phantom-menace/

Watch the episode 1 review from this guy's You Tube videos. http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/17/watch-this-70-minute-video-review-of-star-wars-the-phantom-menace/ He gives it way better criticism than I can on a short Slashdot post. If you watch all 70 minutes of his review and still not see how bad the plot is, you can overlook more than I can.

I don't know about your kids, but mine sure don't care about Star Wars movies. They do not watch the cartoon shows. They certainly do play with "light sabers", as do all of the neighborhood kids, but don't collect action figures, lego sets or any of the like. They do watch and study other incomprehensible gibberish like Bakugan and Chaotic, which seems to be the hot fads in my area.

As for box office receipts, they marketed the shit out of the prequel movies. And the cost of a ticket was about half in 1977. Yet the episode 4 ranked #4 on your same list. I take the rankings with a grain of salt. I'd put it like this: If episode 1 was the first movie in the Star Wars franchise, there would be no Star Wars franchise. There would be no episode 2.

The same old scripts done by the same old actors. Over and over again, but with a minute change so we must buy it all over again.
As an extra: http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/zz4b70bcca.jpg

StarBlazers is based on the Japanese cartoon "Space Battleship Yamato". And, good news - a Japanese live action movie is being released later this year. Watch the trailer here: http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/01/03/space-battleship-yamato-international-teaser/

The problem is, you might not get the 1 million dollars.

1) All R&D needs to be logged (in terms of cost).

... and they'll pad those costs more than lawyers pad their time. Or haven't you heard that the Star Wars movies still haven't made a profit?

(Even if the Star Wars story is fake or exaggerated, the movie and music business do these sorts of "creative accounting" all the time.)

The above is a fact, and a deleted scene from Michael Moore's Sicko.

It's some time ago so I didn't verify the video clips. Google "sicko norway chainsaw", I think it is this one but didn't watch it to check for the specific scene:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/11/22/norway-a-deleted-scene-from-michael-moores-sicko/

It depends on the case if this would be genius or madness to do.

Higest Grossing Films (before inflation)

#1: Titanic (PG-13)
#2: LOTR:ROTK (PG-13)
#3: POTC:DMC (PG-13)
#4: The Dark Knight (PG-13)
#5: Harry Potter TPS (PG)
#6: POTC: AWE (PG-13)
#7: Harry Potter OOTF (PG-13)
#8: LOTR: TTT (PG-13)
#9: Star Wars TPM (PG)
#10: Shrek 2 (PG)

PG-13 seems to be the most profitable ranking, and even the Harry Potter franchise has flirted with it until their latest movie. Pixar doesn't even hit the list until #17, Finding Nemo. By their second at #40 (The Incredibles), Dreamworks SKG already has Shrek 2 (#10), Shrek the Third (#22) and Kung Fu Panda (#39) and Fox has both Ice Age movies (#25 and #36).

But as I said before, this is all secondary to Pixar's primary goal: moving merch.

Even though there are obviously parallels with Apartheid, I think there are much closer parallels to the recent and growing xenophobia against immigrants (illegal or not) in South Africa. Incidentally, there's a good interview with Blomkamp here where he notes that both of these played crucial roles in the film. He also mentions that in the first week of filming, the recent xenophobic riots took place where people were murdered and burnt alive etc. Alive in Jo'Burg was also clearly influenced by xenophobia.

Yep. Here is the article: http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/04/08/pixar-announces-up-newt-the-bear-and-the-bow-and-cars-2/

This movie definately was brought down by the PG-13 rating.
Why, in the movie, are terminators so bad at killing people? In the first movie, the T-800 didn't fuck around tossing people around, he shot them multiple times in the face. Yet in this movie, the machines have dozens of chances to just crush John Conner's head (among others) and yet they decide it is more prudent to chuck him across the room, giving him a minute to recover while they amble over. What makes the machines so terrifying a concept is that they make cold, calculated decisions to kill at any cost to themselves.
What happened to the bleak world that we saw in Kyle Reese's flashbacks, where the machines didn't scream, didn't waste time, and didn't act human at all. They were silent, terrifying killing machines.

IMO, this movie would have been a lot better if it had followed more of a Saving Private Ryan-esque formula, with a small group of men (Conner, others) sneaking past the machines lines to rescue Reese. Can you imagine the opening to SPR, but with machines manning laser turrets? It would have evoked more emotion in the audience than the pathetic attempt to anthromorphosize the machines. But, then, it might not have gotten the all-powerful PG-13 rating, especially with the original ending. No fate but what you make, indeed.

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm going to see it as soon as I can. I was hoping this wouldn't get screwed up, and signs indicate that it hasn't.

The surest way to screw it up would have been to get Tim Burton or Paul Verhoeven to direct it; they don't seem to be able to make a movie based on a book without wanting to change things and put their own fingerprints on it. (I'd love to watch a Starship Troopers movie. Too bad we didn't actually get one.)

Everyone agrees that a perfect, 100% faithful adaptation is impossible, unless you do it as a miniseries that is around 12 hours long. The best we can hope for is that the screenwriter and director do a good job of streamlining the story and keeping the important parts intact. Kevin Smith says that this has been done.

I've read several reviews, and they illustrate how impossible it is to walk the tightrope. The movie keeps large chunks of the original dialog intact, and reviews have complained about dialog-heavy, boring long scenes. As a fan of Alan Moore's writing, I'm expecting that I will like or love these "boring" scenes. You can't please everyone.

I read an interview with the director, Zack Snyder. He said the movie studios pushed on him to cut some of the more shocking scenes, such as a rape, and a scene where a pregnant woman gets shot; but the scenes were important to the story, and he got them kept in. In the book, the alienation of Dr. Manhatten is shown visually in the way he stops bothering to wear clothes; this is kept as well. The pirate-themed side story would have made the movie too long... but they filmed it anyway and it will be available as its own feature on DVD.

I read that Zack Snyder gave each actor a copy of the graphic novel, and authorized them to edit their characters' dialog to more closely match the graphic novel. I have real hope that this movie will make me happy as a Watchmen fan.

P.S. Alan Moore is not happy with it, but as far as I can tell, he is automatically not happy with any attempt to turn his work into a movie. You could get Peter Jackson with an unlimited budget, and he still would not be happy. I read that they offered to have him help with the adaptation, but he declined. (Which makes perfect sense... that way he can complain about everything, and no one can say "well, you had the power to change that, why didn't you?")

steveha

I've seen a lot of book-to-movie attempts. Some are watchable, like Lord of the Rings. Some are not, like Dune. I can't help myself. I'm nitpicky. Occasionally very nitpicky.

But I'm keeping high hopes that The Watchmen will not be too far off the mark. Why you ask?

Because Kevin Smith liked it.

Let's face it - he's probably a bigger comic book geek than almost all of us. And if it passes muster with him, it may just be great.

TFA http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/01/23/free-monty-python-videos-on-youtube-lead-to-23000-dvd-sale-increase/
refers to http://mashable.com/2009/01/22/youtube-boost-sales/
which allegedly refers to a mashable news from 01/21/2009, but the linked site http://mashable.com/2009/01/21/youtube-click-to-buy-overlay-ads/
has NOTHING to do with amazons bestseller lists AND there was no mashable news on 01/21/2009 about amazon at all. see http://mashable.com/page/2/ and http://mashable.com/page/3/

moreover none of amazons "Movies & TV" bestseller lists http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dvd/ref=pd_ts_d_ldr_dvd/183-1981496-3747918 or sublists (links on the left side) has a monty python title (if it was no. 2 on 01/21/2009, like the first mashable "news" claims, then i don't think it would have been out so fast)
also the "news" doesn't mention, WHICH title was no. 2 in the bestseller list, but I think amazon's search-results are sorted by Sales Rank and the highest one in the search-results for "monty python" is http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009XRZ92 on rank 755 in Movies & TV.

i think, the whole article is just made up.

Wouldn't you say the piano playing robot is trying to do both? It tricks its audience into thinking it is real, but music is not purely mechanical - dynamics, tone, and style can be subtle things a human can detect. Piano is an easier instrument to fake than, say, cello. I can tell a good cellist from a bad just by asking them to play anything for a few seconds (even a single note), and not from the tangibles like vibrato and mechanical prowess - by the intangibles like attack, bow movement, and phrasing (which can dynamically vary, making it difficult to mechanically nail down).

and running a Turing test based entirely on rote intelligence is the mistake of AI, in my opinion. Too many machine AIs are easy to trap this way - you need to add a "state of mind" for the AI, complete with opinions on subjects, so if I say "What did you think of the American Elections?" and the AI says "I think they're great!" I know immediately it's a bot. If the response is "I <3 Obama, I'm so happy!" or "God, in 4 years and the government will be so far in the toilet I might as well move to China now" I would have a lot more doubt.

btw, James Cameron is trying to pass the visual Turing test with his next movie, Avatar (also see here) we'll see when December comes...

You're entitled to your opinion of course, but if you're basing part of that pessimism off of that interview with Smith, perhaps you should take note that Smith has called the new Watchmen film Astounding. Its been said over and over again that its too hard to properly replicate the book's unique presentation, but it doesn't mean that the movie can't be good.

Kevin Smith has seen a pre-screening of Watchmen and said they got it right.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/08/15/kevin-smith-has-seen-watchmen-its-fking-astounding/