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New International Serenity Trailer Released
Tenken writes "The international Serenity trailer has just popped up online and it looks to be even shinier than the first. This new trailer doesn't really spell out the plot of the film as explicitly as the first one, but for that reason it may play better with fans. Chiwetel Ejiofor's "Operative" character is also shaping up to be one of those memorable Whedon villains along the lines of Jubal Early from the episode "Objects in Space.""
A couple things:
A Firefly-fan friend of mine already saw the movie. He was very apprehensive after seing the trailers, and left quite, quite pleased with the movie (and has had to resist spoiling it for me).
Unrealistic fight scenes
How many fight scenes did you see in firefly? Or are you judging a movie and the series that it is based on from a few seconds of (barfight?) scene in a trailer?
utterly anachronistic one-liners
Actually, some of the best parts of Firefly are where one-liners would have been used in most shows, but weren't. For example, Mal's "huh.." after the discovery of River.
cookie cutter set and ship design
Firefly actually stands out in that they built the entire ship set as one complete piece.
queue the messianic character
Are you referring to River or Mal? If you're referring to River, I think the Bible would have been a lot more interesting with Jesus talking about how quickly the human body can be drained of blood given adequate vacuuming systems, claiming that he's a ship, speaking incoherently, and threatening to kill people with his brain.
Point of interest. Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.
September is still a very weak month for moviegoing in general, which is why it tends to be reserved for what are called "soft" movies.
Perfect example of such a film is "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" which was released on 9/17. It went on to gross ~$60 million worldwide boxoffice, with a production budget of about 70 million (the budget was actually closer to 100 because of CGI cost overruns).
It was originally scheduled to be released in the summer, but it would have been crushed. With little competition it was unable to earn back its budget domestically.
Serenity's production budget is listed at $40 million. This means its marketing budget is somewhere around $20-25 million, probably... Let's assume $65 million as the figure in question.
The film has to double its budget (assuming equitable split between exhibitor and distributor, which isn't always the case) in box office receipts to ensure zero risk for Universal at stage one of the revenue stream. It has to earn $130 million at the box office in OCTOBER! That's a stretch.
So what is more likely is that Universal is willing to take a loss on box office, which they are conceding by moving it to September so that they can get all the box office revenue possible (less competition). Geeks are loyal DVD purchasers, so they are banking on DVD sales to not only offset any loss, but for DVD sales themselves to buck the trend of flattening DVD sales as the DVD market matures.
No one releases a press release stating that they think their movie is going to fail, so refering to one in this instance doesn't amount to much. Also, other films released early summer, with established stars and directors (for example: Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom and Ridley Scott) failed miserably... with much bigger marketing budgets and the entire summer audience to cater to.
un burrito me trampeó.