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Bloodrayne Officially Awful
Uwe Boll's latest attempt to kill the future of gaming movies is officially terrible, reports Next Generation. From the article: "Filmjerk: 'In his mind, [Boll] is Steven Spielberg; arranging danger and adventure on the screen with clarity and a roaring sense of excitement. However, the tragic reality is that Boll has all the artistic ability of the average 4th grade finger-painter.'" Update: 01/09 21:33 GMT by Z : 1up has a short and telling interview with Mr. Boll from this past weekend.
Whats sad is you're the only person who understands why he makes such crap movies.
Under the German tax system, if the movie tanks, the investors make a mint through a tax loophole. Video game movie rights are sometimes really easy to obtain if your a big studio. Big studio execs then form a shell German corporation and invest in the movie through that. When the movie tanks, the investors (studio) makes a mint.
Hollywood is too cutthroat to allow this kind of crap to be released for no reason.
Oh. That didn't really seem clear from your comment... but I still disagree with you. In 2005 we had Doom and the announcement of Halo (with Peter Jackson producing). In 2004, we had a Tomb Raider sequel and Aliens Vs Predator. This year, we can expect Metroid (directed by John Woo), Silent Hill and Mortal Kombat 3. Next year, Castlevania (directed by Paul Anderson, who did AVP and MK).
There is not a shortage of video game movies, and none of those above (to my knowledge) were directed by Uwe Boll.
It's a January release. One of the traditional Hollywood dumping times when people are generally watching football and such and not going to the movies.
Of course it's bad.
But seriously...
Yes, THAT is how to cast a film!
You know, that theory still doesn't hold water for me. The way the German tax loophole worked (I say worked because it was recently closed) was this. The studios would sell a movie to a German holding company for, say 100 million, and then the holding company would lease the movie back to the studio for, say 90 million. Why would they be willing to lose 10 million on the deal? Because the money they put up is considered a capital investment under the old German tax law, and isn't taxable until it turns a profit, so instead of losing 40% of that money to taxes they only lose 10%. It's free money for both parties, but the thing to keep in mind is that it's completely removed from the actual box office receipts. It doesn't matter if the movie is a hit or tanks, the amounts are decided long before the movie is released, and no matter what happened the holding company always "loses" it's 10%, and the risk is still on the studios shoulders with just a little extra padding because of the loophole.
So how does Boll exactly benefit from this? His movies are too low budget to benefit from this shell game, studios like doing this with big budget movies because it benefits from an economy of scale. Trying to make a $1 million off of a $10 million dollar movie doesn't work as well because too much of the profit margin gets eaten up with lawyer fees and the like. BloodRayne is his biggest budget film yet, and from what I can see it's right around $20 million which is not enough. German investors aren't going to directly invest in his films if they don't return at least 60% of their investment, and I don't think any of them have. I'm still voting on blackmail polaroids of various studio executives as the most likely explanation.