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Watchmen 50 Days On, Was It Worth the Gamble?
brumgrunt writes "Friday marks the 50th day on general release for what was the long-awaited Watchmen movie. But how much money has it made, and how has it measured up to Warner Bros' expectations? Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "
When Watchmen shot out of the blocks to an opening weekend of $55m in the US back at the start of March, there were some mutterings of discontent that this wasn't quite the kind of number that Warner Bros was looking for.
Well, to be fair, stateside that puts it at #6 for opening weekend for a Rated R movie. And 64th overall. Worldwide so far it's sitting at $180+ million and, like the article said, DVD and Blu-Ray sales often make a big difference.
... so what is the problem exactly? You've made the #6 most popular R rated movie by opening weekend in the United States. Job well done. I assure you that DVD and Blu-Ray sales will net you a lot of money. Especially with that Curse of the Black Freighter stuff you withheld from the movie.
I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that
It was always going to be a harder sell than a Batman or Spider-man movie ...
For the love of all things binary, I thought it was common knowledge that you cannot compare rated R movies to PG-13 movies. Every single Batman & Spider-man movie has been rated below R.
The movie did well and I'm sure it was worth it.
My work here is dung.
Warner Bros made money. If they make a good director's cut they will make a boat load of new money.
>I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that ...
>so what is the problem exactly?
The usual rule of thumb is that a film needs to make 2.5-3 times it's budget before it's profitable - that allows for everyone in the chain, cinemas etc to get their cut. As such, Watchman needs to make around $300m before it makes the studio happy.
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Best SF this year. Love that is was Long.
Totally worth it. A bunch of my friends who had never read Watchmen, and really aren't the reading types, made it out to see the movie and we all had a long discussion about Rorschach and the Comedian, and how much we loved Dan Dreiberg.
Movie was good, Watchmen is good to make a movie about, end of story.
The soundtrack was like someone stole my ipod and played all the songs that were way too on the nose to be taken seriously.
Cool music.. just made the movie wierd.
You're ignoring the opportunity cost. Sure, it'll end up returning 3 times the amount it cost to make, which is a decent profit, but could the studio have spent that money making another (or two, or three other) films that would have done better? If so then Watchmen was the wrong choice. In this case would they have been better off making a couple of PG-13 films?
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But I greatly enjoyed it, felt it resonate with me and felt better for having seen it.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
I am one who rarely buys a DVD and even rare-er buys a bluray.
I will in fact be buying Watchmen. and a LOT of others I know will be as well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah - I'm glad they made it and I'm glad I saw it. But I'm also glad that I didn't have a stake in it - It had to be an unsettling investment for those who did. It's got to feel good to have participated, but it was obviously a gamble from the beginning. Watchmen is definitely aimed at a niche market.
Still - I'll bet that DVD sales are good. TPB be damned, I'll have a boxed copy here.
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It was argued that movies like TDK showed that a darker, more serious summer movie could fill seats and rake in cash, and likewise a few years ago The Matrix Reloaded was making money hand over fist long after the hype train was derailed, in spite of an R rating and a relatively cerebral (most would say pretentiously so) story. Both successes challenged conventional wisdom about the summer blockbuster and probably opened the door for Watchmen to a degree.* I worry that Watchmen's unimpressive gross will convince studios to close that door again and be more conservative with content and tone on their big-ticket movies. Where then for Iron Man 2's mooted alcoholism subplot?
*I know Watchmen was in production by the time TDK arrived in 2008, but a lot could've been left on the cutting-room floor if the studio had seen that year's adult superhero movie flop.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "
It's not worth the gamble, expense, and hassle to go see a movie in the theater any more. Speaking as part of the core audience for this movie (as in, I actually own the graphic novel) there is no fucking way that I'll go to a theater to see much of anything any more. I actually found it cheaper to buy an HDTV than to go to the movies once a month for a year. Unfortunately for the Blu-Ray wankers, I also find that an upconverted DVD looks fucking fantastic. If I were the kind of person who paused stills so that I could bitch about compression artifacting maybe I would feel differently. Finally, I find that I rewatch movies less and less these days, so I won't buy the movie on any form of media. At this point it looks like I'll be renting a DVD from Netflix.
The distributors have been ratcheting up the price of getting the print in your movie theater to the point where diminishing returns are in full effect. My understanding is that pretty much none of the ticket price typically goes to a theater. For the price of two people going to see the movie, you can buy the DVD. Or better yet, get netflix for a month. If they want asses in theater seats, they're going to have to drop the cost to the theater. And if they want people to spread buzz about their movies, they're going to need those asses in those seats. The movie industry is going to slaughter itself, and it can't happen soon enough for me — not because I want less movies to be produced, but because I think that moviestars have too much influence in our culture.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Saw it in Imax, and I'm sure it'll be on my xmas list in Blu-ray. I honestly don't know how it would play to someone who hasn't read the original, but I enjoyed it with relatively minor quibbles. I'm kind of curious about the stuff that didn't make it in.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Talk about scraping the bottom for story submissions. Are we going to start getting updates to see whether Marley & Me was worth it too?
they already made a ton of movie and with the 190 minute directors cut hitting shelves in july they are gonna make a ton more.
BoxOfficeMojo.com says it cost $150M.
It has done $190M worldwide.
$300M+ would be breakeven.
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This movie is going to shine on the home movie market â" for one really good reason. It's a move a lot of us geek men love but not really one to take a date to. (sure, some of you have that type of woman, but face it, those are a rare type) The guys who had to miss the theatrical release because they didn't want to go to the movies alone because that's just lame are going to buy the DVD, because you can watch that alone, and you have have your to cheap to buy a movie ticket friends watch it with you. (BTW â" I watched it alone, after work, I got off of work at 11:00 PM)
The theatre I usually go to in Baton Rouge had a sign clearly displayed saying have your ID ready for Watchmen, we will be checking. I don't know how many theaters checked ID's nation wide, but face it, it's easier for under aged comic fans to buy a DVD than it is to get into an R-rated movie in some places. Granted in some other places it's the opposite, but never mind that.
Let's not forget, some movies just shine on DVD anyways. Who here honestly watched Office Space in the theatre when it premiered? Everyone saw the home release! (I think it went back to the theaters once, but I'm not certain) Tarintino movies, how many did you see in the box office? Probably more at home than in a theatre seat. I wouldn't be surprised if the home release take rivals the theatrical take.
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The success of The Matrix Reloaded and TDK challenged conventional wisdom about the tone (character-led, cerebral, and dark) and content (R-rated) that a big-budget movie could have and still draw the crowds, arguably opening the door to the Watchmen we saw in theatres. Had TDK flopped, I suspect Watchmen would've gone back for reshoots or had heavy cuts. Watchmen's own flop is likely to justify conventional wisdom to movie executives, closing that door and leading to more conservative production in future. What then for Iron Man 2's mooted alcoholism subplot?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Any time a film makes back less than its budget in domestic gross, it's considered a commercial failure by the studios. It's close enough that they'll probably get past the break even point once DVD sales kick in, but it's by no means a success.
This isn't really a surprise to me. I had no connection to the source material, so I had no built-in excitement about the film. The reviews were mixed when it opened, so I skipped it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way, though I may be in the minority here...
>Still - I'll bet that DVD sales are good.
Yep. It will be Serenity all over again.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that ... so what is the problem exactly?
The problem is that Hollywood Execs are not looking to be successful on a scale of 'job well done', and nor should they, from their paradigm. Their paradigm is manufacturing success, through advertising, TV spots, trailers, awareness campaigns, viral marketing, celebrity whoring, and as many other nefarious tactics as they can get away with, in order to absolutely 100% guarantee a certain level of success.
Just doing alright is a failure, from that paradigm.
A success would be the biggest opening weekend of all time. And that's what we see, again and again. Look, and you will see that this record is broken by every other truly triple-A blockbuster, probably happens a couple of times a year or more.
The real sign of failure is that video games now have even bigger opening weekends - Halo 3, followed hotly by GTA 4, really showed Holywood what an opening weekend could be.
Let the whoring begin!
I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that ... so what is the problem exactly?
Opportunity cost. $100m invested in The Watchmen can't be invested elsewhere, and if $100m invested in another movie would have given higher profits, then they didn't make as much money as they could have.
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I'll buy the extended edit DVD that's coming out this summer. I wasn't crazy about the "book" but liked the movie. I was disappointed that they chose to change the ending, but thought they did a fine job of it.
Please excuse the double-post of this below, I clicked away and didn't see the comment come up when I revisisted so I assumed I hadn't gone past "preview".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
that moviemakers gut the mythology of a work in order to bring it onto screen
they didn't do that here
sure, they got rid of the squid, but peter jackson also got rid of mr. bombadil from lotr and no one seems to give him that much flak for that. both the squid and mr. bombadil are kind of completely out of context of the stories they inhabit, so really, no big deal
obviously, the filmmakers, directors, writers: they had passion for the work. but that's actually the source of the criticism they get: that it was TOO committed to the material. the issue was that they made the movie a slavish devotion to a frame-by-frame reading of the material, which was a herculean task, and also mostly successful, but only on that measure
and yet they get flak for it: that it was hollow, eeriely emotionally empty for being a frame-by-frame remake. that's been the substance of a lot of critical reviews
the lesson: you can't satisfy everyone. if you are adopting a major literary work to film, just go with your gut, be prepared to piss off the fanboy fundamentalists, and be prepared to go over the heads of a lot of the audience. because if you pander too much to the fanbots or the general public, you either water down what makes the material great, or you make a cult movie that you will still be hypercriticized for, because, in the end, there just is no satisfying the fundamentalist fanboys
the best anyone can do is hope for success like peter jackson and lotr. he's pretty much the gold standard now for adapting much loved literary works to screen. meanwhile, watchmen was received lukewarm critical, and lukewarm popular
so the final commentary is: meh, its ok, whatever
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This is just a repost of my comment up above, I thought I'd not posted it correctly.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Many of the greatest films of all time wouldn't have been made if the people involved were worried about profitability. That being said, I feel that Watchmen is as worthy an addition to the cinematic medium as the novel was to print.
It went away from the Hollywierd normal direction. It went where most do not, it treated the audience as educated and intelligent instead of drooling morons that scream for boobies and Michael Bay explosion fests.
I really hope that Cinema goes back to having an IQ required instead of the typical "snakes on a plane" kind of crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This the sort of feature that will be able to have about 5 different DVD releases, with the niche market running out to buy every version. You can have the theatrical release, which will occur in the next few months, and about six months after that then you can have your director's cut release, and then a year after that you can have your "Ultimate Director's Edition!" which will cost 3 X as much as the Theatrical release and include inane commentary and material that was left on the cutting room floor for a reason.
The studios will be fine, they just won't make the killing that they'd like too on it!
There was a significant amount of back story missing from the movie. I did not read the graphic novels or any of that stuff and instead watched it without any previous knowledge or experience. There was quite a curve to overcome with regards to character development and the background stories. While most things were answered in some way eventually, the flow was still more confusing than it needed to be and they should have realized that prior to opening day. It wasn't just another "super hero" movie.
What SHOULD they have done? Easy -- release and play some mini episodes that show off the characters in their glory days while promoting the movie itself. This would have built more enthusiasm for the movie and would have given viewers who would not have otherwise been familiar with the characters a greater level of comfort and more ease getting into the story. This could also have resulted in better story development without having to flash back too much.
Fuck the studios' happiness. These are the same people who claimed to the author of FORREST GUMP that there were no net profits to share with him. You remember that bomb, doncha? Only made $330M domestic in theatres. How anybody at that studio could afford to feed a family after that disaster is beyond me. And by "family" I mean "cocaine habit."
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
It's fairly easy to boil down the numbers as to whether or not the movie was financially worth it, but was the movie artistically worth it? Considering the writer of the original award winning graphic novel wants nothing to do with the movie, and the unlikelihood of the Watchmen movie winning any artistic awards, I don't think this movie was artistically worth it.
This the sort of feature that will be able to have about 5 different DVD releases...
Also known as the Blade Runner effect.
Maybe if they got rid of the obnoxious blue penis and pointless gore they could have made it PG-13. While they're at it they could have also shaved an hour off the running time.
After watching over 2 1/2 hours of blue superhero cock, I don't think I ever want to see the words "Watchmen" and "measure up" in the same sentence again.
Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle?
Bluntly, it's not my money, or my time, or my movie, so why are you asking me if it was worth it ?
It would be cool if the producers read slashdot, but I doubt it.
While darker than previous Batman movies, The Dark Knight was still PG-13. Makes the target audience much, much larger. Especially amongst teens with disposable income and time to see the movie 3 times in the cinema.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
There's already three announced.
You got your vanilla release, your director's cut and your director's complete cut which'll have Black Freighter interwoven with the Watchmen story.
Thoughtful movies have always been made and always will be made. Watchmen is just another instance, possibly a damaging one: its low attendance (sorry but it's true) renewed and justified studio policy for PG-13 superhero movies.
Anyway, good movies will keep sneaking under the radar now and then if you're looking for them. I remember seeing The Quiet American many years ago; it was near opening night, and there were about 10 other people in the theatre.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Are you kidding me. Doing my little research (about 2 minutes), I go to Wikipedia and check out the summary box on the right side of the article, which says: Budget: $120 million, Gross revenue: $180,112,419 . With a quick calculation I get 150.08 % return of investment. A normal economic person would probably tell it was worth it. Now what was the question again?
They did what I feared they would; they turned it into a superhero movie.
Because of time limitations they had to cut parts, and of course the parts they cut are all the non-action scenes which set 75% of the mood. The newstand? The Tales of the Black Freighter? Long developed characters and interactions that drive home points a little more involved that BIFF! and POW!
And don't get me started on how they completely removed the alien and inserted a bomb instead. Ugh.
I for one can't wait till they release the Watchmen Babies edition... V for Vacation sounds awesome
"In this case would they have been better off making a couple of PG-13 films?
Don't worry, I'm sure they'll eventually make the money back off the animated series :)
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I wanted to see it translated to the big screen. I still like the comic better, but they did an amazing job on the film and I absolutely enjoyed it. I'll be buying the DVD too.
When did money become the primary criteria for determining the merit of an artistic project? Sheesh, what a stupid society we live in.
Ask me about my sig!
I vaguely recall a stat that came out during "Titanic" mania. If you could've invested a single dollar in the production of the film, you'd have gotten about $1.03 back as return on investment. Had you invested that same dollar in the production of "The Full Monty", you've have gotten back several THOUSAND dollars in return.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
This movie will definitely be a financial success consider the majority of the people that went to see it are fans. Most of them will likely buy the DVD. I have every intention of buying the directors cut regardless of price just to see the parts that were cut.
I've never read the comic book, but the movie felt like they took a LOTR trilogy worth of material and crammed it into one long obnoxious bundle that never really developed any of the really interesting parts of the story. Instead of the points, humor, and world detail I am guessing the author wanted to convey in the source material, we got a naked blue guys junk all over the screen and some unpleasant gore scenes. This was the first time I have ever have wished a movie was PG-13 instead of R.
Most likely once the DVD and eventual extended directors deluxe action figure edition are released, it will make enough money to validate the investment.
What is funny is that a big study is never going to ask "did we make a great movie" or "did we do the source material justice", it's all "will we make a profit. I have no problem with them making a profit, but I would love to see more focus on the quality of the movie than the FX budget and schedule.
Just my anonymous and cowardly 10 cents.
You think that's bad? Lucasarts is still telling David Prowse (the guy who wore the Vader suit) that Return of the Jedi still hasn't turned a profit.
Made my wife sick to her stomach.
I loved it. I'll catch it on HBO like 6 times...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Oh please, step down from your high horse. You just look like an ass.
There's nothing wrong with wanting an intelligent movie. I enjoy them as well. But sometimes I just want something that's just fun to watch, no matter how much the story lacks.
When did money become the primary criteria for determining the merit of an artistic project? Sheesh, what a capitalist society we live in.
Fixed that for you.
Hey, if they can make a cop pour himself into a helicopter in Terminator 2, they can surely CGI-out the Penis and blood bits for a K-mart/Walmark edition.
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For the love of all things binary, I thought it was common knowledge that you cannot compare rated R movies to PG-13 movies. Every single Batman & Spider-man movie has been rated below R.
It's not a comparison of the movies but of the popularity of the franchises.
You also have to look at from the perspective of "were we successful enough to whore it for sequels."
Maybe not.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
You're seriously comparing a movie that did $180 million worldwide to a movie that did $34 million worldwide?? And don't tell me to look at the budgets, granted Serenity's was less but it didn't even make it up.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the hell out of that movie, but using it to predict Watchmen's performance is a little fallacious...
I believe with marketing, and the fact that FOX wanted their pound of flesh, it was closer to 200 million.
Don't you mean Art Buchwald and "Coming to America"?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
That's 38 million, sorry for the typo.
Ask me again at 100 days.
I don't know if that comic is popular in the US, I never heard of it before. And since it's been in the cinemas for a month now here, allegedly, and I have never even seen an ad, a preview or a "making of" for it, my guess is that the expectations are pretty low in my part of Europe...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sorry but that is fucking ridiculous. If you can't make a profit off a 180% return on your investment something is seriously flawed with the business model, and you need to figure out what you did wrong.
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I dunno, I was more than happy to buy Serenity (one of the few DVDs I've actually been willing to pay for). Watchmen, meh.
This is pretty much what watchmen will make if you add the DVD and blue ray and tv releases to the calculation...
And this is why I don't go to the movies anymore.
Why the fucking hell would I pay 10$ to see an INCOMPLETE movie? And it's VOLUNTARY incomplete too?
Fuck you, studio executives.
All of your other DVDs were just stolen?
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Well clearly if they could have made a movie that would make more profit then it wasn't worth making. There is simply no other way to judge a movie.
It is this type of thinking that is wrong with the world.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
No way. Theaters usually get to keep between 25% and ZERO percent of ticket proceeds. Yes, sometimes it's zero; for really big films that people are sure will pack the theater, often the theaters have to agree to turn all ticket proceeds over to the studio, and make whatever profit they can off the overpriced popcorn etc.
Worst case, a film might need to make 50% over its production cost in box office revenue to turn a profit, but usually it's more like 20% over production cost.
Don't forget marketing, the watchmen had a very large ad budget. This varies by film and studio, but some big budget films spend more on marketing than they did on production.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Just for the opening sequence alone it was worth it. It took the whole comic book/graphic novel mythology and reinvented it for the movies and placed it in the context of the time, cold war paranoia etc. It also answered the question as to what super heroes do when off duty. Why it's a good movie is - it's one of those you can watch more than once. Unlike some very bad big budget movies where you can't wait to get out of the theater.
"Movie was good, Watchmen is good to make a movie about, end of story." - by GMonkeyLouie (1372035) on Thursday April 23, @10:59AM (#27687547)
Agreed, 110%... I was impressed, & felt the most for "Dr. Manhattan" actually (but, I did relate to Rorshach, & yes, I even liked Nite Owl (nice person is why)). My fav. exchange through this film, was this one:
----
Nite Owl: "How long can we keep this up?"
The Comedian: "Congress is pushing through some new bill that's gonna outlaws masks - our days are numbered. Till then, it's like you always say: 'We're society's only protection'... "
Nite Owl: "From what??"
The Comedian: "What're you kidding me??? From themselves...!"
Nite Owl: "What the hell happened to us? What happened to the 'American Dream'??"
The Comedian: "What happened to the American Dream?!? IT CAME TRUE (you're lookin' @ it)... "
----
Why?
Because I feel it describes the U.S.A. of today, actually (how sad).
APK
P.S.=> And, although Ozymandias was the BIGGEST "sociopath" of them all (& funny how HE described BOTH "The Comedian" & "Rorshach" as that, eh)? I admired his resolve actually, & abilities...
(Imo, he was easily the MOST dangerous/powerful of them all, after "Dr. M." that is (perhaps moreso though, mentally, because of his ability to manipulate Dr. M. via his psychological weaknesses))...
Yes - I wish I had read the series when it was published, but, by that point (1985 or so)?? I had 'put down' comic books, prior to entering high school... apk
Then they lied when they said the budget is $100 million. From what you said the budget was actually 250 to 300 million, but 150 to 200 million of that is on borrowed money.
it will NEVER make a profit.
'cos profits are, like, taxed.
If it makes 300mil then 200mil of accounting will make it show no profit.
If it makes a billion, it may be more difficult to have it make no profit. But they'll try.
Where is this rule of thumb? This is Hollywood accounting by the way where Forrest Gump with a budget of $55 million grossed over $670 million at the box office but was declared "unprofitable" by Paramount in order to avoid paying royalties to Winston Groom who wrote the novel. Mr. Groom unfortunately did not know that most of Hollywood write their contracts to get a cut of the gross not the net revenue because the infamous Hollywood accounting. Paramount later settled their dispute with Winston only because they really wanted to make the sequel.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The "investment" of a big-budget studio picture includes WAY more than just the production costs. All that advertising, promotion, distribution, and exhibition costs money (often times significantly more than the production costs). You think prints make themselves, ads are free, flying your stars around is free, the theater doesn't want a cut, etc.?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The movie needed a good score and a better soundtrack.
It had a jarring sound hit or miss soundtrack and a worthless score.
The violence is tricky- some violence was put in- that wasn't in the comic books. OTH, some violence in the comic books was removed from the movie.
Other than that, I wouldn't change a bit or any bitsies.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Bottomline - the movie made money. It made more than it took to produce. Therefore, it was successful in that it did not lose money.
I love the part where the dog messes everything up! I can't believe the Academy passed this one up!
The usual rule of thumb is that a film needs to make 2.5-3 times it's budget before it's profitable - that allows for everyone in the chain, cinemas etc to get their cut. As such, Watchman needs to make around $300m before it makes the studio happy.
Huh? That figure never made sense to me. If they need to make 2.5 times what they say is their budget before they say they can make a profit, then doesn't that make their budget $250 million instead of $100 million? Or is this funny accounting?
So what you're saying is when they say it took $100 million to make they are lying?
You mean bootlegging DVDs? Never heard of that before. Especially here. Nope. People here have morals.
There is a reason for this, the expectation of watching in a Movie Theater is different from watch at home on DVD
For Movie Theaters there is an expected time span, expected content (enough "backstory" so people who just decided on a whim to see it will understand what's going on, but not all the small nuances that true fans enjoy), and rated low enough to grab the widest audience.
For DVDs there is an expectation for in-depth information (commentaries, blooper reels, featuretts, etc.), more freedom given to time span (put it on pause for a bathroom break, or sit down tomorrow night and select the chapter you left off at), and a bigger market for rated R or 'unrated' material (Unrated editions of just about every movie ever made, and they're selling them at Wallmart!)
So, while it is an 'incomplete' movie as far as comparing it to the directors cut, it is complete as far as Movie Theater expectations.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
Undoubtably, yes. I was thinking more in terms of tone and being character-led than "objectionable content" or whatever the catch-all term for sex and violence is these days.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Bottomline - the movie made money. It made more than it took to produce. Therefore, it was successful in that it did not lose money.
I can see that since John Madden retired, he's got a few minutes to post anonymously on Slashdot.
My moma always said that watching a movie sequel is like eating an entire box of chocolate, just after you finish eating an entire box of chocolate. It usually makes you sick to your stomach...
Nope, just means you need to get in line for some Fed bail out money!!
It would have done better if Ozymandias wasn't a slimy dick making it completely obvious to people who knew nothing about Watchmen that he was the big bad. He should have been the ultimate good guy through and through until all was revealed.
Apparently the Extended version will run up to an hour longer than the Theatrical cut.
While the Watchmen movie wasn't perfect, and while it might not have earned as much as they wanted it to; I fully expect the DvD version of the movie to sell very very well.
The Long Now Foundation
there's always cranks, which is what you clearly are
fact is, they could make movie tickets $15/ head, have crying babies and cell phones all the time, and movie houses would still do gangbustersd business
why?
because its still better than sitting at home watching vin diesel on a 17 inch monitor in your basement by yourself
sure, you can talk about home theatre systems, which most people can't afford, and you can talk about inviting your friends over, which is not something easy to coordinate
and finally, psychologists have shown that all of the oohs and aahs and giggles in the audience heighten your experience, so over all, its a win, in spite of all the complaints you can muster
tv was supposed to kill theatres, then vcrs, then dvds, the internet, then hd theatre... bullshit, bullshit, bullshit
the movie going experience has a long and profitable future ahead of it, in spite of all the whiny cranks like yourself
because, in the end, your spoken words don't actually match your actions (that is, you whine, but still go back to the theatre nayways), or, if you actually don't go to the movie theatres for what are actually minor complaints, then you are just a vanishing small minority that can be safely ignored: the chronically unsatisfiable crank
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But I'm also glad that I didn't have a stake in it - It had to be an unsettling investment for those who did. It's got to feel good to have participated, but it was obviously a gamble from the beginning. Watchmen is definitely aimed at a niche market.
On the contrary, it was probably a pretty predictable quantity compared to other movies. Not that any new release is predictable, but this one wasn't anything like 300 or Sin City where they were hoping to pull in people who knew nothing about the source material, or like Persepolis where it was unknown whether the enthusiasm for the books would last through the release of the movie (and where there was probably a lot of doubt that fans of the books would even bother to see the movie.) It was a so-so movie based on a popular and prestigious graphic novel. They knew the size of the niche. They knew that the readership of the graphic novel would contain more movie fans than the general population, and, having test-screened the movie, they knew it wouldn't break out to a broader audience or inspire massive rewatching.
Assuming that the broadcast and rental rights were sold before the film screened, the DVD sales are probably the riskiest part -- how many people want to see it again? Will fans of the graphic novel want to buy a movie that failed to do the source material justice (inevitably and maybe blamelessly, but still)?
What the... NO... that's just wrong on so many levels!
The budget (that you should not estimate but know exactly!) includes the price for everyone in the chain, from the person who paints the wall over the actors, studios, distributors and cinemas. Why else would it be called the budget?
Everything else is pure profit, about which you should never complain.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
My local cinemas decided to stop showing it after a week. I missed it and now have to drive 35 miles to see it. Screw that, it better be good on DVD.
But since I drug my girlfriend to all the Star Wars special edition showings at the box office, she said I had to watch that one.
Gak.
Kevin Bolk is drawing "Watchbabies" strips on his art site. They're actually quite funny.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
What about the extended and expanded editions, not to mention character-specific editions, the Gold edition, and the Super edition?
And the McDonald's Special Edition, which includes a short badly animated cartoon about Ronald McDonald teaming up with Roscharch and Doctor Manhattan to catch hamburger thieves.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
As a fan of both highly intellectual pieces, and as a man who went to see Snakes on a Plane on three separate occasions in the cinema AND owns it on DVD, I agree that I'd like to see cinema go back to having an IQ - just one that is capable of stooping to near-idiotic levels once in a while for a laugh.
If you really want to cite something dire, you're looking more at "Meet the Spartans" or "Disaster Movie" - which have ridiculous profits and universally negative criticism. At least Snakes had good humour and utter B-movie charm throughout.
Troll or ignorant, you clearly have no idea why there are "deleted scenes." I watch the directory commentary on all my favorite movies and new movies have the deleted scenes with commentary. Almost invariably the director says, "while I really loved this scene because of X, the information/emotion presented was repetitive and it slowed down the film" -aka- pacing.
What you will notice more than some missing backstory from the comic book you laminated and keep in your shower (it is ok to insult ACs right?), is an action movie that takes forever to get to the action.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/business
after factoring in advertising (-) and dvd (+), the whole thing should be a wash: they should make a small profit or small loss
so it wasn't a success, but it wasn't a failure. just an exercise in moving a lot of dollars around to little overall effect
be glad it wasn't a failure, but also be glad it wasn't a success: if it was a success, we would have to deal with "watchmen ii: electric boogaloo"
(whoa! holy double '80s reference batman!)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How to make a movie that deals in a pompous manner with inanities like "superheroes aren't necessarily always good" and "if you're really clever, you might become a bit of a sociopath" (or alternatively "the only way to unite human kind is by perpetrating 9/11, I mean, make them hate another guy more")? Because the Romans knew that already, if not the Greeks and Persians.
Anyway, the movie was ok (apart from the moronic sex joke) right up until the end, when all was "revealed". (I haven't read the comics, no, nor will I)
The only guy who was remotely interesting was inkblob, butapart from him? Where is the re-watch value?
Taking in $180 million for a movie that cost $100 million is not a 180% return; it's an 80% return. That's still a lot, but there are more people who need to be paid than you can believe.
Sorry, I meant the TV series, Firefly.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The usual rule of thumb is that a film needs to make 2.5-3 times it's budget before it's profitable
That's ridiculous. The budget is how much they spent. If they make as much as their budget, they broke even. If they made more than their budget, then they made a profit. If they make 2x their "budget" and they claim they're not making a profit they're lying. Either they're lying about their profit, or lying about their budget, but someone is lying.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How is it that marketing costs don't figure into the budget?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I often prefer the theater cut to the "extended" or "unrated" or "special" edition. Most of the time, the material that I see in the extra scenes drags on, and it is readily apparent WHY that material was left out in the first place.
bombadil was a sort of connection to the larger story of middle earth. i read the silmarillion, i love tolkien's work
and how about this: we're talking about adopting a book to a movie, which i don't think jackson needs any defending: he hit the ball out of the park. please don't segue the conversation into one of how i've insulted your romantic relationship with the source of material. of course bombadil is important. but we're not talking about raping the source material for the hell of it, we're talking about adopting the material to a movie. in THAT context, there is no need for you slight my judgment that bombadil is expendable
in the context of fanboydom, saying bombadil is expendable is treason. in the context of adopting the book to a movie, saing bombadil is expendable is good sense. notice something here please: the actual fucking context of our actual fucking conversation. whic is it? small hint: it involves making a movie. so: don't change the subject matter, and then use that as a reason to insult me
so i'll start taking slights from random self-important yahoos on comment boards seriously when you show me your credentials from tolkien establishing yourself as the mystical authority on determining lotr fanboy stature. until then: fuck off fanboy, your out of context, and out of line
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh they profit from the investment, it's only on paper that they don't profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Basically if you give all the money to other companies that arent your company but really are because you are both owned by the same people, you've on paper lost a ton of money (they call it gross), but that's only on paper.
Whats funny to me is that after screwing over the author of Forest Gump, the studios approached him for rights to the sequel. As the wiki page mentions, he told them he "he cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure." So, good job guys, you've ensured you're never going to make money from the second movie.
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their buisness that they do into how to cheat their way into more money, we'd have no economic troubles and would nationally be 10 trillion in black rather than in red. And we'd have much better movies.
You're missing the math, not on budget, but on earnings. The film "brought in" that amount to theatres, not to the production company.
If you make widgets at $1 a piece, and sell them at $2 a piece, you're not making as much money as people think if the local store is buying them at $1.25 from their distributor and the distributor buys them off you at $1.05 each.
In this case, the movie tickets sold value is what we're seeing, not the price WB got from its distributors who got that money from theatres who are themselves probably making a killing.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
and they're selling them at Wallmart!
Hey Wal-mart is pretty hardcore. They sell such family friendly classics as Requiem For A Dream...
Possibly. On the other hand, sometimes you've got to toss some money into experimenting with other niches. If "Watchmen" had done well, it would have opened up an entirely new market. As it stands, they probably won't be doing that for a while... but just think how many "Slumdog Millionaire" copycats there will be in a few months.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The real sign of failure is that video games now have even bigger opening weekends - Halo 3, followed hotly by GTA 4, really showed Holywood what an opening weekend could be.
That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Games cost $50-$70 each, while your movie ticket is going to be around $10; there's a larger in-rush of cash during an opening weekend of a game because there's a heavier hit.
If the average movie-going crowd was 5-7 people, then it could be a better comparison.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
What if your business model is "hire the shadiest accountants in the world to cook the books like crazy and hide the money"?
Hollywood is notorious for their shady accounting practices.
I read the internet for the articles.
It would have been groundbreaking. 20+ years after it broke ground, everyone alerady has been playing in it's territory. There is nothing (on the face of things) that is new or fresh 20 years later. Dont get me wrong, I worked at a comic book store in 1986 and I was reading the comic as it came out. I understand what it did for comics as a whole but in the movie business these things are not new for 2009. The movie is just too late to be the blockbuster it could have been.
that's not that contentious a statement of mine, nor that original an observation either
as for the squid, eh. it's very lovecraftian, and, as you demonstrate, can be a blank canvas all sorts of symbolism, implied, imagined, explicit, or otherwise. but, honeslty, i really don't think the squid cuts it, even in the source material. unlike bombadil, who is sort of a connection to the wider story of middle earth, perhaps if the watchman universe were expanded outwards like the universe of middle earth was with silmarillion and such, then maybe the squid could develop more legitimacy. but otherwise, fuck the squid. sorry fanboys, that's just my opinion, you don't have to take me seriously, i'm not presenting myself as some sort of authority, so don't react to my words as if i were, just my opinion
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Come on... really? $180M at the box office does not mean $180M for the studio. Cinemas split the box office proceeds 50/50 with the Studio. So, 90M for the studio... they haven't broken even yet.
I am glad I saw Watchmen as well. I thought the story was fantastic. I could have done with less giant smurf penis though...
Was one mention of the blue penis not enough? Did we needed another, more descriptive, big blue penis?
My fellow Americans, let's restore the death penalty for child rapists. Let's do it . . . for the children.
"hamburger thieves"?
You're obviously referring to Hamburglars...
I agree with you that The Dark Knight and The Matrix Reloaded put a spin on what we normally consider summer blockbusters, with the added consideration that they were able to do that because they were successful sequels of successful movies. The playbook was wide open for the creative development in those two franchises because people knew who the characters were and what the story was about. Watchmen tried to go straight to step 2, and in terms of looking for box office numbers that's where things went wrong. A three hour R-rated movie with multiple narratives in a genre where the norm is a two hour PG-13 movie with a clear plot made the IP a tough, tough sell.
That said, I am looking forward to picking up the Blu-Ray when it comes out.
The choice of music in one of the trailers I saw was fantastic, but you're right, that was about the only piece I enjoyed and really felt fit in the movie.
with huge chunks missing
if they were to do the whole book frame-by-frame, you'd have a 78 hour movie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why does everybody here so readily discount the value of watching it on a HUGE screen? Especially for action/effects based movies, this is the main reason I like going to the theater. Lord of the Rings was 10x better in the theater than my friend's HD surround setup.
Most comic book/action movies don't really interest me at all on an intellectual level, but if my friends want to go watch it at the theater I don't mind paying to go with, if I'm in the mood for some eye candy. These are movies I would never think about renting or buying. So yes, there is value in movie theaters, I don't know why everyone here thinks HDTV = Theater. They are two totally different experiences.
So the cited budget includes what exactly?
It doesn't work like that: the studios don't hand out "cuts" like thugs after robbing a bank. Profits of the marketers, distributors, cinameas, etc. are included in the budget, because all those people don't get "cuts" - they offer services and the studio buys them. It is not the job of the studio to ensure they get profit.
Sorry, but this sort of talk is just a weak attempt to cover up the fact that big studios are literally wading through cash, and their arguments about piracy hurting them stem from pathological greed.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
The movie was fairly close to the book, but the fact is THE BOOK alone doesn't make for a good movie. A simple view: the storyline is some strange combination of a drama (fucked-up in the head people) bridging multiple generations with a limited amount of brutal action. It's harder to reconcile the two different halves in a movie, because people expect one or the other.
I'm really not surprised nobody went to see it, the storyline is too complicated to bring in the crowds.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
All of your other DVDs were just stolen?
;-)
well you *could* read it that way
Or OP was 'happy' to buy Watchmen, but not 'happy' to have purchased his other DVDs...
I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that ... so what is the problem exactly?
psychologists have proven that the oohs and aahs and giggles from the audience heighten the movie going experience
factor in the negatives of cell phones, teenagers yapping, and babies, and you still have a net positive
granted, some people, such as yourself, are hyperaware of the insults to your attention to the movie, but you are a psychologically a small minority, as most people just aren't as sensitive to random interruptions like you are
develop some thicker skin, or stay home. where you can watch your movie in stony cold isolation. which is somehow superior to you for some reason
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, if David Prowse is looking for money from Lucasarts then he's knocking on the wrong door. And by the way all Star Wars Cast members were well taken care of from Star Wars. The leads have all said so.
Some have correctly noted that studios could have gained more return on investment by making another movie that was not rated R.
However, if ROI was the only standard by which movies were made, that would encourage studios to be very risk averse at the expense of art.
I would much rather have the studios take gambles so that we do actually get to see creative and original movies get made.
I also suspect that the actual ROI calculation doesn't take into account the soft benefit of allowing actors, writers, and directors to do the projects they want, regardless of prospects of return.
its just a bunch of geeks hanging out in a bar chewing the fat. none of this is important. which makes the subject matter completely valid
in that context, the only thing more irrelevant than this story, is some comment attached to the irrelevant story earnestly informing us all about how irrelevant it all is
we get it, its irrelevant. but that renders your thinking one more degree of irrelevancy. so why did you even comment?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not so much making sure everyone in the chain get's paid, but the profit's from Watchmen will balance the losses of flop's.
You do not want this movie to be financially successful, otherwise the studio will insist on producing a sequel.
in iron man 2. at least accord to downey jr:
http://www.superheroflix.com/news/NEo0LvouqGg1rr
which is a shame, because downey jr is the perfect actor for this story line arc. look to iron man 3 for that story. and if they don't ever do the alcoholism story line, they are fools, because this is a fantastic goldmine, in terms of a good story, and in terms of the perfect actor for the role, like mickey rourke for the wrestler
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That would be LucasFILM... not LucasARTS. Lucasarts makes video games and were one of the best studios around until they started churning 100% Star Wars crap....
Lucasfilm once had some of the best films under its belt until it started churning out Star Wars "prequel" crap..
Hmmm... I see a pattern emerging.....
I don't know how those deals work now, but back when I was in the theater business, this was not true at all. Big blockbuster movie like that, all of the box office went to the studio. Cinema made their bundle from concessions. Think about what the markup is on soda and popcorn.
What they won't have is the non-R rated version. And that's the one I'd be interested in watching.
(So many good movies ruined by gratuitous violence and unnecessary nudity.)
Got the graphic novel from Amazon (~$12), almost done with it. I definitely agree with the "freaking awesome" assessment of the novel.
As such, I'm going to give the movie a try, but only after it shows up in the el-cheapo second-run theater ($2 instead of $8 or something). [This is standard procedure for movies I'm interested in watching.]
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
no I only purchase R rated dvds due to the fact it appears less manly if I don't >,>
Read: http://digg.com/d1o9ch
How the hell can you cook the books so bad as to make it appear on paper you never made a single cent.... not bloody like I would ever invest in a Lucas film as according to their books they never make a profit! I guess after to you pay all the bills you give the left over to Lucas as a 'bonus' and tada... no profit!
Lots of film make no profit. Bills assessed and paid long after the film has been out. Forest Gump's studio fees where paid a year later at astronomical rates just so the movie would not turn a real profit.
Wonders of Hollywood Account!
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Is that an Airplane analogy on /. sir?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Self explanatory
OK, I'm one of those "cranks" who remembers how moviegoing USED to be, and considers the current "experience" extremely inferior.
It used to be, you'd go to a big, beautiful PALACE with thousands of seats and a gorgeous environment. Even if you lived in a small town, the local movie theatre was a glamorous, special place.
This was before mobile phones. And there would be a special room for mothers to take squalling babies or toddlers having a tantrum, called the "women's lounge."
In the 1960s, theatre owners, in an industry maybe didn't DIE because of TV but took a big, big hit, came up with the concept of the "cinemaplex." More choice! More people can go see movies suiting THEIR taste, not the programmer at the local movie palace. I live near where one of the first American multiplex theatres, The Americana 5 in Panorama City, CA, was built in 1964. It had one "big room" for what was then known as "road show" releases, the big movie expected to be the blockbuster of the moment. It also had four smaller rooms...and I really mean smaller. 200 seat shoeboxes as opposed to the 1,000 seat "big room." People went anyway, and the theatre chains realized they could make more money because they'd go to the movies regardless of the amenities or lack of them. They didn't really have a choice in the pre-home video and pre-HBO/Showtime days. You either saw the movie in the theatre or you waited for it to come on TV, and that wait would be literally years.
Eventually the "big room" was subdivided in two in the mid '70s, and the Americana 5 became, for a time, the Americana 6. It was only due to the decline of the neighborhood and the competition of cable and home video that the Pacific Theatres knocked down the thin subdivision barrier and turned the two theatres back into "the big room" again. Amazingly enough, the Pacific Americana underwent a bit of a renaissance for a while. They would have events, geared towards the local predominantly Latino populace, where Spanish-language movies, free concerts after the movie and appearances by local Spanish-language radio personalities would be part of the fun. Selena did one event and the immediate area surrounding the Americana was mobbed. The LAPD had to be called in to do crowd control.
Eventually the Mann Theatres chain put in the Mann's Plant 16 a couple of miles down the road at the big-box mall that replaced the long shuttered GM assembly plant. This was what killed the Americana. The Pacific Theatre Group unloaded it on a couple of locals who went indie. It got more and more run down, started playing second-run movies in both English and Spanish for bargain prices, and when things broke, they stayed broke. The last movie I saw in the "big room" there was Prince of Egypt. The movie theatre that every year around Easter would play "The Ten Commandments" had its swan-song with another retelling of the Moses myth. It was sad to see the place go. The area where the four small theatres stood is now a school of cosmetology. The old "big room" was once an indoor futbol arena where people would play pickup soccer games, and is now a banquet hall which, ironically, boasts a nice big movie screen. It is also more ornate than the "big room" at the Americana ever was.
Anyway, huge digression. The multiplex movie theatre encouraged a degradation of movie theatre etiquette. Going to a little shoebox theatre was less special than going to the community movie palace. People didn't have the same sense of "occasion" going to the movies. In a lot of respects, the experience of going to one of these theatres was like the drive-in experience. Often a theatre chain would knock down a drive-in and replace it with a mega multiplex. They could show more movies to more people and it was a more intelligent use of land. And with the competition of cable, home video, "sell-through" home video, and finally the DVD, there were now real choices about how to see a movie.
So yeah, theatres are not exactly
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I don't think that releasing the moview with the R rating was wise. I'm all for tasteful or comical nudity, but the "blue dongle" was not contributing to the movie.
Seriously... Watchmen had an unnecessary amount of gore and FAR too much blue penis!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Every single Batman & Spider-man movie has been rated below R.
Hmm... I could've sworn The Dark Knight was rated R, but I looked it up, and you're right!
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
But, using your analogy and the margins other people have pointed out who have worked in theatres, You are selling your Widgets at $2, and You distribute them to the store for $1.60 (20% markup for theatres). This is best case scenario for the theatre, and the movie would have to make $125 million to break even. (being a $100 million budget film). However, As it has been pointed out, many theatres run big budget films for free, and they make all of their money off of concessions.
So I sell my Widget that costs $1 to make to the store for $2, and they sell it for $2, because my widget is so amazing it gets people into their store, and they make the profit selling other goods.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
they did the same for watchmen. the music CD does not contain 99 luftballoons even though the nena song was played in the movie.
typical shitheads not giving composers credit. and they complain about TPB.
I think he was just referring to Serenity's comparitive financial success between the theatrical release and the DVD release.
No way that's true, at least in retrospect. The Titanic ended up grossing $1.85 BILLION dollars worldwide on a 200 million dollar budget. My guess is that $1.03 figure either assumes you had an unfavorable investment agreement, or is based on old/incorrect information.
Sure, the Fully Monty has a ridiculous profit:budget ratio (around 75), but that's not the norm. The Titanic's ratio of 9 is still well above average, and its investors almost certainly profited handsomely.
Movie theaters get half the gross, so that is 90 million for the studio. It is hard to make a profit on $9 if you put $10 in.
Last I heard, it was a sliding scale. Studios got a really high percentage (like 90%) of box office the first week, and it decreased over time to about a 50/50 split for long-runs. This might vary for different regions and different theater chains.
that's the next horizon for moviegoing, none of which you can do at home (cheaply)
what you describe is very personal, and very historical. coming from times square myself, believe me, i can describe similar changes, notably: the death of the porn theatres in the 1990s due to porn going private with the rise of vcrs and dvd and the internet. which is wonderful. sure, some freaks in new york decry the disneyfication of times square, but for me, prostitutes and heroin addicts and midnight cowboy is not a wonderful environment. no more seedy sticky theatres. yeah!
meanwhile, all of the changes you describe are just unimportant churn. everything changes. just deal with it. there is no grand death of some undescribable quality that is so important to you. in terms of quantifiable terms, your complaints are completely unimportant. you have a lot of nostalgia, but so what?
go watch cinema paradiso
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Paradiso
the whole story is built around the changes in moviegoing. its a nice weepie that nicely tracks what you just wrote above. but it has nothing to do with a valid commentary on the moviegoing BUSINESS, which, by the way, is all about giving people what they want, and people seem to be gettig what they want, by financial returns. and financial returns is a better indicator of the health of moviegoing than any nostalgic yarn of yours. you're just fixated on the past. which is fine. but it renders your judgment on PRAGMATIC reality invalid
here's the financial reality, which is all that matters, and its all upside:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Digg alert! Modding down is in effect!
Whats funny to me is that after screwing over the author of Forest Gump, the studios approached him for rights to the sequel.
Forest Gump II: Run Harder Forest, Run.
Is the reason why I don't generally watch movies based in books either. Much, much better to sit in my couch, cuddle with a cup of tea, and read, than go to the movies to watch something that is surely going to butcher the book, surrounded by people who don't shut up or have the courtesy to turn off their cellphones.
I grew up in Judy Garland's home town. The old farts still occasionally talk about watching the Gumms getting their toddler up on stage in one of the local theaters before a movie to do a little vaudeville. I grew up watching movies in that town in the '60s and '70s. Even then, while you could see how much the glory of the old theaters had faded, you could still enjoy a show in a really nice environment. Now? Not so much. :(
Lucasfilm once had some of the best films under its belt until it started churning out Star Wars "prequel" crap..
Your claim that Lucasfilm once had some of the best films under its belt only proves emphatically that there is immense opportunity for you to expand your film horizon...
I thought the squid was replaced by kind of an awkward conceit. It was weird to see a totally different ending after recognizing so much material from the book in there. I would have rather they filmed the squid one
Nudity is never unnecessary. What is wrong with viewing the human body?
"But this one goes to 11!"
For the love of all things binary, I thought it was common knowledge that you cannot compare rated R movies to PG-13 movies. Every single Batman & Spider-man movie has been rated below R.
Let's compared it with Sin City then. Data from imdb:
Watchmen
Released: March 6, 2009
Budget: $100,000,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend
$55,214,334 (USA) (8 March 2009) (3,611 Screens)
£3,243,001 (UK) (8 March 2009) (419 Screens)
Gross
$106,418,446 (USA) (12 April 2009)
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/business (TFA data may be more current than this)
Sin City
Released: April 1, 2005
Budget: $40,000,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend
$29,120,273 (USA) (3 April 2005) (3,230 Screens)
£2,452,299 (UK) (5 June 2005) (395 Screens)
Gross
$74,098,862 (USA) (7 August 2005) <- 129 days after opening
$12,300,000 (Worldwide) (5 June 2005) (except USA) <- 66 days after opening
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/business
This was accurate in the past, when movie theaters paid a fixed weekly cost for the rental of the film and then got to keep every penny of ticket sales (some of which obviously would pay for the rental, but that's the theater's problem, not the studio).
Now, movie distributors get X% of the ticket price. Plus, they still sometimes get a fixed rental fee, but when that happens, it's now generally an "exclusivity fee" or "rights fee" or some other BS term. Some also have guaranteed minimums, where they get at least $5 (for example) of each ticket regardless of the actual selling price of the ticket.
The percentage the distributor gets usually starts big and drops as the movie gets older. As the percentage drops, so do any guaranteed minimums.
All this sounds like it's a good deal for theaters until you find out that the first week percentages to the distributor are almost always more than 90% (especially on a potential big movie, like Watchmen). So, basically, the first few weeks gross really are representative of what the distributors make, minus a few percent.
The issue is always Hollywood accounting, where the distributor is technically a different company from the studio who produced the film. Since they are really owned by the same parent company, it's just moving money around. But, the accounting shows $30M paid out for "distribution costs".
What part of the tags "bluepenis" and "bigbluepenis" makes you think this wasn't the porn version? ;-)
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
So I consider myself fairly knowledgeable person when it comes to the nerd/tech culture. I grew up with marvel comics X-men Wolverine etc, love Star Wars, enjoy star Trek every now and then, and played AD&D as a tween. I've always been a video game fan and put in a few good years playing WOW along with all the classics. I'm at least familiar with other tech topics to be able to easily follow all but the most technical of articles. So I am baffled by the reverance for and the level to which this movie has been elevated to by the tech/nerd culture. Not only had I not heard of this series prior to the movie but no one I know has ever heard of it either. I looked it up on wikipedia and it appeared to be a relatively short lived series. Is this a Great Britian thing? My only conclusion is that this love affair must have been very regional or that there is an entire swath of the tech/nerd culture that I am totally unaware of. Can anyone give me the back story on this?
Most of them deal with Dr. Manhattan's "naturalness" and some are funny. I saw a bunch at a recent Denver scifi convention.
Christ almighty. The movie was too long already AS RELEASED. You're saying there's another full hour of material they shot? I'm usually willing to sit through a nearly-three-hour movie but FOUR? They might as well have split it into two movies, "The Fellowship of the Spandex" and "The Two Planets."
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Duh! Don't you know, nearly NO movies in Hollywood "make a profit" even when they make a ton of money and well exceed their cost to make the film.
Hollywood is legendary for using accounting tricks to make sure nothing makes money. It's always eaten up in expenses and production costs and other places that somehow manage to eat up all the incoming cash.
The reasons are simple. If you have people in on the profit sharing, you don't want to pay them. So, you make sure the film never makes a profit. Then there are taxes. Films that make money pay taxes. Films that never make money are a tax write-off for the movie companies.
If you are exceptionally slick, you do the movie under one company and the toy licensing and DVDs under another and thus the profits stay out of the movie's cash flow.
By the way, this is one area that will clobber Watchmen. Toy lines and licensing are *essential* to making the big bucks these days and this movie won't have toys or happy meals or anything like that. It's not a kids movie. Merchandising is limited. That right there is probably 300 to 500 million bucks they won't get. And no, you cannot make that money selling PVC figures to adults in comic shops. You make that money selling cheap action figures in the Walmart toy aisle. Except Watchmen will not do that.
Losing out on hall a billion is OK though: Watchmen had to license the smiley face image from someone so the less they sell means the less they have to pay in royalties to the smiley face owner (assuming it wasn't a flat fee) and no matter how much cash the movie brings in, Alan Moore is cut out of it.
He should get a cut. He won't. So screw it.
people want to go to the theatre to see movies. beginning and end of the story. if hollywood screws up and drives moviehouses out of business, so what? the demand is still there, and someone will capitalize on that with new theatres. the point is: the underlying business model is still sound, no matter what detail you can point to in terms of numers jiggling up or down in minor ways
no one wants to sit in stony cold isoltion by themselves in some home theatre, no matter how impressive the tech. really. its psychological. moviehouses are kind of like what churches were for the 18th century, satisfying the same pseudosocial need people have to congregate and experience something transcendant in groups. its a human need that moviehouses supply, and the need for which is not going to abate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"...consider the effects of all that we do unto the seventh generation."
~ Makwa Gaa Nii bawit -- Chippewa
http://74.6.146.127/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=tribe+%22unto+the+seventh+generation%22+seventh+generation&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501-s&u=www.p2pays.org/ref/37/36109.pdf&w=tribe+%22unto+the+seventh+generation%22+seventh+generation&d=MgVraUxISqAH&icp=1&.intl=us
The world would be such a different place if everyone thought this way.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
If you want a non 'R' rated version, then you aren't interested at all in Watchmen, trust me; the violence and nudity are an integral part of the story.
Also, anyone who was seriously bothered by Jon being naked needs to come out of the closet. I didn't even notice after the first couple of minutes.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
What if your business model is "hire the shadiest accountants in the world to cook the books like crazy and hide the money"?
Then, Sir, you are a 21st Century capitalist, and I thank you for preserving our Freedom.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Adjusted for inflation 9 of the top 10 films are over 25 years old. Many well over.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
as in:
David Prowse: When do I get my check?
Lucas: (*waves hand ) These aren't the profits we're looking for; move along.
David: These aren't the profits we're looking for, move along.
(Lucas; phone rings) Hello? Steven. how are you?
Davif: Hello Steven. How are you?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Why is a penis obnoxious? Inwhat way does it make it not PG-13? Does it work like nipples?
Maybe the rating system is broken? Or viewers are idiots?
the movie business is based on human psychology: people have some sort of unexplainable need to congregate in groups and experience something transcendent. no home theatre system can replicate this need, ever, no matter how impressive the tech. enjoy your dolby 100" home threatre... by yourself, in stony cold isolation. yuck
the need that moviehouses satisfy is basically the need to go to church. moviehouses satisfy pretty much what churches satisfied in the 1800s. people need to go out, sit in a group, and experience something dramatic. understand that, or understand nothing of the subject matter. fact is: the movie house business will wiggle up and wiggle down due to various business changes, but the basic underlying business model just isn't going away, and is in no way threatened by home theatres and the internet
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The movie did well and I'm sure it was worth it.
I did not do well. You need to look closer at how movies are made and sold. The cost of production may have been covered, but the marketing, distribution and promotion costs of big movies can rival the production costs (which according to Box Office Mojo are $150M for Watchmen, not $100M). And $55M was a big disappointment. 300 did better out of the gate, and it was also R and debuted on the same weekend of the year.
But honestly, that's all just nibbling around the edges.
Here's the short version:
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=watchmen.htm
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=fastandthefurious4.htm
Fast and Furious made more out of the gate, it made much more overall (in less than half the time!), and it costs a lot less to make. That's it, end of story. Hollywood will follow the money. PG-13, simple story, lots of car crashes and sequels until you cry. In short, the Michael Bay formula.
No producer is going to be as happy just about breaking even (as you say) when they could have instead made a pile of money.
Honestly, they never should have made the movie. Zack Snyder (I hate to say it) did about as good a job as anyone could have expected. And he still couldn't overcome the problem that the story does not resonate with the crowd who actually sees movies. People who are 25 were 7 when the Berlin Wall fell, they just don't remember the Cold War. They sure don't remember Nixon.
Add in the fact that watching the movie requires some thinking (especially given how much it had to be shortened from the comic) and you've got a big problem.
To Hollywood, Watchmen was an expensive experiment that failed. And it will affect everything the produce in the near future.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
No way. Theaters usually get to keep between 25% and ZERO percent of ticket proceeds. Yes, sometimes it's zero; for really big films that people are sure will pack the theater, often the theaters have to agree to turn all ticket proceeds over to the studio, and make whatever profit they can off the overpriced popcorn etc.
I'm sure the theaters have some kind of agreement with the studios to prevent the exact thing I'm about to suggest--but if the theaters have to give basically all the ticket sales to the studios, it'd be interesting to see what would happen if a theater decided to start selling tickets dirt cheap. Keep the concessions at their outrageous prices, but sell tickets for $4 or so.
I know if ticket prices weren't so high, I would be more likely to buy a drink or something.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
As a long-time fan of the comic, I think the movie damn well got it right. (In fact, I think the movie ending makes more sense than the comic book ending.) Also, it'll sell on DVD forever. There's no way it won't make back the money.
(My wife saw it with me - she hadn't read the comic and thought it was great. So it does in fact seem to work as a standalone.)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Yeah right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Nor was it detracting. It's not like he was using it or anything.
People need to get over it. "Oooh a penis! Run away!"
Why don't we all just give up and wear burkahs?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Dr Manhattan has been there, got the T-shirt.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
That's a damn shame, as you say his personal experience would've lent the storyline a great deal of integrity.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
There's no way on Earth this isn't going to sell forever on DVD, much as the comic has in book form.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Actually ... the R rating was the tip-off.
As a long-time fan of the comic, I strongly recommend the film. It's that good. Even in a cinema. Especially in a cinema.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The advertising budget is part of the production budget of a motion picture. Prints are purchased by the theatres showing the film, they are in fact not free... The movie theatre's cut (for the first 2-6 weeks depending on the film's estimated popularity) is strictly in concesion sales as well, 100% of ticket price goes to the production company. After the initial period the theatres get a small cut of ticket sales as well.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I was most pleased to watch the Lord Of The Rings extended DVD editions, because, unlike the theatrical cuts, they had enough of the plot to actually make sense.
(I am likely an outlier, as I loved the LOTR movies but have read the books precisely once and never plan to again.)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
And of course, the BIG BLUE DONG is all the excuse needed for the absolutely artistically and dramatically necessary Silk Spectre II T&A. Mmm, yes indeed.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The thing about this movie is, Zack Snyder did a lunatic gamble called "300" and it actually paid off. And the studio guys went "Jesus WTF" and are happy to let him do it again - you do weird shit and get away with it and they do let you try again at least once. Wonder what he'll pick for a third try.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Not that I know if that 2.5 factor is correct, but "Make a profit" doesn't mean "no losses"... it means having the move perform adequately as an investment given its risk. Investors need at least as much money as they would have gotten in some other comparable (risk-wise) investment. If the returns are too low it would have been better to put the money in safer investments that would have yielded the same profit.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
But ... I suppose they could tone it down, rename it "Showgirls 2: Watchmen" and run it on LOGO channel.
Just once I'd like somebody to seriously explain what's so much better about the Original Trilogy over the Prequels, keeping in mind all the issues people had with the OT when it first came out.
Jar Jar=Ewoks...so on and so forth.
Well hi there!
I'm the web admin for Interrobang Studios. We're grateful that people have been interested in Kevin's work doing Watchbabies comics. Since a lot of folks are interested in this strip, we'll be publishing a comic of the Watchbabies strips in the near future.
Right now we're actually in the process of a major site re-org (specifically to get more content like Watchbabies on-site). Anybody who's interested in watchbabies updates can e-mail watchbabies@interrobangstudios.com or subscribe to the Interrobang Studios RSS feed (http://www.interrobangstudios.com/rss.php)
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Where did you dig up this POS article? The guy flip flops about 40 times, his train of thought opaque. Absolutely infuriating to read!
Best example of this I've seen was American Pie 2. The movie was perfect as it was cut in the theater. The extended version however dragged scenes (and jokes) for way to long, had extended akward moments, and really felt amateurish at times.
I ended up selling that one online and purchasing the theater cut.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
Obviously... seeing my DVD collection is full of such classics as Ben Hur and Spartacus, oh and lets not forget the extened LoTR trilogy, Dune, Blade Runner, Gladiator, etc etc... Its amazing that out of me saying that the some of the BEST films Lucasfilm brought out (does that say that I thought they were the best films ever made?....No) where the first three star wars and Indiana Jones movies you totaled that I have a crap selection in movies.... I guess you need to learn to read in CONTEXT and stop quoting me OUT of context.
Why the fucking hell would I pay 10$ to see an INCOMPLETE movie? And it's VOLUNTARY incomplete too?
Dude!
The movie was 2 hours 45 mins long to start with! And that's after making loads of cuts in the backgrounds of characters and stuff (the most egregious cut/shortening being Roarschach's scene with the psychiatrist).
Worse - for people who hadn't read the book, it was a difficult movie to follow, and unusually slow starting, especially going by cookie-cutter action movie standards, which is what the uninitiated viewer would have expected. Throw in the Black Freighter and rather than seeing it as the metaphor that explains the main thread, the (uninitiated) audience would have just gotten frustrated.
I actually feared that exactly this sort of thing would happen -- that they would really struggle to find the line between fidelity to the novel, and making the necessary cuts/deviations for it to be a success. And the fantastic level of detail and complexity in the book makes it really hard to cut anything. The movie was almost doomed from the start. They almost needed to split it into 2 parts - but that would have required a huge deviation (a crisis/climax to end the first part - which isn't present in the novel) - and the faithful would then have rebelled.
What's a film-maker to do?
if $100m invested in another movie would have given higher profits, then they didn't make as much money as they could have.
I've been arguing for a while that we need quantum accounting to deal with the high degree of correlation in market behaviour seen during bubbles and crashes, and this kind of thinking reinforces that belief.
The central mantra of quantum mechanics is: "An experiment which is not performed does not have a result!"
It makes sense to talk about what you might do in the future. It does not make sense (however badly anyone wants it to) to talk about what you might have done in the past. You did in the past what you did. There is zero opportunity cost to past actions because we have no opportunity to change them. There is only opportunity cost when considering future actions.
If people really believed in opportunity cost they wouldn't limit it to a comparison with a single thing they might have done: they would take the weighted average over ALL the things they might have done, and asked if what they actually did generated more or less revenue than that mean. That the mean is completely unphysical is irrelevant, because "the movie they might have made if they didn't make the Watchmen" is completely unphysical as well.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
+1 Thumbs Up. Fair tradeoff to my mind.
Ah yes, opportunity cost. That's a polite fiction used by movie studios and pharmaceutical companies to make their profits seem less by comparing their investments against other choices. It ignores the fact that better choices are only obvious in hindsight.
Using their logic my beer last night cost me forty-one million dollars because I didn't play 15,22,30,37,48,12 in Powerball instead. At the time of the investment my beer seemed like the better bet. You can be sure that the movie studio thought Watchmen was the best bet at the time too.
> You make that money selling cheap action figures in the Walmart toy aisle. Except Watchmen will not do that.
You're not nearly cynical enough. I'd lay money they're on the shelves by Christmas.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Kudos to you for referring seriously to American Pie 2 during a discussion of films. Well Played.
They should make a movie about that.
Ok ok, balance this... 5 minutes of full frontal of Dr. Quad Cock vs. 0 minutes of full frontal of Silk Specter.
Yah. Fair.
I love the dichotomy of him storming Vietnam. What's more terrifying to the uncouth natives than a giant blue Tarzan with loincloth shooting fire and making people burn? A giant blue NAKED Tarzan shooting lazerbeams from his cock (Overfiend style). This producer had no balls, no courage...
"Opportunity cost. $100m invested in The Watchmen can't be invested elsewhere, and if $100m invested in another movie would have given higher profits, then they didn't make as much money as they could have."
If they thought they could have made more money elsewhere they would have-they are rather risk averse. The fact that they didn't means they thought it was a good investment.
I might question their taste but not their goal of making obscene amounts of money.
Sorry but that is fucking ridiculous. If you can't make a profit off a 180% return on your investment something is seriously flawed with the business model, and you need to figure out what you did wrong.
Yes, it's definitely time to sue your customers.
Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Maniac Mansion ... ah, those were the days.
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their business that they do into how to cheat their way into more money
But it's easy to do Hollywood accounting, and if you can buy the politicians who should have dispatched the bloodhounds (whether they come from IRS, SEC or $TLA), you can easily make a lot of money as a C*O.
And of course, you don't get to be CEO by thinking about what's good for humanity or your nation or the economy; you get there by being ruthless. So it's not like you're going to use your position to improve society; shareholder value comes first...
*sigh*
The "Watchmen Motion Comic" DVD literally is frame-by-frame, word-for-word animation of the actual graphic novel. Nothing is missing.
It runs about 5 hours.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I don't know where you got that budget number but Box Office Mojo lists it at $150M. Add another $50M in marketing (at the very least) and you have yourself a non-profitable theatrical release. The movie would have had to gross at least $400M worldwide to be considered a success. Oh, and don't forget about the money Fox got from this.
But I actually really liked the movie and that's what matters to me.
I can't even begin to imagine that penis being longer in the director's cut.
Meh. I've been a huge fan of the comic since I first read it back in '86 or so and have read it literally dozens of times, and I found the movie to be decent but not great. Especially the last 30 minutes or so, which made me want to walk out of the theater and punt a puppy.
I will buy the DVD version that has the interwoven Tales of the Black Freighter, though, despite my disgust with the bastardization of what is basically the story's main plot line.
in some sort of bizarre cult
where you have a seinfeld sitcom like scenario where a large group of friends are always cheerful and happy to see whatever movie you like whenever you want. no job, no family, no disagreements with you, no disagreements on the time, no disagreements on the movie choice, always cheerful. and even then, none of them has a cellphone they forget to turn off (smirk)
hey, if you have this magical group of friends who is always magically showing up for your movie nights, you win dude
but until this fantasy of yours is reality, i call bullshit, and assert your magical group of always available always agreeable friends is a complete fabrication on your part in the context of trying to win a retarded argument on slashdot you've already lost, by going to such laughable fabrications in order to bolster a clearly wrong and losing pov
but don't worry about me
you have your large magical stable of always available, supportive, lobotmized, ritalined and xanaxed friends at your ready disposal, so why should i bother you? ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You may get it earlier than you had imagined! Behold the Watchmen Saturday morning cartoon!
The moon may be smaller than the earth, but it's much farther away!
now take your honesty further and admit that you are in a small minority on the issue. you are hyperaware (in a debilitating way, not an enabling way)
the vast majority can tolerate the occasional interruption. its just thicker skin. our mind's attention doesn't crumble at the slightest diversion. if i would have any suggestion for you, it would be to work on this problem of yours, because such hyperattentive focus, unless you are a monk, can only serve to hobble your life, careerwise and relationshipwise. occasional interruptions are the norm of life. rather than expect the moviehouse to adapt to you, you really need to learn to adapt to it. and this applies to all the other real life scenarios where i bet this inability to focus has been detrimental in your life
now NO ONE can tolerate an ongoing interruption, but i'm a pretty regular movie goer in a famously rude city, and this problem is exceedingly rare. and if my memory serves me right, in the scenario where the interruption was ongoing, the guy was asked to leave the theatre by a movie house employee, and he did
in other words, the problem you refer to just isn't a real problem for the vast majority of us, or you are overrepersenting the threat
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What's wrong with greed?
Don't forget Disney's plan to make Lost Girls.
but its still way too long
cut out over a half, and then you have a commercially viable movie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's right about now that you are probably realizing that MBAs do know more than you about these things.
I'm looking forward to the long version. I thought the movie was a wonderful adaptation, but a lot had to be cut out, and I think the time was too short to properly appreciate the complexities of the plot. It would probably have fared better as a cable miniseries, with a dozen episodes or so.
The fact that they are lying about it, aren't pulling their fair share, broke their covenant with the public, and so on.
Normally, I can avoid the fact that there's a penis onscreen. Part of watching and enjoying porn I guess. But A) I saw it in Imax, so it was huge, B) there were multiples, C) it was blue, D) It didn't move right E) he had no balls F) it wasn't countered with enough T&A of Silk Spectre to make it worth it, and G) I saw it with about 8 over-sensitive women afraid of cocks that made the whole experience awkward.
My fault. Go with real women, comfortable with their sexuality, next time.
Excuse me for being ignorant if i'm wrong, but i think that the studios have little to no "cash" problems, if you make a 80% profit, investors will come from all over the place to rub your back, and since Watchmen appears to be a "low profit" movie, i can only imagine about the "high profit" ones...
So i'm sure the studios have plenty of cash to start as many movies as they see apropiate, that means that every silly idea anyone around them mentions becomes a movie...Oh wait, that's what's happening right now...
Mea culpa.
Actually I think I intended to just say 'Lucas' but I just seem to instinctivly add 'arts' after it. Maybe it's one of those conditioned responces...
I'd much rather watch four hours of cinema that actually interests me than three 90 minute pieces of dreck that regularly gets shoveled at us.
And, lest you forget, there's a pause button on your remote. It's the one that looks like a logical or.
That was about as funny as watching reruns of Charles in Charge, with Scott Baio giving hilarious commentary during each commercial break.
if you can't appreciate the commonsense idea that the cinema is a group experience that reinforces your laughter/ fear/ excitement, then you lack the capacity to understand the subject matter at all. if you still persist in disingenuously asserting that you CAN appreciate the fucking obvious as some sort of vague sociological academic text that can guide you, then you can google it yourself, you have fingers, right?
i am not going to sit here and spoonfeed you the effort you need to make yourself if you actually have any intellectual honesty about your supposed desire to understand me
but don't worry about it: obviously, my lack of desire to sit here and spoonfeed you google links is inescapable proof of me being horribly compromised in my impartiality and having an extreme irrational bias
zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, lying isn't greed. Weather or not they are pulling their fair share is only your business if you own part of the studio. I have no idea what you mean by "their covenant with the public, and so on."
And, lest you forget, there's a pause button on your remote. It's the one that looks like a logical or.
Hah! Totally off-topic, but I never noticed that before. "I could keep watching... OR I could go get a snack first." I think that will probably be in my head for the rest of my life
=^-^=
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
Not read the comic, so will not comment on that.
But the best part, for me, was the parents storming out with their pack of 8-15yr olds from the film and screaming (you could hear them over the cinema sound, so they were loud) at the ticket clerk for their money back, just after the rape scene.
Seriously, why the fuck would you take children to an R rated movie, regardless if the source was "a comic"?
...
Your opinion is in the minority, even among those who are hardcore fans of the graphic novel. The ending of the graphic novel was a mess. The film's ending was tighter, cleaner, and made more sense from any number of perspectives.
What would be awesome is if they filmed the special effects and scenes for the "original" comic series ending, and spliced them back in as a promotional gimmick to sell more DVDs. A version with seamless music to provide the "original" ending would make fanboys happy and give collectors a reason to buy it. And I'd love to see the effects they would have come up with - given Snyder's faithful recreation of the key comic book panels in various "signature" scenes, the NYC scene just before Manhattan and Silk Spectre pop in would be outstanding.
-Mod how you like, we'll make more
Stalker is quite a good adaptation of the already good novel "The Roadside Picnic".... ("good adaptation" being defined as "absolutely mind blowingly extraordinary superior")
Well, I'd take a Rorschach figure. But try selling that to little kids. First you have to get it past their parents.
Imagine the box art "Scourge of prisons and thugs everywhere, Rorschach isn't afraid to maim, kill, burn, and murder to get the job done. A key member of the team, Rorschach is the superhero you would be, if you could!"
See the problem? Yeah, this is not the toy for a 9-year old.
My fictional internet girlfriend is interested in a Dr. Manhattan figure so long as he is anatomically correct and he's got a removable tux and he glows blue. Should be easy to make.
They could have had it rated MA15 if the blue guy had kept his underpants on! I don't think it would have affected the storyline.
My other account has mod points!
preeetty sure they got their pound of flesh even before selling any tickets. blue flesh to be precise. blue, hanging flesh.
I was one of the people that bought it on DVD. Good movie. :)
Firefly was a great TV series, although far too short obviously!
There is nothing wrong with viewing the human body. Doctors do this all the time. However, to display the human body for sensual and/or shock value is degrading to the beauty that is the human body.
I shouldn't have pirated it. In fact, I should have gone to the theatre with my friend instead of showing him the pirated version. I'll make up for it by getting the DVD. A physicist superhero with quantum mechanical abilities and lots of very interesting revisionist elements was just too cool.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
The budget for the film is the amount of money it took to make it. However, there are various people who get cuts of the revenue. The Theater owners keep something half of the take, for example, and if Stars or others get "points" (i.e., a percentage of the film's take in lieu of payment), that is not part of the budget either. Also, I think that there are some expenses that may be generally regarded as "off-budget" (I believe marketing may fall in that category), as they are not really finalized until after the film is released - the more popular the film, the more marketing that will be done.
Now, of course, film accounting is notoriously flakey, but that factor of 2.5 is just a rule of thumb to account for these various payments that have to be made before the film can recoup its cost of production, but are not really part of the cost of making the film.
David Prowse doesn't believe that RotJ hasn't turned a profit? I find his lack of faith disturbing...
I know a lot of people who refuse to see movies in the theater anymore, just cause of how bad it is to deal with rude audience members; especially for a movie like Watchmen that we actually care about. I'll be buying the DVD to show my support, but I won't punish myself with another 2 hours of text messaging teens and crying babies.
Not lately though. I have seen several movies in the last few years where they ruined it by cutting too much. The best example of this is League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Watch the movie theater release and you'll notice alot of stuff is ackward or incomplete. If you then add-in all the cut stuff available on DVD, it is a MUCH richer/better story.
There's 0 evidence of that. How many Fast n Furious sequels have there been? This is a question of longevity, not success. Watchmen met the success threshold easily, but has 0 longevity (as there's nothing more to be done). But then again, how many D&D movies have there been?
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Who watches the watchmen?
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their buisness that they do into how to cheat their way into more money, we'd have no economic troubles and would nationally be 10 trillion in black rather than in red. And we'd have much better movies.
Translation: If human nature was completely different, things would be completely different.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
RFD is family friendly, it's like a feature length version of Nancy Reagan's "Just say no!" catchphrase.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'm sure such a version exists. Here in Taiwan when I watch American movies on HBO there's almost no violence or nudity, and the cuts looks to me like it was done professionally, i.e. the story is preserved and it's very hard to tell anything was removed unless you saw the US theatre version before.
I.e. there's a theatre version, an uncut DVD version and an Asian satellite version the cable here picks up. The uncut DVD version has all the offensive stuff, the Asian satellite one has none (because they want to show it in places like Singapore and China) and the US theatre version is somewhere in between. If I actually see movies at the cinema, I'm pretty sure I see the US theatre version.
I'd even suspect that you could show the uncut DVD version here legally. The reason they don't is commercial.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The usual rule of thumb is that a film needs to make 2.5-3 times it's budget before it's profitable
I've heard that multiplier bandied about before, and frankly, it's a load of crap. The cost of making a movie has fuck-all to do with the cost of distributing and showing it. It costs the same amount to truck around 150 prints of a $25M movie as it does a $100M movie. The monkey in the projection booth gets paid the same hourly wage to rewind the reels after the $25M movie as he does the $100M movie. About the only thing that scales with production cost is the promotion budget, and that only scales marginally, and only a fool spends more on the advertising than on the production. The truth of the matter is that the investors who put up the front money are a bunch of greedy fucks who play 3 card monte with the money until it looks like they've mnade almost nothing... yet they still drive $100K Lexuses and live in Bel Air.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Doctor: "Tell me what the ink stains show you, Mr Rorschach."
Rorschach: "A happy man."
Cut to Rorschach's eyes
Cut to ink-blot test
Image fades into Hamburglar's face, split with an axe, blood pooling underneath and flies crawling in the dead eyes.
The worst director's cut I have seen is Monty Python's Meaning of Life. It simply ruins much of the film. Avoid at all costs or you'll be left wondering why people are raving about the genius of the thing.
Spoiler:
Crime #1: They've cut out the Crimson Insurance intro. Which makes the later attack of the pirates look about as meaningful and funny as a giant mechanical spider in a western movie...
No. I sat through Gods and Generals for four hours. Ben-Hur is still my favorite movie of all time.
Your bullshit movie theater expectations can go fuck themselves. They've nearly ruined movies altogether.
Just once I'd like somebody to seriously explain what's so much better about the Original Trilogy over the Prequels, keeping in mind all the issues people had with the OT when it first came out.
Alec Guinness.
It will be Serenity all over again.
What, the film will do so well that it'll persuade Alan Moore to write more Watchmen comics?
Well, congratulations. I was sort of interested in this movie but now I will probably buy none of them.
I won't buy the first two because there will be a "more complete" version out there. And I won't buy the last one either because it'll be way too expensive, or because it will come out so late that I'll have forgotten about the movie altogether.
Exactly. I'm still wishing I had the theatrical cut of Death Proof, but they only included the director's edition on the DVD I have. The movie feels about 30 minutes longer than the theatrical cut, and it's not really worth it.
Not to say the extra content is bad! This is the tough thing in movies - you can have 4 hours of awesome stuff, but if the pacing is wrong, something still has to get cut.
Heck, if ticket prices were lower I would be more likely to go at all. Tickets are $12/person in my town, so if the wife and I go to a movie it's $24 before we even buy any popcorn or drinks. Which is stupid, considering that's more than the price of either buying a DVD or a month of netflixs.
Too bad it only totals about 12 hours of movie when played Extended editions, back to back. That is a long time to watch a midget and his friend walking. Walking. Walking.
Not just walking. Walking with ANGST.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
http://www.nerdyshirts.com/watchmen-shirt.html?SID=CsH/T0MqsShYJTEz1Q8BTUy0cWjhgyYCwI7jIUZbvN0=
Yeah... it can happen. Here's the thing.. a certain class of films get the "Special Edition" treatment -- this can be simultaneous, more expensive releases, or like LOTR, the theatrical release followed up by the SE. I fell for it, I bought both.
Either way, it's a big moneymaker, and unfortunately, it may be called for by the studio whether there's a good reason for it or not.
But in other cases, there very much is a Director's Cut, and as a film buff, I'm happy to at least have the option of seeing the director's real vision, before the studio messes with it.
In the "Watchmen" case, Snyder apparently cut something like 40 minutes to deliver a comercially acceptable film.. but the length of film I'm happy with in the theatre doesn't match the length I can enjoy in my home theater, on the 71" DLP, in a super comfortable recliner, with good coffee or beer or all kinds of things to go with. So I will be buying that BD when it comes out... I already know there's the original intent, stuff he wanted in there, it's not simply being padded to generate sales.
Increasingly, directors are using the power they get with DVD releases for good rather than evil. Long ago, Terry Gilliam got both the Director's Cut and the worst-possible-totally-mucked-up cut of "Brazil" on the Criterion release. Robert Rodriguez does a "film school" and gives out his favorite recipes on his DVDs, along with the Director's Cut.
-Dave Haynie
Wow, I guess criticism of Watchmen is another unwelcome idea here on Slashdot. ("Troll"? Unintentional flamebait perhaps, but troll? Someone peed in this mod's cornflakes this morning .. )
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Oh, I fully understand you. I'm not arguing that there SHOULD be toys made based on Watchmen, I'm simply resigned to the fact that there will be [in addition to the ones that already exist]. I'd only be mildly surprised if the Silk Spectre II figure had removable clothes.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
They weren't really midgets. That was just special effects.
Pick a different project :)
It's just too nuanced of a story to translate well to film. Also much of what made the comic great was how it was a reaction to the genre itself. However, that being said I do think they could have managed to put something better together, had they left Zack Snyder and Malin Akerman out of it. Too much slo-mo action and valspeak.
The talk about Dr. Manhattan being naked is strongly exaggerated. It's very brief and I didn't find it uncomfortable.
It even functions in the story. He's withdrawing from what regular society considers normal, and by the time he has to put on a suit for his interview it's like he's forgotten they exist. It's not for shock value, it was part of the original story, was related to character development, and the director left it in.
Also, Watchmen the comic was violent for its time, sure, but it was markedly different in its treatment of violence and sexuality than the schlock that, say, Image Studios, put out in the 90s. Sex in Watchmen is awkward, and violence is not idealized but committed by individuals with mental issues.
I guess my point is that I'm more than ok with an R-rated movie, as long as there's a compelling reason why it was done that way. The opposite happens a lot, too: stories that would benefit from the realism that are bowdlerized for the sake of having a bigger opening weekend.
I think that you could say that about LoTR but not Watchmen. They turned Watchmen into an action flick. The fact that the general consensus on here seems to be that there was too much dialogue and not enough action sort of scares me.
However, to display the human body for sensual...value is degrading to the beauty that is the human body.
No, it isn't. A large fraction of our brains and bodies is devoted to sensuality. Sensuality is an integral part of the human experience. It should be celebrated. Trying to hide or ignore it is what's degrading to the human body, by definition, because it's a statement that there's something horribly wrong with a significant portion of said body.
True. Not to mention the soundtrack was ridiculously corny at times.
Agreed. The song lyrics work well on paper, but in a movie they take the place of a real score, which to me is often the strongest part of a film. Imagine Jurassic Park without the score, the main theme in particular. It makes it just epic and fantastical enough for me to be okay with the fact that I am seeing Jeff Goldblum and Wayne Knight running around, and there are freaking dinosaurs on screen.
However, I really loved the scene where they bury the Comedian. I doubt I'll ever tire of hearing "The Sound of Silence", especially where that first drum hit comes in.
one could say the same thing of the Lord of the Rings movies, but they were more successful in the theater AND dvd sales than I expected. Considering they came from a director barely anyone recognized and had actors which, though popular in smaller roles, weren't exactly A-List or close to B list, it did (imho) surprisingly well.
Viewing a human body is a simple action. The "sensuality" or "shock value" is something that is created in your own mind, and is not a universal fact.
"But this one goes to 11!"