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Rovio's Desperate Push For 'Angry Birds' Movie (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader writes:Last year Rovio "cut 213 jobs, affecting all departments except those working on the film and its related projects," remembers VentureBeat, describing their effort to make a movie about three outcast birds on an island of happier birds who all meet in an anger management class. But "Since Rovio funded the entire film, the directors didn't have to answer to an executive committee or a board of trustees..." reports VentureBeat, quoting director Clay Kaytis as saying "We had to make ourselves happy... We were making the films for [ourselves] instead of for a larger entity that expects something in return."
After working for four years from a script by Jon Vitti (a writer for both The Simpsons and The Office), and funding a marketing onslaught that lasted nine months, Rovio finally saw their Angry Birds movie open in this weekend's #1 spot, according to the New York Times. "Most of the 'Angry Birds' financial risk fell to Rovio, the Finnish video game company, which paid $173 million to make and market the movie. As such, Rovio will receive the bulk of any profit."
In China, McDonald's released special Angry Birds burgers with red or green buns...which at least one patron complained made the buns look moldy.
After working for four years from a script by Jon Vitti (a writer for both The Simpsons and The Office), and funding a marketing onslaught that lasted nine months, Rovio finally saw their Angry Birds movie open in this weekend's #1 spot, according to the New York Times. "Most of the 'Angry Birds' financial risk fell to Rovio, the Finnish video game company, which paid $173 million to make and market the movie. As such, Rovio will receive the bulk of any profit."
In China, McDonald's released special Angry Birds burgers with red or green buns...which at least one patron complained made the buns look moldy.
They risked and won, now would they hire those employees back?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I work in West Hollywood. Angry Birds has enjoyed a media blitz here courtesy of the industry at large. its just something that gets done for all films. it can be written off on studio taxes. its surprising to see something like this make #1 though? It certainly speaks to a very talented writers group.
what does not make sense is to go it alone, fire 200 people, and push to deliver a film solely by yourself. Unless,you're taking a page from some of the more cutthroat entities of US Capitalism. Yes, in the short term, doing this can net you a few million in revenue taxed at a very favourable US rate. However, you canned most of your game staff so now what? This was just one film. Blockbuster teams like Weinstein and Warner crank out 4 sequels a year and thats sometimes with recurring losses baked in. those sequels exist only to sell toys and shirts and food. Unless you plan to focus on franchising which takes way more money sunk into branding and advertising, im afraid you just sold the company down shits creek. Or did you want to be a film company? Was this an attempt to get around huge industry margins for films like those out of marvels wheelhouse? Those are unavoidable and it speaks to corporate greed if you did cartwheels to explicitly avoid players in Hollywood.
So yeah, whoever you worked with, it largely wasnt Hollywood. The films marketing consists of a billboard on la brea with a cryptic phrase and a billboard on la cienega with three birds and a charred facade but no mention of the film, its opening date, or even that its a film...
Good people go to bed earlier.
I dunno, current Slashdot doesn't seem to care about nerd culture anymore. There's almost nothing on video games (although to be fair, Dice Slashdot basically kicked all the gamers off Slashdot with their amazingly biased anti-gamer stories), and there's rarely coverage on things like the Avengers movie or the new Star Trek TV series.
Of course, part of that is that to a large degree this stuff is more mainstream - I don't need to come to Slashdot to see stories about the upcoming Start Trek series or the newly announced Star Wars movies. But, even though I hate anime and don't care about it, I've come to miss the Slashdot of old when the original editors would post stories about their favorite anime. It was always interesting to see aspects of nerddom covered that I wasn't part of.
So, yeah - on the current Slashdot, this story is out of place. Current Slashdot seems to be more heavily targeted solely at IT geeks and not at general "nerddom."
Wait a minute, I was just able to enter "Alejandro G. Iñárritu" and all the cool little foreign hats on the "n" and the "a" showed up! Did something fundamental change at Slashdot? Have the Slashdot owners been meddling with the primal forces of nature?
You are welcome on my lawn.