At the Mountains of Madness is...
- Thread starter Vagabond
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For now.
Let's hope so.
Stupid Universal. This guy wants to give them the R rated world and they worry the twilight tweens won't be able to give them money for it.
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Overflight
Here's a pretty depressing article detailing the (admittedly, pretty obvious) reasons why this project was canned and how it's symptomatic of a worrying decline of the industry:
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-...universal-for-the-state-of-the-industry-today
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-...universal-for-the-state-of-the-industry-today
This is an easy fix. We need a confused teenage girl to accompany her parent on the expedition (of course the parent will be, like, totally lame and totally not "get" her). Then, we need to make those Lovecraftian horrors sparkle. Is there a there a teenage heartthrob available to play the leader "bad boy" mutant? You know, someone who comes off as rough but just wants to be loved? Anyway, I'm sure we can hire someone from a CW show or whatever. So, then we make it a love story between the two sides as they struggle to make it a world that won't accept them.
You know, something that really sticks to the core story that Lovecraft wrote.
Clearly del Toro is being difficult. Ass.
You know, something that really sticks to the core story that Lovecraft wrote.
Clearly del Toro is being difficult. Ass.
So it is all Avatar's fault...
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Staff member
That article is a decent analysis to a point. It makes some odd assessments, though. How is "Paul" a risk, and not exactly what he lambasted in the first paragraph? It's essentially American Dad without Stan Smith if the trailers are at all accurate. How is Simon Pegg a risk even? How is Scott Pilgrim not "chasing a fanboy base"? Wolfman failed because it was "done". And overdone. The new one simply offered nothing appealing or new. It lacked the mystery of the original, and the horror of the newer werewolf movies. It was a barren ground way before harvest time.
He's right about alien invasion movies. I know I'm sick of them. I see these trailers for Battle Los Angeles, and I have to wait until the end to see exactly which movie it is by title, because I cannot distinguish it by anything else. It's generic to the extreme. It seems to be so generic that the trailer doesn't even offer us a central character! It looks like 10 other movies from the past 5 years alone. That's not to say an alien invasion movie can't be done, it just can't be done the same as the last 4.
Slapstick comedy starring actors who the general public probably won't recognize is already a risk (Simon Pegg is not that big a name outside the nerdcore). Making said slapstick comedy about an alien makes it riskier (Coneheads was a long time ago, and sucked, besides).
Is it as big a risk as your average indie film? No, which is why we're seeing Paul in the theater and not an indie film promoted by Universal.
It is, and it failed as a box office product. That's kind of what he means.
It's why I'm anticipating Cowboys vs Aliens and not Battle:LA.
I'm wondering how he was going to make it an R movie. There's not that much actual gore in the novel compared to your average CSI episode.
I suppose he could make the Elder Ones autopsies in the beginning more explicit, and actually have the shoggoth bite someone's head off on screen as messily as possible, but that still doesn't seem like much...
Del Toro said he didn't want it to be bloody or crass (foul language); he just wanted to make the movie very intense, and apparently that can get an R rating. He was concerned that his creative freedom would get restricted if he had to agree to a PG-13 rating.
Stupid movie ratings board.
Stupid movie ratings board.
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Overflight
In the light of that article I linked, I can't help but look at this as (at least in part) a karmic backlash:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/business/media/15mars.html
P.S: That's right: They'll spend 150 million on THIS but not on Mountains Of Madness. *depressed sigh*
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/business/media/15mars.html
*satisfied sigh*
P.S: That's right: They'll spend 150 million on THIS but not on Mountains Of Madness. *depressed sigh*
I do not think that it is illogical for a studio to see an animated family film, with merchandising possibilities about the ying yang, as a safer investment than a hard R horror movie based on a fairly cult novel. While it would seem that they were incorrect, history shows that family pictures are a safer investment, generally speaking. While "At the Mountains of Madness" sounds like it had the potential to be a great flick, I really don't see an R-rated Lovecraft film grossing $500 million dollars worldwide. Like ever. In the history of cinema. Or in the future of cinema, for that matter.So not a sound investment.
The movie industry is about money as much as it is art. If your artistic costs far outweigh your profits, you're not going to be making movies for very long. Unless Jim Cameron was going to transfer whatever satanic license to print money he has to del Toro, there's no way anyone sees a profit on "At the Mountains of Madness".
Actually, DVD has changed that field quite a bit. For many films, the DVDs tend to make twice or three times as much as the film made in theaters, and even in cases of successful big budget movies, the theatrical run might just make up for the budget and advertising, and the real profit from the DVD sales.
While that's potentially true, it's a lot easier when they spend only $30 million on a movie instead of $150 million.
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Overflight
I didn't meant to imply that I didn't UNDERSTAND why a studio would make this decision, just that it's sad that THIS is what's actually profitable. Or not, in this case.
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Philosopher B.
Every time a Del Toro project dies in the womb, so too do I die inside.
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