Jerry Bruckheimer's Mojo
I hate stupid journalism and stupid trend pieces.
The first time Idiots wrote off Jerry Bruckheimer was when Thief of Hearts came out in 1984. Don Simpson was still alive, Flashdance had been a true phenom, and Hearts was a commercial car wreck. Next films… Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun.
In 1990, Days of Thunder didn’t get to $100m domestic. Career was over again. After Bad Boys at Sony instead of Paramount, the boys moved to Disney and had a series of more modestly budgeted hits with Crimson Tide and Dangerous Minds.
1996 – Simpson dies. The Rock comes out 5 months later. Can Bruckheimer do it without Simpson? Bruckheimer knocks out 4 $100m+ domestic hits in a row, including his biggest worldwide hit at that time, Armageddon, which was just the 10th $550m worldwide movie in history.
2000 – Coyote Ugly is supposed to be the new Flashdance and instead is Bruckheimer’s first non-$100m domestic grosser since Simpson’s death. Mojo over? Disney even passes on his television production company! It must be over!!!
October 2000 – CSI debuts on CBS. A year later, The Amazing Race debuts. Disney has made one of the greatest strategic mistakes in entertainment history by not staying all the way in bed with Jerry.
Meanwhile, Remember The Titans is a surprise domestic smash. But the Pearl Harbor gets cocky and gets slammed by the media, underperforming its massively inflated budget. Black Hawk Down is release by Sony and eventually gets momentum, but doesn’t do well overseas.
But the real slump begins in 2002/03… Bad Company. The extremely expensive, endlessly re-edited Kangaroo Jack. It’s all over for Jerry!
2003 – Pirates of the (m-fing) Caribbean.
Veronica Guerin… bomb. King Arthur… bigger bomb.
National Treasure… from an idea from Disney marketer Oren Aviv.
Glory Road… bomb!
Pirates 2 & 3.
Deja Vu… soft in the US, but Denzel’s best ever international, $180m worldwide.
National Treasure 2.
And this last 2 years, Confessions of a Shopaholic does $108m worldwide… G-Force does $282m worldwide… Prince of Persia does $330m worldwide… but all three lose money. And it looks like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice will too.
Pirates 4 greenlit.
Dick Cook fired… probably as much for the budgets of some successful grosses on films that lost money anyway as to turn over a new Disney leaf.
Bruckheimer’s 19th $100m domestic film arrives next summer.
Disney is trying to get him to self-finance and use Disney only as a distirbutor/marketer… which is one reason why so much pressure is being put on MT Carney’s first film on which she had a real influence. As always, opening weekend has nothing to do with the film Bruckheimer delivered – double-edged sword – but with that marketing.
If he wants funding, he’ll have it. Will he be at Disney? No way to be sure. Ms. Carney has a lot of managing up to do. Will The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp as Tonto ever happen? Unknown.
Is there any actual indication that anything unusual has happened with Bruckheimer lately? None.
I don’t think he is the key to America art… but he does know how to tap into American culture and to get an action movie rolling along. Prince of Persia was a big, freakin’ mess. Serious misstep. But no worse than Bad Company or King Arthur. And given some decent reviews – negatives more about mediocrity than badness – I put the blame for Apprentice squarely on an unfocused marketing message.
The only thing Bruckheimer really needs to change is the size of his massive, DVD-driven budgets. And there is no reason why he can’t.
He does turn 65 in a few months. And he has enough money to do virtually anything he wants. Will he want to keep doing what he’s been doing on the other side of his 60s? Probably. Bruckheimer seems to be a guy who plays about as much and as hard as he likes… and he seems to like to work.. a lot.
Disney would love the attacks on JB’s mojo to continue… so they can get 10% instead of 8% as they negotiate a deal to have him connected to the studio for years to come. Get it?
Is media just like some carnival game now, where we just throw rings at bottles knowing that it’s rigged and that it’s not really a game of skill… but hoping that we’ll ring a bottle and win the big prize because we FIRST wrote that some career was over or rising?
Pathetic.
It seems culturally impossible that Jerry Bruckheimer will be 65 this year.
Yes, it seems culturally possible.
Go through that CV and you find Mr. B has evolved: Oscar Bait in “Black Hawk Down” (released by the now-defunct Revolution Studios), arty stuff in “Veronica Guerin,” Emmy Award-winners in “The Amazing Race.” His rep is such that Disney short-circuited an arthouse/upmarket hit of its own just to open “Veronica G.”
As for “Apprentice” the marketing was typical Hollywood Hard Sell: “From the producer and director of National Treasure”. DUH!
Maybe all this “Bruckheimer has lost his mojo” talk is what helps him get his mojo back. A self-unfulfilling prophecy if you will.
Chucky, for the last time, EXPLAIN YOURSELF FOOL! Seriously, you have ridiculous metrics in your head that we as a community have had to deal with for years.
It’s time you put it on the table, explain your wackiness, and give us insight into the mind of CHUCKY! Where liberals are evil, referring to Helen Mirren as an OSCAR WINNER IS MORE EVIL, and The Weinsteins are… THE DEVIL!
Does he eventually get an Academy Honorary Award?
Hey Chucky, so if ‘from the producer and director of National Treasure’ was such a terrible marketing choice, why did National Treasure 2 do so well?
Everybody loses “it” sometime. You can’t help but lose some creativity and connection to the zeitgeist, whether you are a musician, filmmaker or author. I hesitate to call Bruck a filmmaker, but he’s still picking scripts and if his reign is not over now, it likely will be soon.
I have previously posted my theory that Chucky’s name-checking angst comes from having watched helplessly as a child while his family was brutally murdered by Troy McClure.
As for Bruckheimer losing ‘it’, I have to agree with David that it is a simple bump in the road. Do you think he brought this project to Disney or did Disney hand off the property to him. Someone with more inside info would have to tell us if Pirates was his idea or Disney presented him with an oppurtunity to produce as their in-house hitmaker, SA seems to me to be the same situation.
MAW
“Coyote Ugly” was cost around $45 million to make and the film made good profit for Disney.
“Pearl Harbor” was also profitable. (just not as profitable as Disney wished)
By the way, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” looks like a modestly-budgeted film to me; I would be surprised if the film lose money.
“Veronica Guerin” was a low-budget film and Disney did not expect the film to make big money at first. Disney financed “Veronica Guerin” primarily for keeping good relationship with Jerry.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not a bad movie but it is not a good movie either. There are elements and ideas that worked reasonably well, e.g. mixing science and magic. Cage and Molina were great. At the same time they pushed too hard a teenage first love story between twenty year old people really made for five year olds. The plot is very predictable and sometimes it felt like the characters postponed their choices or actions until the final climatic scene. If the editing was different and the love story came up towards the end maybe in some unexpected way, it would not be a much better movie. It is still just an inch below most Potter movies.
Boxofficemojo says Coyote Ugly cost $80 million. That can’t be right can it?
Also, is it that much of a stretch to assume that Disney did in fact expect the $17 million Veronica Guerin to make a lot more than $9 million worldwide? Cate Blanchett had done pretty well for herself by then and Joel Schumacher wasn’t exactly an unknown director. I find it hard to believe Disney wasn’t disappointed with its $1.5 million domestic gross.
Keep writing posts like this, the elders of the town will order you to drink hemlock.
Keep writing posts like this, the elders of the town will order you to drink hemlock.
About “Coyote Ugly”.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_20/b3732105.htm
Disney made a tidy profit on his movie Coyote Ugly, a movie about barmaids made for $45 million.
If Disney had high hope on “Veronica Guerin”, they would open “Veronica Guerin” in under 60 theaters instead of 472 theaters. Because 100-500 theaters opening is always meant for quick theatrical playoff (like “Chloe” and “The Joneses” in this year).
I’m not talking about Disney’s eventual release plan for Veronica Guerin. I am referring to their initial decision to make the movie. There’s no way they made a modestly budgeted biopic with Jerry Bruckheimer, Joel Schumacher, and Cate Blanchett figuring they’d achieve an international gross equal to half of the production budget.
Yeah I can’t imagine Coyote Ugly costing more than $45 million.
Wait a minute… Coyote Ugly, a movie made ten years ago with no stars cost 45 million dollars? That blows my mind a little. Think I need to go watch Inception again to clear my head.
It’s not every day that you come to a favorite movie site and see mention of THIEF OF HEARTS.
BAUER POWER. CARUSO POWER. Also: How on earth were Harold Faltermeyer and Giorgio Moroder actually two separate guys?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYsOlK16cM0&feature=related
I love me some Giorgio Moroder – discovering the Cat People theme he did with David Bowie last year was a musical highlight.
Speaking of squeaky ’80’s classics, watching Streets of Fire on the cable, now – wow, this movie was such a cheesy kind of cool, basically a pseudo-musical urban action movie. Michael Pare, a lovely late teen Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Willem Defoe made up like Eddie Munster, Amy Madigan, Robert Townsend, Mykelti Williamson…..and it’s apparently filmed in Chicago. Just a blast in HD!
Shoot, Bill Paxton, Rick Rossovich, and a really grimy Ed Begley Jr. are in it, too??
Actually, STREETS OF FIRE was shot right here in good ol’ L.A.: mostly at Universal Studios and some scenes at Brew 102.
Shot ENTIRELY in LA, really??? A lot of it looked like soundstage, but some looked very much like it was shot right by the L and along the Chicago river.
That’s what Walter told me. Of course, it is possible they used some stock footage shot in Chicago.