It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Not sure this changes Disney’s calculus DP, or other studios’ willingness to emulate them given how they’re doing. This was a bad investment from the get-go. (I think this one is much worse, because Caroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” is an adult-targeted head-trip that has no business being adapted for kiddie audiences. Because it’s so less well known it’s going to be much more tarnished by this rote crap than the original).
As you say, we need to wait on international, but let’s assume it takes a $30 million writedown. Even then, Mouse House has probably raked in more profit from its five 2016 releases than Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony, WB and Universal combined this year. Zootopia is the #2 Disney Animated feature of all-time. (you can’t discount animation given Disney is going from 2 movies to 3 per year between DA/Pixar. Frozen 2 hasn’t been placed yet but given it’s recorded voices, expect a holiday 2017 drop-date.). TJB is the highest grossing live-action PG film of the 21st century.
Can anyone explain why ID42 and X-Men didn’t switch release dates, other than issues in post? APOCALYPSE was never going to do that well, but I’m surprised Fox didn’t think superhero-fatigue at this point would be a factor at this point…$1.1 billion for the genre by June is insane, and there’s only so much loot to go around. I know X-Men Memorial Days are a tradition but Emmerich has had success there too, opening DAY AFTER TOMORROW to $118 million adjusted.
Speculation, but I imagine there was never a chance in hell of ID4-2 moving off of July 4th weekend.
I think this is the last mega budget X-men film we’ll see for a while–Fox will probably move towards mid-budget projects like Deadpool and New Mutants (maybe X-Force). If they were smart and have the rights to it, they should also look into making a Power Pack movie for the family audience.
ID4-2 is dropping June 24th. I guess they expect the Fourth to help give it a good hold, but that weekend is a mess with four other releases coming out, two of them major (Tarzan, BFG).
Et- Don’t be surprised if “Purge 3” opens bigger + better than “Tarzan” 4th of July weekend. (Sony needs to reconsider dropping “The Shallows” on June 30th.)
It’s not listed above, but “A Bigger Splash” is barely making a ripple in the b.o. pool its first wide-ish expansion w-end. Not sure what happened there.
And Magnolia/Magnet probably should have made the well-reviewed “Ones Below” a VOD D&D w/ limited theatrical (like most Magnolia titles), esp since it’s “limited theatrical” is clearly tanking. Very little hopes of theatrical expansion now.
I totally agree with Warren. The New Mutants and X-Force make more sense right now. But the other day I read Bryan Singer wanted to make one more movie with the original cast of 2000: McKellen, Stewart, Berry and Jackman.
I’m not sure I’d call X-men a miss, at least versus what expectations should be It’ll do 200 million vs 240 for the last one…and the last one brought the old and new casts together with Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart etc front and center in the marketing.(yes there’s a cameo but it’s not he same) The budget on this one was also 30 million less so it’s in line. The x-men films have always been successful but not at the Marvel level.
“ID4-2 is dropping June 24th. I guess they expect the Fourth to help give it a good hold, but that weekend is a mess with four other releases coming out, two of them major (Tarzan, BFG).”
Whoops! This is why I mostly lurk.
Profitability is what matters, not expectations. Apocalypse will struggle to reach $170 million domestic and $550 million worldwide. With numbers like that, Fox will definitely move away from taking that big a risk for the foreseeable future.
Yeah movieman–talk about timely! Blumhouse is going to hit pay dirt with that one–I wouldn’t be shocked if it does better than CONJURING 2. Feels like it could break out internationally as well, despite the superficially domestic subject matter. And yeah, TARZAN is sadly quiet. David Yates improved so much as a director between Potter 5-8, (not to say he was bad to begin with…Order of the Phoenix’s messiness is partly a result of inexplicably trying to cram a 750 page book, the largest in the series, into the shortest movie) he deserves the chance to be a major director outside of that franchise, and I feel like it’s going to tank even if it’s good, which it should be with that cast.
Btw…has a summer ever felt more like a rehash of a summer 2/3 years past? Cap 3, Conjuring 2, Purge 3, TMNT 2, Now You See Me 2, XMen, Neighbors 2, Star Trek 3. It’s obscene.
“Obscene” is right. It’s getting harder and harder to rouse myself out of the house to see some of these things. (Especially when seeing them involves a 3-hour round-trip to Cleveland screenings/promos.)
The CGI bombast of “Looking Glass” made me think: when anything is possible, everything seems like a disappointment.
Which reminded me of something a student said last semester re: the bear attack scene in “The Revenant.”
“It looked so real that it looked fake.”
Counterfeit reality. That’s what 21st century moviemaking has devolved into.
1) Days of Future Past was an outlier of this franchise, and APOCALYPSE shows as much.
2) Superhero fatigue is a thing, for movies that aren’t MCU films. People come to see MCU films. Deadpool, to me, works better than all of Singer’s Xmen movies, because it feels like an MCU movie. These X-Men film, are just a horse, that has decided to beat itself.
3) Ethan, it does feel that way, but there should hopefully be something random, that shocks us in the next three months. This month, is usually AUGUST, but something has to happen. It always does.
Yeah movieman, feels like we have alternate universes movie-wise now, with so many indies I can’t keep up, even though I have no idea how they make money…and a studio system where I wish I couldn’t keep up in which more than 50% of the Big 6/Lionsgate May 1-July 31 product is sequels/remakes.
Yeah JS, APOCALYPSE feels almost retro, a relic from the early 2000s Singer/Raimi salad days. I’m kind of baffled by the reviews…it’s certainly not worse than LAST STAND, and on par with THE WOLVERINE. But I agree, I guess it’s more owed to fatigue with this year, and the fact people want new-new-new if they’re going to sit through a superhero movie ever 25 days. I’m one of those people, but at the same time this is a great cast, and X-Men makes me nostalgic.
I was hoping WARCRAFT was the summer surprise, but nope. Hopefully it’s TARZAN, SUICIDE SQUAD, SAUSAGE PARTY or GHOSTBUSTERS, but if I had to put money down it’d be on SECRET LIFE OF PETS or ID4-2 :/
Here’s hoping, that Ghostbusters isn’t shit. Seriously. If any movie needs to be some next level shit, it’s that film, because there are a ton of MRAS who need some cumupence!
What we should discuss with ID-4: ELECTRIC ALIENLOO, is this: does it pull some Jurassic World nostalgia, or is it a wet fart? I am leaning towards wet fart.
Yes. it has a tonnnn of pressure. I am not sure which is the most appalling:
1) The Ghostbusters remake trailer is the 9th most disliked video of all-time on Youtube. The only other movie trailer among the 500-most disliked videos of all-time on Youtube is…the 2nd Ghostbusters remake movie trailer.
2) Donald Trump has a video ranting about how Ghostbusters has women now. For your viewing pleasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clGuYPcim-g
On ID4-2 I would guess somewhere in between just because it doesn’t feel like there’s a 4-quadrant tentpole until Fast and Furious: The Next Generation (STAR TREK), and Chinese audiences eat up mindless explosions.
Et- And it’s definitely not “Me Before You,” a movie for anyone who thought that what “The Fault In Our Stars” needed was posh British accents.
And the two leads are so charisma-deficient they almost made me wish Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones had starred. Almost.
Besides more indies than I can count (or remember) and which are notoriously difficult to see unless you live in a Major Media Center, there simply aren’t a whole lot of studio movies coming down the pike I give two shits about.
Besides the Spielberg and “Jason Bourne,” pickings are awfully slim unless reboots and sequels are your bread and butter. (Yes, I know “JB” is a sequel and quasi-reboot, but it’s Greenaway returning to the franchise he helped make great. And Damon reprising the role he owns.) Besides that?
“Pets” looks cute, but the bad taste of “Minions” still lingers.
“The Founder” might actually be a good John Lee Hancock movie (what a concept, huh?), but who really knows at this point? At least the trailer’s enticing.
“Sausage Party”? Maybe, but Rogen seems to be spreading himself as thin these days as his buddy James Franco.
“Florence Foster Jenkins” might hit the August sweet spot (it is Frears after all), or simply be another excuse for Meryl to be La Meryl.
Yea, just like Kit Harrington, it seems as though the reason Emilia Clarke hasn’t broken out of Khaleesi-mode is her acting ability, or lack thereof.
I’m also holding out hope for WAR DOGS and “Kubo and the Two Strings”, though I know Laika’s last two features were divisive and Todd Phillips hasn’t made a funny movie this decade (Jonah Hill’s very good track record of late, the combination of he and Miles Teller and the subject matter, while very hard to do well as a comedy, intrigue me).
Yeah. I haven’t seen the whole damn movie, but Emilia seems cute as hell in that film. Now Ethan, don’t go bad mouthing the one who was promised, because he is the reason GoT is moving now. He carries that fucking show, and we all know he is destined to play a Superhero. That’s that dude’s gig. Whenever he wants it.
I bet those disappointing ALICE numbers are really going to put a damper on Johnny Depp’s weekend.
JS–I don’t have much confidence after Pompeii, Seventh Son and especially Silent Hill 2 (I love the original). His part in TESTAMENT OF YOUTH was decent, though that really was up his alley with the stoic bravery thing. He does have some big chances with a weird-sounding Western thriller co-starring Melisandre, and is the lead in Xaviar Dolan’s English-language debut/all-star overload extravaganza (Natalie Portman, Jessica Chastain, Kathy Bates, Adele, Michael Gambon Susan Sarandon, Nic Hoult, Thandie Newton, Bella Thorne, Taylor Kitsch…no pressure!) so maybe that’ll wake him up.
He just seems like the movie world’s Ben Carson or Zayn Malik so far.
Hey I love Game of Thrones as much as the next guy but like The Walking Dead, it’s a HUGELY successful show made up of so many disparate parts that we aren’t likely to see any breakout box office stars from it. Which isn’t exactly a tragedy because most of the cast are least getting steady work – Dinklage is never gonna break out either, but he’ll be doing nice character work over the next 20 years and MAYBE win an Oscar in 10. Kit Harrington will probably headline his own BBC or Netflix series after this ends, which isn’t bad either. Same with Lena Headly who isn’t going to stop getting work anytime soon.
As for X-Men, this release date was never going to work and I’m still surprised that Fox didn’t learn their lesson from the last time around – ‘Days of Future Past had great reviews and fantastic buzz but was ALSO the third superhero movie released in barely two months and got sandwiched between at least two other tentpoles (Maleficent, Godzilla) so it couldn’t even do 2.5 times opening weekend. They should have gotten out ahead of the competition or given themselves more space.
And there was never going to be an ideal release date for Alice 2 but launching it this weekend, Disney is pretty much cannibalizing itself at a time when screens are tough to hold on to – they’re having a banner year overall no doubt and I see no way they can lose the yearly studio domestic BO crown which they haven’t had in more than 10 years. But they’re going to bleed money with SOME of these big genre releases coming out in such close succession, probably Alice and Pete’s Dragon at least, maybe The BFG.
As for ID42 4Eva, I could see it possibly being the biggest film of the summer or……Terminator: Genysis! I doubt it’s going to come close to Jurassic World numbers but does it need to? Fox has been watching the cost on this one I’m sure they’d be happy with 2012 numbers – and if that tripe can overcome terrible reviews and a career-worst performance by John Cusack to still make $800 million WW, but then that should be very attainable for the “long-awaited” sequel to Independence Day.
I kind of like the rugged new Jon Snow.
Death definitely becomes him.
Doesn’t seem so much like a neurasthenic wimp anymore.
Have mixed feelings about the (commercial and otherwise) prospects for “War Dogs.”
Teller and Hill, yep. Phillips? Hmmmm.
Bradley Cooper does perk up the trailer, although I’m sure it’s just a cameo.
Of course, “Tropic Thunder” pulled it off (also an August release) a few years back.
Geoff- “Career-worst performance,” lol?
Theatrical releases only, or are you also including Cusack’s voluminous # of straight-to-DVD releases from the past decade as well?
Getting really hard to cherry-picks these days.
Some of those things have gotten a (I assume) contractually obligated token theatrical, but did so poorly that they didn’t report box office figures, which is a bit unfair to Katherine Heigl, because it means the “Zyzzyx Road” record will never be topped. I saw FROZEN GROUND with Nic Cage, and THE NUMBERS GAME with Malin Ackerman in theatres…alone. His career worst? Tempted to go with BAG MAN with Robert DeNiro which brought in a whopping $50k, SHANGAI with a Chinese dream cast ($46k!) or DRIVE HARD with Thomas Jane (no reported box office), but in the end it has to be a tossup between RECLAIM with Ryan Phillipe or THE PRINCE with Bruce Willis, which was so bad it made me sincerely depressed. Wow…studios hide box office figures way more than I thought
Damn I’ve wasted so much of my life…
@Movieman: “And Magnolia/Magnet probably should have made the well-reviewed “Ones Below” a VOD D&D w/ limited theatrical (like most Magnolia titles), esp since it’s “limited theatrical” is clearly tanking. Very little hopes of theatrical expansion now.”
It’s readily available on iTunes, Amazon, etc. as of yesterday. The definition of day-and-date.
LOL ok guys, I used to be a huge Cusack fan, then it all seemed to go downhill once he got hooked into too many mediocre romantic comedies (Serendipity, America’s Sweethearts) so I can safely say that 2012 is the worst performance of his that I have actually SEEN. 😉
I don’t know if Jon Snow was ever really a wimp – dude took out a White Walker head-to-head!
I’m not surprised that Apocalypse is opening softer than anticipated. DOFP looks more and more like the natural conclusion to this franchise. Xavier and Magneto resolved their feud. Logan found some measure of peace and brought Jean Grey back. Mutants had become widely accepted within society. That’s the whole series tied up in a bow. The only reason to make another one is surely as a rights keeping exercise to keep the characters out of Marvel’s grasp. And it shows in the movie to be honest. I’ll say this though – Apocalypse is so sprawling and overblown that it makes a useful comparison with the original Singer movie from 2000. That was relatively modest, lean, with clear character arcs, mostly good performances and smooth pacing. And it climaxed not with the end of the world at stake but with a fight in a gift shop, which would be unthinkable in a comic book movie now. That Summer, your big movies (okay, we had Mission Impossible 2 as well) were Gladiator, Perfect Storm, The Patriot and What Lies Beneath. All original star-driven material aimed largely at adults. 2000 doesn’t seem to me to be all that long ago, but in movie terms that was a whole other world.
WG- I checked my cable’s On Demand menu yesterday and didn’t see “Ones Below” listed, so I figured it must not be available since they always carry the Magnolia/Magnet stuff.
Must be a glitch in their system.
I’ll have to check again and see if it was added.
Thanks!
X-Men could have opened if they had a sales pitch people were excited about. Didn’t.
Marvel is heading into Next Gen territory too. Maybe they will overcome it better.
Anything can open to any amount on any date. What has changed is that you can’t expect many franchises to open themselves anymore. And studios are playing high-stakes poker.
And ET… the economics of Dismay 2016 are irrelevant. They are worrying about 2019 now. And they should be. Things change. Even for Disney.
If theres a lesson to be learned it’s this: don’t make a sequel to a movie that no one liked, and succeeded only due to unique circumstances (a 3D market that no longer exists, an actor and director who had yet to fully realize their potential as caricatures of themselves).I can’t imagine learning much else after the monstrous success of TJB.
Glad to see you commenting!
The stakes for xmen 2000 was preventing the disintegration of the UN and half of New York. But yes small stakes by today’s standards but still very effective. I remember watching the first Avengers the same week I first saw Emporer of the North and while much more was at stake in avengers the board and chain fight between a hobo and a railroad bull over essentially nothing was much more satisfying.
Went to see Nice Guys at 7 pm Saturday showing and at 43 was the youngest of the thirty other people in attendance. Loved it but I have to feel melancholy about what it’s DOA performance means for future projects. And as a side note, I noticed all the retro movie billboards in the film where Jaws, Concorde, Smokey and th Bandit. Silver must have thought this was going to be released under Universal after their success with NonStop.
And while I bemoan the state of cinema how the hell is Maggie’s Plan an indie film? I haven’t seen it so I can not speak to quality and execution but the premise is pure screwball scenario that could have been filmed 50 years ago by Blake Edwards and starring Shirley MacLaine and willam Holden. Is this where we are where any comedy that doesn’t consist of either gunfire screaming or farting is dropped into a platform release?
“TJB is the highest grossing live-action PG film of the 21st century.”
Hate to be a pedant, but in what universe is that a live-action film? Except for the kid and maybe a few props, everything in that picture was animated!
Haha, true. It’s hard to draw the line though because it appears real. Is Avatar animated? What about Alice or Oz? Gravity? Getting harder and harder to quantify.