As it turns out, I had saved a page from Michael Adams & Associates, which as discussed the other day, claimed to be able to project profitability and grosses via script analysis. And so, here are the six films they projected grosses on… (the exact wording of their document can be found after the jump.)
ICE PRINCESS
MP4I
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movieman on: I Should Be Doing Box Office
Review: Little Women (no spoilers)
Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree
Review: Frozen 2 (spoiler-free)
Review: Marriage Story (spoilers only in the broadest sense)
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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
How come they don’t give actual figures? I could point at any movie and say whether it’ll be profitable or not, but it ain’t science.
So the two profitable movies of those six were Ice Princess and Hostage? How do these guys still get an article in the New Yorker?
Well, I don’t feel so bad about how off I am sometimes… it’s rarely as bad as this. I think the problem with this system is that it’s just going by the script and the elements that might appeal, which completely foregoes things like marketing (letting people know about the movie), buzz (people actually knowing about it and wanting to see it), market competition (other better choices in theatres). If anything, this computer program might be used to see if a script is worth greenlighting in terms of whether people might LIKE the movie, but there’s no way to tell from a script how the movie can do at box office…there are too many other factors, like casting and poor direction choices…things that can make it hard to sell a movie after it’s been made.
Back to the drawing board…
Interpreter is a good example of this… they went by the script and didn’t think there were elements that would appeal to people… throw in Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn shortly after Oscar winning roles, and there’s your appeal right there. A decent trailer and solid commercials and even more interest/buzz. I really think that this system wouldn’t have seen hits like Inside Man and Flightplan, both which had interesting premises but bad scripts, though were also elevated by their stars
RE: a proposed film as “profitable”:
Maybe I missed it, but was there any mention or any occurence of first dollar gross profit participation on the part of above-the-line talent for the films listed? Did Sandra Bullock get a cut of Miss Congeniality 2, therefore skewing the conclusion this film would not be profitable?
Universal and Fox just passed on Halo which has fans of the game in a collective fit.
http://www.cinematical.com/2006/10/20/fox-and-universal-pull-plug-on-halo-movie/1#comments
The snag in Halo‘s negotiation appears to be profit participation; the film’s proposed budget is $200+ (and Jackson, a veteran filmmaker, went over on King Kong; Neil Blomkamp has never helmed a production this size.)
wolfgang, Microsoft has stepped in and they’re going to finance Halo… and I don’t think they’ll have any trouble getting the money together to make it either. That’s like spare change to Gates.
Thanks, ED.
A few questions:
1) Is Microsoft footing the entire production budget?
2) If so, how does this affect distribution and profit participation?
3) Can Microsoft also be the distributor of the film, or does that end of business have to go the major studio route?
I figured the studios saw the grosses for movies like Doom and realised $200mil is a tad, er, extravagant for a computer game movie.
wolfgang, not sure… here’s a link to the press release:
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=17109
What bothers me is that they were thinking of making a $150-200 million movie, but after King Kong and Superman weren’t really profitable with such big budgets, I’m not surprised that Fox/Universal backed out. I’m sure Gates can afford to finance it and they might be able to get another studio on board to distribute once it’s done since they won’t have to foot that bill (think of WB distributing Alexander, though it was financed by European companies)…but they should look at this as a sign and maybe try for something that can be done cheaper.
Ah, a correction…they haven’t agreed to finance the whole movie…they’re going to pay for the prepreoduction phase so that Jackson et al can keep working to put something together to get the budget.
“That’s like spare change to Gates.” I’m sure if they lifted up the cushions on a few sofas they’d find that much, easy. Maybe one cushion on one sofa.
I’d like to see the Epathingy report on “Star Wars.”
I am the President of Epagogix, Ltd, that was the focus of Malcolm Gladwell’s recent article in the Special Media Edition of the New Yorker (cover date of October 16, 2006). We are not the same group as has been assumed by some of the commenters. Indeed, I have never heard about the group that has been mistakingly assumed to be the same as Epagogix. I do not know how that other group performs its projections or how accurate it is. All I do know is that in the most recent test that we undertook for a major studio, we were 100% more accurate in determining in advance of release of some 9 films whether these films would earn enough in US Box Office revenue to cover the initial all in negative or production cost of the film (excluding prints and marketing costs). This measure is typically sufficient to determine if a particular studio film will be net profitable. There are very important exceptions to this rule of thumb, but those exceptions were not relevant for the nine scripts that we reviewed. Due to a confidentiality agreement I am not at liberty to provide more information, but we and the studio were quite pleased to achieve this level of accuracy based only on our analysis of the script in a form that could be performed prior to the studio’s incurring the first dollar of production expense.
Mr. Copaken –
You will have to forgive continuing skepticism as you continue to insist on hiding behind fake names (Mr. Pink & Mr. Brown, etc) and making 100% proclamations just weeks after Mr. Gladwell had nothing close to that suggested in his article.
I would love to believe you, but it still seems rather shifty. And since your program appears to be nearly identical to the previous one that mysteriously went underground, I have no basis for believeing they are not associated… even if you have changed names.
Feel free to take this private – my email is poland@moviecitynews.com – and instruct me further. If you tell me the name of the studio, I will be happy to discuss it privately with top execs at that studio, whichever one it is. And if you have been truthful, I will be happy to acknowledge and embrace your product as viable, even if I suspect that it is very limited and sure to cost some sucker a lot of money real soon.
How can one be “100% more accurate”? That doesn’t make sense.
I don’t see where the “failure” is. The Profitable and not-profitable designations involve money-spent versus money made, not how big the box office was. The Ice Princess can make a third as much as Guess who at the box office, and still be more profitable.
My understanding from the Gladwell article was that they give hard box office receipt predictions. That seems the best way to judge their predictions. Where are they?
That’s a really good question, JJRS. Where are they?