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Will Mars Needs Moms be one of the Biggest Box Office Bombs in History?

Will Mars Needs Moms be one of the Biggest Box Office Bombs in History?

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mars-needs-momsThe New York Times is reporting that Mars Needs Moms, which opened on Friday, “is on track to become one of the biggest box-office flops ever.”

In the movie business, sometimes a flop is just a flop. Then there are misses so disastrous that they send signals to broad swaths of Hollywood. Mars Needs Moms is shaping up as the second type.

Walt Disney Studios spent an estimated $175 million to make and market Mars Needs Moms, which sold $6.9 million in tickets at North American theaters in its opening weekend. That grim result puts the 3-D animated adventure on track to become one of the biggest box-office bombs in movie history, on par with such washouts as The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Cutthroat Island and The Alamo.

Much of the blame for the film’s poor reception is being placed on high ticket prices, especially for Imax.  While it costs between $8 and $9 to seat a child for a typical movie, ticket prices for 3-D screenings average around $13 — and $15.50 for the Imax version.

The film is based on the 2007 book Mars Needs Moms! by Berkeley Breathed, creator of Bloom County. It follows the adventures Milo, of a 9-year-old boy (voiced by Robot Chicken creator Seth Green) whose mother (Joan Cusack) is abducted by Martians.

The NYT predicts the impact on Disney “will be severe.” Disney has already closed down ImageMovers Digital, Robert Zemeckis’ animation division. Zemeckis, the Oscar-winning director who helmed Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, and The Polar Express, was a producer for Mars Needs Moms.  His last film using the same motion-capture animation style, A Christmas Carol (2009) was also a disappointment for Disney, and now the studio has canceled his next planned feature, a 3D remake of Yellow Submarine.

I thought the trailer looked good, and Breathed’s book was terrific. My kids want to see Mars Needs Moms, so I guess I’ll discover firsthand if the film is enjoyable… but the odds aren’t promising.

First Teaser Trailer for Conan the Barbarian

First Teaser Trailer for Conan the Barbarian

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conan-3dThe first trailer for the new 3D remake of Conan the Barbarian has been unleashed this week by Lionsgate.

The trailer is quite brief (one minute), and doesn’t show much beyond a lot of smoke, a few poorly nutritioned villains, a beautiful woman, and some goofy dialog on how to achieve contentment through slaying.  That part reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with more swords and a better soundtrack.

The brief film description reads:

The tale of Conan the Cimmerian and his adventures across the continent of Hyboria on a quest to avenge the murder of his father and the slaughter of his village.

I don’t remember anything about his father in the original version. But as Howard Andrew Jones is constantly telling me, I probably need to read more Robert E. Howard.

The finished film will be released on August 11, 2011.  It is directed by Marcus Nispel and stars Jason Momoa (Stargate: Atlantis) as Conan.

The film also stars Ron Perlman, Stephen Lang, and Rose McGowan, who’s preparing her own take on a Robert E. Howard character in the upcoming Red Sonja, also scheduled for release this year.

Celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Excalibur on Blu-ray

Celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Excalibur on Blu-ray

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excalibur-blu-ray-cover1Excalibur (1981)
Directed by John Boorman. Starring Nigel Terry, Nicol Williamson, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay, Cherie Lunghi, Paul Geoffrey, Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne.

One land! One king! 1080 lines of resolution!

Did you know that there is a re-make of Excalibur is in pre-production? Apparently, the lawyers at Legendary Pictures have forgotten that Le Morte d’Arthur and its associated characters are in the public domain and have been since the bleeding Dark Ages. No more about the re-make (for now).

The original, Once and Future Excalibur, is a crowning piece of high fantasy from the 1980s. It is also my favorite film version of the Arthurian legends. (Apologies to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) Most movies about King Arthur, especially those before Excalibur upped the ante, are tatty costume dramas lacking magic, either cinematic or literal, and which feel like they were adapted from children’s editions of the story. (Apologies to Howard Pyle.) None of these movies connect to the sensations that the original telling of the legends, from Geoffrey of Monmouth, to Chrétein de Troyes, to Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, create in me when I read them. A sense of dark mysticism pervades through the oldest versions of King Arthur’s myth: a mixture of paganism and early Christianity, a connection to Faerie, the eternal struggle between chaos and civilization. Excalibur, ignoring attempts to either look “realistic” or to resemble the generic expectation of a Hollywood costume drama, drives into the spiritual heart of King Arthur and emerges with something fantastic and often breathtaking.

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Checking in on The Hobbit

Checking in on The Hobbit

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hobbitThere’s a movie version of The Hobbit coming out. You knew that, right? But if you’re like me, it’s not something you keep tabs on every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love all things Tolkien, but movies move at a glacial pace, especially a highly anticipated movie like this one, and especially during pre-production. So I thought it would be interesting to talk a bit about it and update everyone.

So, after The Lord of the Rings movies, there were rumors aplenty that The Hobbit would be filmed as well. I was really psyched about this news. But then I read that Peter Jackson was in a dispute with New Line Cinemas regarding his contract for The Lord of the Rings and, considering that, couldn’t in good conscience agree to speaking about another movie with them until these issues were resolved. Jackson and New Line eventually came to some mutually beneficial agreement. Not only was the lawsuit by Jackson dropped, but he signed on to act as executive producer for The Hobbit film.

Then, early in 2008, I came across some news releases that reported about a new dispute with New Line, this time from the Tolkien estate. The allegation was that to date they hadn’t been paid a single penny for the movies. Wait a minute. What? The movies, which grossed more than the GDP of plenty of countries, haven’t resulted in any money for the Tolkien estate?

From the estate’s release:

The cumulative worldwide gross receipts to date total nearly $6 billion. Notwithstanding the overwhelming financial success of the films, and the fact that the plaintiffs have a gross participation in each of the films, New Line has failed to pay the plaintiffs any portion of the gross profit participation at all.

And this (emphasis mine):

The complaint seeks, among other things, in excess of $150 million in compensatory damages, as well as punitive damages, and a declaration from the Court that the plaintiffs have a right to terminate any further rights New Line may have to the Tolkien works under the agreements, including The Hobbit, due to the serious and material nature of the breach of the agreements.

Now, this is only one side of the story, of course. But being an author myself, and being such a fan, I quickly jumped to the defense of Tolkien. I’d heard about crazy accounting practices on the part of the studios to avoid having to pay royalties, but this? And, as a fanboy, I was pretty miffed that those (allegedly) greedy practices were going to prevent my beloved Hobbit movie from reaching the silver screen.

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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Hollywood Goes Grimm

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Hollywood Goes Grimm

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image0023Anyone who has ever read Grimm’s fairy tales knows that they are not the stuff that Disney has made of them. Shorter on happy endings than you may think ,and often fraught with enough violence to garner an “R” rating, it’s a wonder it’s taken Hollywood this long to discover them and mark them for a darker, CGI-laden treatment.

Being a huge fan of Grimm’s fairy tales, as any self-respecting goth chick would be, I’m following several interesting offerings en route to the big screen in the coming months.

Red Riding Hood, set for release in theaters this weekend (and called Little Red Cap in the Brothers Grimm tale) puts a werewolf spin on the original tale of young girl-meets-carnivorous-canine-who-consumes-her-relatives.

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Goth Chick News: Rubber (Need I Say More?)

Goth Chick News: Rubber (Need I Say More?)

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image004Okay, let’s be honest. I knew full well when I started writing a blog called “Goth Chick News” that I’d be putting out the welcome mat for all manner of weirdness. I’m used to the emails containing cadaver pictures, links to vampire porn sites and invitations to underground parties to which everyone apparently is expected to wear leather riding tack.

At this point I’m fairly unflappable and difficult to impress.

It’s to be expected when, until 2009, Googling “goth chick” lead you straight to several pages of sites that at best required you to swear you were over 18, and at worse required a credit card.

However, once in awhile I get an email that makes even me wonder WTF?

And those, my friends, are rare and wonderful moments indeed; like the one earlier this week I received an email containing an ad for a soon-to-be-released indy film called Rubber.

Granted, at first this correspondence nearly got flushed, being understandably mistaken for yet another solicitation of an “adult” nature. But luckily, fueled by the third triple-shot latte of the morning, and bored to sobs being in between batches of interns to abuse, I decided to roll the email-virus-dice and open it.

Major pay dirt.

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“Are You Not Still Entertained?”: Gladiator’s 10-Year Oscar Anniversary

“Are You Not Still Entertained?”: Gladiator’s 10-Year Oscar Anniversary

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gladiator-posterAs of Sunday evening, The King’s Speech is the newest Academy Award winner for Best Picture. I am sure a virulent backlash against the English period drama is already underway, but let the record show that I thoroughly enjoyed that movie. It is not my personal pick for the best film of 2010. I would have liked Black Swan, Inception, or True Grit to win, but such was not to be, and The King’s Speech as a winner doesn’t anger me.

However, I prophesy that The King’s Speech will go down in history as one of the Oscar winners with scant staying power. Remember Shakespeare in Love? Chances are you haven’t thought of it much at all. The same can be said for numerous winners since the awards started in 1929: movies that had their moment, and then faded back as the “losers” turned into perennials. No one has much interest in Cavalcade (winner for 1933, the year of King Kong and Duck Soup) or The Great Ziegfield (winner for 1936) today; 1952’s The Greatest Show on Earth is the butt of jokes about “Worst Best Picture Ever”; and even the recent A Beautiful Mind has blipped off the pop-culture radar fast, while Crash’s win tends to get people upset.* I can even mount an argument that the massively popular win for Forrest Gump has been overshadowed in the ensuing years by the everlasting popularity of two of its competitors, The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction.

But many Academy wins have lasted. It is amazing to realize that Casablanca was a surprise victory in 1943, upsetting favorite Watch on the Rhine. When was the last time you quoted or heard someone quote Watch on the Rhine? Other enduring winners include The Sound of Music, Gone with the Wind, Rocky, Platoon, and from the last twenty years The Silence of the Lambs (this year is its twentieth anniversary as a winner) and Unforgiven.

Which brings me to this year’s tenth-anniversary winner. Where does Ridley Scott’s Roman epic Gladiator stand today, a decade after it received five Oscars at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards?

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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Hell Rises Again

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Hell Rises Again

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drive-angryWith March just around the corner there’s a tiny whiff of spring in the air and here at the Black Gate offices this means attention spans are running even shorter than normal.

With the boys busy sniffing last year’s Hawaiian shirts for potential (and highly unlikely) freshness, and polishing off the last of the Amber Ale to make room in the communal fridge for the MGD 64, all thoughts have turned to flip-flop and cargo shorts weather, leaving room for additional content at Blackgate.com.

Therefore, to save myself having to listen to one more chorus of “Marguerita-ville,” I’m shutting myself up with the espresso machine in the underground offices of Goth Chick News.

My plan is to pass the time down here until May by bringing you one additional helping of extra gooey, pop-culture goodness each week.

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Goth Chick News: Barnabas Collins Rises

Goth Chick News: Barnabas Collins Rises

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image0061Though I would normally start this post by ranting about the lack of originality in Hollywood and threaten to stick my thumbs in the Black Gate blender if yet one more remake crawls into a theater near me, I’m brought up short by news of a project with a serious pedigree.

Dark Shadows is slated to start production this Spring for an early 2012 release.

If you tell me you aren’t acquainted with Mr. Barnabas Collins I will first need to inquire how the weather here compares with your home in the Congo, and did you have a pleasant flight into civilization yesterday? I would then go on to tell you that Dark Shadows was a first-of-its-kind gothic soap opera dealing primarily with supernatural themes and if, like me, you were to discover it for the first time while watching contraband reruns at a 10-year-old’s birthday sleepover, it would have scared the crap out of you.

First impressions, no matter how traumatic, can stick with a person for a lifetime and Dark Shadows clearly stuck with a large segment of the population.

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Back to the Ninth Legion . . . Yep, Still Lost: The Eagle

Back to the Ninth Legion . . . Yep, Still Lost: The Eagle

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the_eagle_posterThe Eagle (2011)
Directed by Kevin Macdonald. Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, Tahar Rahim.

Less than a year after Centurion was released theatrically on a small number screens, along comes another historical adventure film telling the tale of the vanished Ninth Legion. Except The Eagle got released on many screens. In a just and fair movie world, the situation would be the opposite. But anybody who has every griped about the Academy Awards knows that we live in no such world. (And by the way . . . no Best Score nomination for Daft Punk’s work on TRON Legacy?)

The Eagle is the opposite of Neil Marshall’s incredibly energetic, almost gonzo Centurion. Marshall’s film uses a great cast to flesh out its characters and themes of survival and duty while keeping an insane and glorious momentum. At every turn, Centurion does its damndest to keep audience’s adrenaline high. The Eagle, given greater dramatic space for characters between battle scenes, sketches out complete blanks for protagonists, contains no sense of the Roman frontier, and features poorly shot and edited battle scenes that emit out not single nanowatt of excitement. (Oh, I’ll be generous. Not a single microwatt of excitement.) No wonder Focus Features unceremoniously dumped this film out in early February, during Valentine’s Day weekend, up against a kid’s CGI animated movie and romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler. The Eagle is totally disposable.

And given the subject matter, it’s a shame. I hate to see any movie mess up the wonders that the Roman Empire can deliver in terms of action and spectacle. It takes a tremendous amount of work to make me dislike a film about the empire, but dammit if director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play) and his cast and crew put in overtime to produce a boring film.

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