All Wrong by SteelFly

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

All Wrong

POSTED BY: STEELFLY
UPDATED: Saturday, August 18, 2007 14:48
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VIEWED: 768
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Saturday, August 18, 2007 1:30 PM

Hi. I've actually been a lurker on this board for a while and only now have I found enough reason to post.

I'm writing because I think the apologetic approach to getting a BDS from Universal is the wrong way to go. I'm tired of seeing people say that they don't care if its straight to DVD or has the same or smaller budget.

If anything the BDS deserves to be done proper justice by having a larger budget, be a feature film, and have proper marketing.

What do I base this on?

Chronicles of Riddick. Universal made this film as a sequel to the low budget (23mil) and mediocre at best movie Pitch Black with 4 times the budget. 4 FRIGGIN TIMES!

What did they get? A poorly reviewed movie that barely broke even only because it wasn't pulled from international release the way Serenity was.

Even though they promoted this thing like crazy and made a video game to coincide with the release it still stunk, but guess what?!?!?!?! They're pursuing another sequel for it already!!!

"Director David Twohy has said that sequel plans depend in large part on the commercial success of the DVD."

"Vin Diesel has said that there are two sequels in development; the second film will involve a visit to the Underverse."

Compare Serenity which got great reviews, has a large fan following, has been compared and considered better than by some to the original Star Wars, with a movie that has a 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a small cult following + the 5 people that thought the video game was awesome.

What needs to be demanded is justice. If Universal can spend 110 million on a piece of go-se that no one besides maybe Vin Diesel and anyone who thought he was a good actor was interested in. Then they should be able to do better than that for us.

Here are my demands.

1. A budget worthy of the story, hell I'll say BDS can get double the budget of the original, say 80 million and we'd still end up with a much better movie than Riddick (any Riddick) or any of the last 3 Star Wars (budgeted from 110 to 120mil a piece).

2. A real attempt at a marketing campaign. I only found out about Serenity from some commercials i saw the week before it came out and i was only enticed enough to say I'd wait for the DVD before my roomate, a Joss Whedon fan, told me it would be worth seeing in the theaters. Obviously she was right. On the other hand I found out about 300 which I had no prior interest in either 6 MONTHS before the movie came out!!! (I forget how long they promoted Riddick but I remember it was months before opening and that from its looks it was all hype and CGI a la the Godzilla remake.)

The 'verse deserves better treatment in my opinion not more Foxing by Universal.

Your thoughts?

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Saturday, August 18, 2007 2:41 PM

WYTCHCROFT

i think we all agree in principle - but and it's a big but... if realistic success is more likely met through a series of dvd movies (ala Babylon 5, Farscape etc) then so what? i'll buy them and i won't be 'apologetic' about it and i'll tell ya why:

i love firefly the tv show as much as serenity the movie - and a series is quicker, cheaper, liable to lose less money or risk alienating fans. even the BDM did that - some hardcore brownies don't accept it at all.

the merits of firefly have never been about the budget - just the cast, the writing and the Gorram magic, y'know? - we don't need an epic every time... which is what a movie studio expects.

what bugs me more than universal - coz international foreign distribution aint nuthin but a bitch - is Fox. who could have saved us all this trouble.

and what really fries me is Galactica whose much deserved success only goes to show how unlucky F.F. was.
Galactica never needed a serenity. it aint gonna be ham-strung by the need for a Big Damn Sequel.

Don't get me wrong. i love serenity - it is the stand we took. we did that.
we stormed those gates.
let's see what else we can get...

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Saturday, August 18, 2007 2:48 PM

CALIFORNIAKAYLEE

Hi Steelfly, welcome to the board.

As a die-hard Riddick fan as well as a Browncoat, trust me when I say you might want to check out the facts behind the Chronicles of Riddick and any possible sequels. There is **NOT** a CoR sequel in the works. The script for Chronicles of Riddick was written in three parts, and only the first was made into the movie. So the other two scripts were finished (written by David Twohy and Vin Diesel) before Universal even agreed to make the first CoR. David Twohy told a story at one point about going to a meeting with Universal after sending them the script for the first CoR movie, and he took the finished scripts for the two other movies with him -- bound and locked. He told the Universal guys that if they wanted to find out what happened next, they would have to greenlight a sequel. It was all a plan to get Universal interested in sequels.

But the Chronicles of Riddick movie did not do well, as you pointed out, so any talk of a sequel has been shelved for the time being. There's still hope amongst the Riddick fans, but not much. If you're interested in following up on this, check out PitcherBlacker.com, one of the best Riddick fan/new sites out there. The CoR game, Escape from Butcher Bay, on the other hand, did very well. It rocked the socks off of people who hated the movie, and it's the number one example people use when pointing out that games based on movies don't have to suck. Check out the ratings for it on places like GameSpot, where it got a 9.3 out of 10. There is actually another game coming out, because the first game did so well, and because it costs less to develop an XBox game in Sweden than it does to film a movie in Hollywood.

As far as a Big Damn Sequel, unfortunately Hollywood does not operate on any concept of "justice". The Chronicles of Riddick was made at all because Pitch Black did crazy awesome on DVD, after having a fairly disappointing box office release. That is what Universal, and every other Hollywood studio responds to. Cold. Hard. Cash. Nothing less, nothing more. Universal is not going to risk $80,000,000 on a sequel to a movie that hasn't shown them significant profit. So if you want to see a BDS -- especially if you want to see something like the jump from Pitch Black to Chronicles of Riddick -- there is one thing, and only one thing you can do: buy the DVD.

~CK

You can't take the sky from me...

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