Forum - View topicNEWS: Live-Action Bebop Producer Reveals 1212 Entertainment
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4577 |
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Ponyo made a hell of a lot more money internationally (especially in Japan, I'd wager) than Astro Boy has, and Disney didn't pay anything close to $65 million for it, since they were merely licensing and distributing it instead of paying for it to be made from scratch. Ponyo was a relative success as far as domestic anime releases go, while Astro Boy has been an unqualified box-office bomb.
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RogueJedi86
 Posts: 501 |
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Funny thing about box office bombs is that they tend to do well on DVD. Pretty much all movies make up their up budget by the time they hit DVD. Even the so-called failure Waterworld was a success whilst still in theaters.
I'm sure plenty of parents will buy AstroBoy on DVD to distract their kids after school. |
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Baltimoron
 Posts: 43 Location: Charm City |
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Saw that bit about Koike also. My bet is that they'll do an adaptation of Lady Snowblood. It's already been done in Japan, but of all of Koike's major works that seems the most likely to appeal to an American filmmaker at this point. Doing Lone Wolf and Cub would require an American director to either make a movie about Edo-period Japan (no studios will invest in this project) or adapt the premise to a new setting. Any adaptation is likely to come off as too similar to Road to Perdition. Samurai Executioner is totally out of the question. A movie about a guy who cuts bound prisoners in half? Americans may be cuckoo for capital punishment, but that's still probably not going to fly in the States. Mad Bull 34 is... well... Mad Bull 34. Everything that makes the manga what it is (unabashed racism and sexism, drawings of Sleepy that look like Tom of Finland pieces, etc) would have to be removed and doing so would leave the director and any potential investors with nothing but undifferentiated police pulp. Path of the Assassin is another one that can't be done by an American studio. American audiences don't know who Tokugawa Ieyasu was and won't pay to see a movie about his rise to power. Furthermore, adapting the characters to a Western setting will force the filmmaker to gamble on just how much disbelief the audience can suspend. A Hattori Hanzo analogue in 800s England or 1800s Germany? No way. Lady Snowblood, on the other hand, is pure Hollywood. A revenge tale about a woman whose lethality is matched only by her sex appeal is the sort of thing producers and directors can't resist. It has the added bonus of taking place in the Meiji period so the film can have the same old meets new feel as the opening scenes of The Wild Bunch. And even if they go for a setting switch, the whole wronged woman who gives birth to her avenger thing can be shoehorned into just about any time or place. |
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luvsffviii
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I was excited about this live action movie being done until I heard about Keeanu, I don't know who he will play, but I am assuming it is Spike. I have always thougt that Takeshi Kaneshiro would be a great Spike. I saw him in The Returner and though of Spike right away. Too Bad.
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kenji_salk
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you couldn't be more wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biggest_box_office_bombs The amount of money lost on flops like this are near impossible to make up in DVD/home video sales, not to mention that even if they WERE able to break even, they'd still be colossal financial failures to the studios (since DVD sales aren't meant to be used to make back budget, it makes no financial sense to be happy about that, it's supposed to be extra profit off of your investment). Deny it all you want, Astro Boy is an absolute failure. |
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RogueJedi86
Posts: 501 |
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Well there's a reason a lot of movies are straight-to-DVD, because the real money is on DVD. If all the money was in the theater run, they'd be stupid to not put them in theaters.
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kenji_salk
Posts: 8 |
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"the real money" implies that companies don't intend to make money off of box office runs. Yes, a theatrical dud doesn't automatically make it a failure, but it's all a matter of how bad it did, and how much money they spent on it. Cuthroat Island, The Alamo, or The Postman cost so much and made back so little that there's no way it could earn back cost on video.
Straight-to-dvd only happens when during runs with test audiences, they get the idea that it will be a flop, and decide to cut their losses and just do a direct to video release. Putting a film in theaters costs studios money, and they're not going to put out films unless they think it's going to get butts in seats (why else do you think anime films like the recent Eureka 7 film only get select screenings, for a very limited time? It's not like they can just toss stuff out there at no cost, and just be blazé about it). Bottom line, with big budget releases, is that theater runs are very important, and while it doesn't guarantee it a failure, is a major setback in turning a profit for a movie. Astroboy had better sell like GANGBUSTERS on home video, otherwise Imagi studios has a problem. It has only made back 17 of the 65 mil budget so far worldwide. That's a lot of DVD sales to make up for. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2771 Location: Toronto |
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Yeah but DTDVD don't usually have a budget of $65 million dollars. All those crappy sequels to American Pie, Bring It On, etc. have budgets of like $5-$15million. |
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Anyway, Imagi and that company behind Blood weren't so bad, compared to a major like FOX, so I'll give 1212 time to prove themselves. 
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