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NEWS: 2012 Madoka Magica Film's 2 Parts Titled

I am sure they will be not recaps, but two new movies with new animation telling the same story (maybe with some juicy changes).

so it's basically death/re-birth all over again...oh boy

fireaxe wrote:

Never understood the point of making recaps/compilation movies since by nature they're doomed to be inferior to the original release. Why not a simple re-run of the tv series on select channels? I don't know, it's probably just me but it sounds like a waste of time and money more than anything else. Given the crazy money they got from the first BD releases, you'd think they could afford to go straight for the original movie.

You're not thinking like a businessperson. The two recap movies can hype the third 'proper' movie. And of course, why would SHAFT and Co. pass on free money? The franchise is massively popular at the moment, and as the saying goes you should make hay while the sun shines. The recap movies will probably be mostly unnecessary from the fans' point of view but they'll sell well and won't be that expensive to make (being compilations), so of course the producers would want them made.

Two movies selling tens of thousands of Blu-Rays each would bring in a huge amount of profit. Assuming that each movie sells twenty-five thousand copies at US$60 each (let's be a tad conservative with our figures here), then that's US$3m all up. Once the production committee pays off the manufacturing and distribution costs that leaves fifty-five percent for themselves. That means the committee stands to get US$1.65m. The movies won't cost much to make and market, therefore they could quite realistically make a cool million dollars profit. That's money they otherwise wouldn't have received; why would they pass up on that? Would you?

Two things I want to note. Firstly, as I said before those are conservative sales figures and prices; they'll probably get a bit more than that. Secondly, I have not included money made from sale of the actual movie tickets, as I have no idea how that would go. So yeah, it is annoying from our perspective as we just want the third movie to come as quickly as possible. But, Anime is unfortunately a business, and making money comes first.

(I also suspect the SHAFT are using the first two movies to buy themselves time to make the third. They are a notoriously bad company at meeting deadlines, so the two recap movies may well be intended to keep fans off their backs while they pour their efforts into getting the third movie completed. That's complete speculation though.)

You figure each episode is about 24 minutes. 3 minutes of that is OP/ED. So that's like 21 minutes. You could come close to fitting the entire series with no edits into two 2-hour films.

Are they just going to take old footage and make a new movie from that? If they're actually going to bother to reanimate everything, why tell the same tale? I'm sure a lot of fans will still show up, but you could have gone cheap and just use show footage and they'd still show up. Or with a new story being told, everyone would probably show up.

Mr. sickVisionz wrote:

You figure each episode is about 24 minutes. 3 minutes of that is OP/ED. So that's like 21 minutes. You could come close to fitting the entire series with no edits into two 2-hour films. Are they just going to take old footage and make a new movie from that? If they're actually going to bother to reanimate everything, why tell the same tale? I'm sure a lot of fans will still show up, but you could have gone cheap and just use show footage and they'd still show up. Or with a new story being told, everyone would probably show up.

The typical approach to compilation films are to mostly use animation directly from the show, with touch-ups and possibly some script revisions. You basically have a few broad types of compilation/re-imaginaging:

1. Summary of the series: this is the one that started in the 70s, before syndication and home video so that people could view a show in movie format at their cinema. Almost every single super robot show did one, and so did Yamato. They might include changes like mentioned before, but mostly stick to what's been offered already. The Gurren Lagann are more or less the same as the TV series, with tons of embellishment, and Macross Plus has a different ending. Often these offerings are completely unnecessary as they don't tighten up the narrative but instead ruin the pacing into a quick mess. Char's Counterattack and Unlimited Blade Works would also more or less fall here, given their structure. They feel like rushed compilations of much larger stories (and I know UBW is in fact just that).

2. Re-imagining that acts more like a "another" view or another way to tell the tale, but closely resembles the original work, like the Macross Frontier films, Evangelion's Rebuild series, and even Macross DYRL in its basic premise. Basically a lot remains the same in writing, but the animation and events might play out differently. For Rebuild, it's headed from this type into the next type as the story moves further and further away from the TV series.

3. Taking the characters but placing them into another reality that's completely set apart from the original. Motivations, events, relationships, and conflicts are totally different, and art design will usually be original to the film as well as well. Eureka Seven, Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaea, and DYRL if you include the stylistic changes fall under here.

The first two Madoka films sound like they'd fall under the first category: basically the same with some upgrades, where hopefully the third gives us something massively unique.

Not to sound like a Gundam fanboy, but why do you seem to classify Char's Counterattack as a recap movie. It is a new story set in the Universal Century. The movie might have Char, Amuro and some of the same characters from the first three TV series, but Char's Counterattack is NOT a recap movie.

angelmcazares wrote:

Not to sound like a Gundam fanboy, but why do you seem to classify Char's Counterattack as a recap movie. It is a new story set in the Universal Century. The movie might have Char, Amuro and some of the same characters from the first three TV series, but Char's Counterattack is NOT a recap movie.

I know it's not a recap movie, but it sure feels like one. The pacing is ridiculously quick and it's to the movie's detriment. Megazone 23 might have been a show condensed into some OVAs, but it has sufficient time to tell the story, not just two hours.