Ronnie Dobbs

Am I right? When hey tried to appease us "Serenity" comes to mind "X-Files: I Want To Believe" it only ended in dismal box office failure. ts no wonder stuff like "Beverly Hill Chihuahua" and "Eagle Eye" can easily top the BO. Even if word of mouth is bad it really doesn't matter movies make more profit overseas where no one really tends to care about critics. So yea lets make more bad movies fuck it I'll watch it eventually. Hey last week I saw the Martin Lawrence gem "Rebound" on HBO. I didn't turn it off.

EdTheRipper

You're just figuring this out now?

BravesMG

This doesn't make any sense. Who are you defining as "we"? If "we" is the tiny internet bitching audience, well, of course they don't care. You're using an emotional term to define a business model, they don't "care" and neither should you. Just go see stuff that looks good to you.

The stuff that makes money is what they will produce. It's not rocket science here.

The Cow

Maybe you should move to Canada.

I think they write coherently up there though. You may need to brush up.

PopcornTreeCt

How about the movie going public doesn't care what we think? Fox gave you an X-Files sequel. You got Serenity. The studios seem to be more intune to what we want rather than Joe Six Pack.

Jason

Hollywood absolutely cares what the public thinks. The problem is, you don't agree with the public.

Brain Stew

What do you want? Serentity didn't make money. It's a business not a charity.

As for the X-Files, Chris Carter, the show's creator made this one. He owns all the blame for this awful movie, not the studio heads.

RichC2

What does this have to do with studios caring what we think?

Glossy movies generally make money, good glossy movies generally do very well (The Dark Knight (Highest grossing and critically, the 2nd highest rated wide release of '08 (behind Wall-E, another $200m grosser)), bad glossy movies generally do okay (Eagle Eye, Mummy 3). Overseas vary.

A movie based on a cult TV series that averaged 4m viewers a week not doing well isn't exactly a surprise (Serenity) nor is a low budget one based on an aged series (X-files 2). Beverly Hills Chihuahua had it in a bag, talking animals sell especially when its advertised ad nauseum on the kiddie channels, they knew their audience and they struck it out of the park with them.

The Antipodean

Movies + audiences = money, all the studios need to care about really.

Your post pretty much makes no sense whatsoever -- shouldn't it be "movies I don't like make money, why is this?"

animatedude

"Serenity" comes to mind? gimme a fuckin' break.that movie is overrated rubbish and u know it.thanks.

Tarantino

What the hell are you talking about?

= J

Jericho

But they DID make Serenity and X-Files 2. If they didn't care, they wouldn't bother making these movies at all.

d2cheer

Maybe you should start reading a books?

Brian Shannon

PT Barnum was way ahead of you

milo bloom

Even after all this time, I'm still confused about Serenity doing so poorly at the box office. The movie was greenlit based on internet sales of the TV series DVDs, the movie DVD itself sold so well it was re-released as a special edition, and now they're doing new special features for the BluRay release of the TV show.

*Somebody* is buying this stuff. Paying real American dollars for these DVDs. It simply does not make sense to me. The only thing that makes sense to me gets into conspiracy theory territory, so I'll spoilerize so you don't have to read it if you don't want to.



Then again, the trailers didn't seem to do a good job selling it either. I also recall several people saying they thought the trailers were horrible, but once on DVD, they rented it and loved it.

And for the people about to complain about the "I heard from so-and-so effect", here's an example: my brother. Mid 20's, never heard of it until the movie came on one of the cable movie channels a while back, and he happened upon it and loved the heck out of it.


But as for the topic at hand: we're a minority. Most of the movie going public likes explosions and snappy one-liners and not having to think too hard. Oh, and of course, happy endings.

fumanstan

I don't think it's that much to be confused about. A million or two fanboys/girls buying the DVDs on release week looks big, but a million or two fanboys/girls paying 10 bucks for a single ticket at the movies doesn't translate to a lot of dough. Seems to make sense to me.

milo bloom

Ehh, maybe, still doesn't sit right with me. The only other thing is too many people decided to wait for the DVD, and that did sell pretty well.

Groucho

One thing about the DVD sales for Serenity is that fans were buying multiple copies to create an artificial demand in order to goad Fox into producing a sequel. There's even a thread about it here somewhere, demanding an explanation from those who dared to buy one or less copies.

RichC2

Unestablished Sci-fi is a difficult sell. Even if the DVDs were million sellers, a million tickets isn't going to make for a successful movie. Serenity, on the big screen, looked and felt like the TV show which I'm sure didn't help (It literally looked like a TV episode blown up onto the big screen and not a theatrical feature). I'm one of those that saw the movie in theaters and just did not like it, it felt cheap and cheesy, the forced dialog didn't work for me, and the plot was incredibly generic/recycled and predictable. Why am I mentioning that? Because save for the 'cheap' part, that completely describes the Star Wars prequels as well and we all know how well those did (sickening isn't it?)

Edit:

Oh, you beat me to it. Somehow missed that.

Anyway, studios do care what we think because we're the ones that will pay to see their movies and buy their products. "We" just happens to cover a lot of people with a lot of varying taste. I mean, why else would they have test screenings? They want their movies liked by the widest audience possible.

spainlinx0

I had never met in person anyone who watched Firefly before the movie was released. Since then, I have met just one. Just because it is overrepresented here doesn't mean it's this huge with the general public.

RichC2

Yeah, internet hype has in general proven to be a pretty big bust.

Drexl

Snakes on a Plane, man.

It's also possible that Serenity could have caught on later, the way that some movies like The Shawshank Redemption, Donnie Darko, and Office Space did. Then again, I'm not really a fan so I don't know what the following is like.

The Bus

A Serenity sequel would cost another $40-60MM.

I don't think Serenity has sold $40MM in DVDs.

I can't make it any clearer than that.

wm lopez

Why does Hollywood continue to make all those anti-Iraq war movies even though all of them bomb?

Nick Martin

Generally we add useless "u's" to certain words (color becomes colour, neighbor becomes neighbour, honor becomes....you get it) but yeah he'd definitely need to brush up.

Snakes On A Plane was awesome. Sucks that the internet's tubes got jammed up and the movie failed as a result but whatever, it delivered exactly what it promised: Snakes on a plane, Sam Jackson saying muthafucka, snake on a trouser snake, snake on a nipple, snake in an old fat lady's nether regions....damn, where's the Blu-ray for this? I'd get immediately if it was available.