That's the thing; an AD movie wouldn't bring in giant amounts of cash. That's what most of us are saying. It would be fairly cheap to produce, compared to many other Hollywood flicks, and as a result even if it just did 10, 20, 30 million dollars then it would clearly be a success for all involved.

I'm not sure how you can think that when they'd probably need $30 million just to cover development (no pun intended), production costs and everyone's salaries (many of which will be higher now due to certain actor's successes). Then you've got prints and advertising...

If budget was an issue, I'm sure this is one of the few projects the actors would be willing to do for scale. And let's not forget the Ron Howard aspect, which none of these other TV-turned-movies had.

Aeon Flux
Ali G Indahouse
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Colon Movie...
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
Pootie Tang [The Chris Rock Show]
Reno 911!: Miami
Run Ronnie Run! [Mr. Show]
Serenity
Strangers with Candy: The Movie
Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny

I think of those only Reno 911! and Tenacious D had the built-in audiences to make money (was Run Ronnie Run even in theaters?), and I think AD has a slightly smaller but comparable audience. D scraped $13m worldwide theatrical and $9m on DVD while Reno walked away with $21m on the big screen and $22m in rentals. D is a failure (costing $20m), but Reno managed to top the rule-of-thumb 3x its $10m budget to be "profitable" and Reno 911! required, in my opinion, more money to make than an AD movie would, including car crashes, a giant fake whale, and all sorts of action-movie nonsense. Reno and D were also both rated R, which, I assume an AD movie would not be. Reno was also shot on DV so that is comparable to a potential AD flick.

The show was reportedly expensive, but when they say expensive they're talking like $100,000 per episode or something. Say what you will but you have to multiply that cost by quiiiiiite a bit to get a $30m budget without marketing. I imagine the stars would be willing to take reduced pay to do something they all liked so much, so I doubt millions would be unloaded just appeasing the cast.

As for Michael Cera, people may not have gone to Superbad to see him, but I imagine some people went to Juno to see him BECAUSE of that movie (as far as "hey, it's the guy from Superbad!" goes) and are just now getting turned onto AD. I'm not saying the guy's box office money or a big star but I would say he has a mild amount of draw.

And given that the Ali G movie bombed, it's hard to not argue that the only thing that propelled Borat to great heights was a top-notch marketing campaign. If you can sell it well enough, people will come. And again, I maintain that those people don't need to come in particularly great numbers.

Michael Cera may not be a big draw but being seen by $240 million worth of people in theaters, not even counting Superbad's dvd sales/rentals.

Ever since Arrested Development came out on dvd more and more people are discovering it (does anybody have exact numbers for AD DVD sales?). I think the movie will gross around 30 mil, and do great business on video. It will make a profit and deserves to go to theaters.

I agree that you can't compare the viewers AD got when it was "free" vs the numbers it's got on DVD since then. I know I've personally pushed my sets on many people that have grown to love it.

Couple that with the (albeit ever-so-slight) rise of such folks as Cera and Arnett, you really can't say what sort of impact this could have.

I, for one, would welcome an attempt and don't care what it costs or what it makes. I just want more AD. Theater or direct to dvd, just get it to me.

Most of those films you listed are not failures at all.

1) While Ali G Indahouse did not receive a US theatrical release it did over $30 million worldwide on a budget of less than $10 million.

2) Aqua Teen Hunger Force cost under one million dollars to produce and made $6 million domestically. Marketing costs were next to nothing as nearly all of the marketing for the flick was viral.

3) Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie are examples of studios not knowing what to do with their final products. MST3K tested through the roof with fans and non-fans alike, but Gramercy, heading towards bankruptcy, just released it on 25 screens and called it a day to fulfill their contract with Best Brains. It recouped it's losses on VHS, which wasn't hard to do, as the film only cost $2 million to make. Brain Candy, which cost a lot more, was actually released on 450 screens which is surprising as...

4) ... It's Pat and Stuart Saves His Family got very limited releases. Both are terrible films, with Touchstone barely giving It's Pat a theatrical release and Stuart Saves His Family got a limited release for a week before it was jolted out of theaters. If Wayne's World 2 and Coneheads lived up to box office expectations at the time, I believe both films would've been given bigger releases.

5) I still don't know who green lighted Pootie Tang and may they burn in hell for it.

6) Run Ronnie Run sucks as well, but it was made in a time where a lot of people were leaving New Line and a lot of new people were coming in. Just like many New Line films made in that time period, it went direct to video.

7) Reno 911!: Miami made $20 million in theaters, more than double on DVD sales alone, and it only cost $10 million to make.

8) Serenity has recouped it's losses thanks due to it's original DVD release. The HD-DVD and two-disc special edition releases were free money for Universal.

9) Strangers with Candy: The Movie was a film made independently, picked up by Warner Independent, dropped by Warner Independent months later, and picked up months later by Thinkfilm before they became big on the indie circuit. It was doomed for failure once Warner dropped it and the film sat on a shelf for over a year.

10) Aeon Flux and Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny are the two biggest failures listed. A lot of the films mentioned (except Serenity) were done on the cheap. Aeon Flux cost millions as Paramount scrambled to release something presentable for over a year and Tenacious D was greenlit (for way too much) just on Jack Black's status at the time.

11) Office Space a failure? Ha! Theatrically? Yes, but the moment that film hit VHS, it was a fucking goldmine. Fox has made over hundreds of millions of dollars off the film.

In the days of DVD sales as they are now, you can have a film tank in theaters, but make a tidy profit once the film is released to video. The theatrical release means next to nothing now and is more of an advertisement for the eventual DVD release.

On that note, let Imagine and Universal produce an Arrested Development film. I'd be there opening day and be first in line to buy the flick on DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, whatever.

Juno made $100 million. Seems like this would be fairly simple to market to the same crowd...some of the same actors, same quirkly style of comedy - I think it would do alright.

...but in the end, I don't really care how much it makes - just so long as it gets made.

The other problem with Aeon Flux was the studio fought with its director (the film is apparently more of a producer's cut), and it also essentially shut up the original creator with a bunch of money. Not in a conspiracy type way, just in a please don't badmouth our movie you don't like kind of way.

Your explanations seem to point out that most of the movies I listed were indeed failures, and the ones that made any money at all made it when they hit video...which just lends more credence to my direct-to-DVD idea. Hell, you even said it yourself:

I don't believe I ever said that AD would lose money; I've constantly been saying that a theatrical release seems pointless, and people thinking it would be a hit at the box office are living in some sort of Happy Fantasy Land.

Try again. $1.5m per episode.

Well (not that I have a source for my number), but presuming that number is correct, unreliable math still suggests that 20mins x 5 = 100mins = $7.5m budget. Obviously you are probably over-raising costs by just taking the number and multiplying it, but still if you tack on $2m to pay the cast (given that the number is already over-inflated) you have a movie in the $10m range budget-wise. Which I still say is pretty cheap. Even in an extravagant world I can't imagine it costing more than $15m, and this is also Ron Howard and Brian Grazer here, who have boatloads of money.

You are negating a few major factors though like pre-production:
- On a television show you have the sets pre-assembled ready to film.
- They would also more than likely double the crew to make a film.
- They filmed a 45 minute episode per week. I also seriously doubt they would film a 90 minute movie in two weeks. They will go the route every other movie goes, 2-3 months. So if you do the math by shooting time the cost raises significantly higher(12 weeks @ $1.5/week = $18m). I doubt they would take a full 3 months, but they will definitely take advantage of having more time to prepare which will raise costs.

:shrug: Who knows? :lol:

I think $15m is the closest guess.

There's always money in the :banana: stand!

I guess, but the only set that would appear to need to be built is the house set...aren't the workplace/apartment/dock/jail existing sets (I know the house was specific and it was torn down)? And even so, the sets aren't very big or elaborate, I imagine they would only cost maybe a million to build the house, apartment and jail. Plus, again, the show was shot on DV, again that would lower week-to-week shooting expenses and it would seem to eliminate the need for a large crew. Lastly, these days you hear about people shooting stuff quite quickly, I would say more like six weeks for an AD 90m movie that's mostly dialogue.

Nothing really concrete, but a new(ish) Jason Bateman quote about the movie: