How many blockbusters will last longer then one week on top?

[Akitsu]

People are complaining about how he's doing more of a Chris Angel act rather than the old, crotchety, washed out late night bad movie host bit from the original... but when you think about it, do kids even understand that reference? Vampira, Elvira, and all the rest of those charmingly bad hosts are well past being public knowledge... so I think it's a rather eloquent update on that part.

That said, I see the trailer for Fright Night and it just doesn't feel right. Kind of like the Friday the 13th remake... it hits the right marks, and technically looks vastly superior... and yet a lot of the charm seems to be missing. For it to work, it really does rely on the lead being this dorky horror obsessed kid who seems to be losing his marbles... which seems to be completely downplayed in this version.

So no, this isn't Tennant's problem... but rather, as always, a failure on the filmmaker's part in understanding what they're remaking.

[LLcruize]

Not a whole lot opening up. BoM is saying The Help is going to take the weekend again. When we were all looking into the future back in late April, who would have thunk that The Help would be the juggernaut of August? None of us.....LOL. Here is what BoM says will happen:

The Forecast, Aug. 26-28
1. The Help - $15.5 million
2. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - $15 million
3. Rise of the Planet of the Apes - $10 million
4. Colombiana - $8 million
5. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World - $7 million
6. Our Idiot Brother - $6 million

Bar for Success
Modest movies mean low expectations, but Don't Be Afraid of the Dark still needs to open well in to the teen millions just to be respectable by supernatural horror standards. Colombiana would need over $10 million to be respectable for a late August action movie, while the bar is lowest for Our Idiot Brother, but it still will be dissed if it doesn't hit the high single digits.

[LLcruize]

I know the blockbuster season is over, but I always keep an eye on the box office numbers throughout the year. It is very telling when you have a re-release of a traditional animated Disney film spanking all of the new releases. Contagion was the closest to Lion King, coming in second with a distant 14m compared to Lion King's 29.3m. Drive, a film that has gotten a lot of pre-release critic and fan love, pulled in a paltry 11 million. The other two new films, Straw Dogs and I Don't Know How She Does it, grossed anemic 5m and 4m respectively.

Of course, you know what this means with Lion King being re-released in 3D and doing this well? We are going to see a load of re-releases in 3D. We already know that Episode 1 is going to be re-released in January of next year. Couple the re-releases with re-makes, I don't know about you, but I'm thinking there is too much "re" going on.

[Akitsu]

Not really... when you think about it, Hollywood is constantly doing the re-thing.

Re-releases don't happen often, but when they do it's pure magic. After all, how else would I have seen Heavy Metal on the big screen? Some people see this as a problem, but to be honest I think it should happen more often. How brilliant would it be to find out something like Goonies or Evil Dead 2 or Tales from the Crypt Demon Knight was on a theater screen again?

Re-makes seem like a bad thing to fans of the original, but without them we wouldn't have 1982's The Thing, or the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors, or even 2004's Dawn of the Dead. For every two bad remakes, someone gets it right and transcends the original. We're also getting a remake of Evil Dead soon, so my fingers are crossed that turns out epic.

Some say Hollywood is out of ideas... but truth be told, Hollywood is scared shitless. They're playing it safe at this point, as to be honest a lot of new intellectual properties are failing to find an audience. Just look at The Adventures of Pluto Nash for example. 100 million dollar production that had everything going for it, and it SHOULD have worked. (Randy Quaid and Eddie Murphy buddy flick on the moon? Shit yeah!) Unfortunately the movie was panned by critics worse than Leonard Part 6... mainly due to the ending which played up the evil clone cliche. It made 7 million bucks. 7. That didn't even cover the catering. It made another 32 when it hit video. That's a deficit of 61 million down the hole on an original story.



The irony is, as bad as Pluto Nash is... it's not Batman & Robin bad... and that turd brought in 238 million.

That pretty much heralded in this current age of Hollywood un-creativity. Suddenly the producers had a nervous hand on their purse strings. They don't see potential anymore... they see a series of past mistakes. You show them a Halo movie and they cringe... being as video game movies are notoriously hard to get right. You show them Fright Night and they say, "Hey! I know a lot of people LOVE that film!"

[Ayeima]

I see what you both are saying and I am of course sitting on the fence. As for re-releases, I think we will see a ton of shit....but there will be a few good ones out there. What we think is good, critics pan as shit, what we think is shit, critics pan as gold.

As for remakes, again we will see tons of shit with a few good ones.

Something that goes in that we haven't discussed are sequels and prequels and reboots. Building on winners and successful formulas but still old ideas.

Is Hollywood ran out of ideas or scared as shit...i say both. They are running low and scared as shit to branch out from the winning formulas. Hell even companies that normally branch out haven't gone too far....

[LLcruize]

Whoops, should have clarified my disdain for the re-issue. Of course, that is nothing new, Disney classic films have been re-issued for many years. So have films like Gone with the Wind, Sound of Music, Star Wars OT, etc. What I fear will be a trend is slapping 3D on films that were not shot in 3D and never intended to be 3D.

[Akitsu]

Yes, but with Lion King it's cell animation... so they can easily separate the foreground and background out to create the effect. More than likely they'll use those elements as a guide and use a 3D model of the character to round them out a bit. The real stunner will of course be the stampede... which thanks to the way it was done, aka procedural AI computer graphics made to look like cel animation, will be able to be done to great effect in 3D.

Personally I wish Titan AE would get the 3D treatment... especially since the majority of the brilliantly lavish Don Bluth animation is done with CG elements in the first place. (I'd also love to see the deleted and unfinished segments restored, as they really did add a lot to the story) Alas, no matter how well it's done on DVD it'll never happen. That initial box office bust will haunt it forever as far as Hollywood is concerned.

[Chiclo]

Whoops, should have clarified my disdain for the re-issue. Of course, that is nothing new, Disney classic films have been re-issued for many years. So have films like Gone with the Wind, Sound of Music, Star Wars OT, etc. What I fear will be a trend is slapping 3D on films that were not shot in 3D and never intended to be 3D.

Gone With the Wind 3D. I want them to make this just for the outcry against it.

[Akitsu]

Gone With the Wind 3D. I want them to make this just for the outcry against it.

Only if you throw in zombies, robots, and self aware robots curious about their own sexuality.... in glorious CG. I'd buy that for a dollar!

[FishiesGoPookPookPook]

Personally I wish Titan AE would get the 3D treatment... especially since the majority of the brilliantly lavish Don Bluth animation is done with CG elements in the first place. (I'd also love to see the deleted and unfinished segments restored, as they really did add a lot to the story)

THIS! *points vehemnetly* MAKE THIS HAPPEN AND MAKE THIS HAPPEN NOW DAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!