Sunday, May 11, 2008
Hate To Say I Told You So
Bad news for Warner Bros. Studios and the Wachowski Brothers at the box office this weekend ... their $100+ million dollar "summer blockbuster" Speed Racer looks to be on track to become one of the huge box office failures of the summer movie season. When a movie costs around $100 million dollars to make and around $80 million dollars to promote and it only pulls in around $20 million dollars on its opening weekend, I think you've got major cause for concern:
The summer of 2008 is only two weeks old, and it already has its first flop. Speed Racer, the Wachowski Brothers' kaleidoscopic retelling of the classic cartoon series, got stuck in neutral this weekend, grossing a mere $20.2 million, according to Sunday's estimates — a disastrous sum for a movie that cost well in excess of $100 mil and that Warner Bros. had considered one of its major summer tentpoles ... Speed Racer (No. 2), which banked less than half of what many in Hollywood had originally expected it would earn over the course of its premiere weekend. Leaked word that the film was tracking poorly coupled with particularly weak reviews made this outcome visible from way down the road ... But that doesn't mitigate the damage. The movie is a wreck on the level of recent memorable summer failures like Kingdom of Heaven (which opened with $19.6 mil) and Poseidon ($22.2 mil) — at the domestic box office, at least. Overseas, well, that's another (possibly sadder) story. While would-be blockbusters that fail domestically usually have a chance to recoup their costs in foreign multiplexes (the aforementioned Kingdom of Heaven and Poseidon both did just that), there are reports that Speed Racer may have gotten a flat tire at the international box office as well; the dust still has to settle before we know the full story there. In the meantime, one has to wonder where the movie — which stars Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, and Matthew Fox — goes from here ... Worse still, Speed Racer could even fall to third place when this weekend's final numbers are unveiled on Monday. That's because its total is a mere $200,000 ahead of the initial No. 3 finisher, What Happens in Vegas, which banked an estimated $20 mil.
Ouch! But to be honest, I am not at all surprised. I saw the film at a midnight screening this past Thursday night and was HUGELY disappointed in how the movie turned out. There really wasn't a single thing that I liked about the movie at all. The awkward spirit of the cartoon was totally lost on the big screen adaptation ... [Source]
... if the movie had turned out more like this ...
... then it prolly would've done much, much better. There is something about the way the original cartoon was presented that gave it its appeal ... none of that was saved for the movie. I will go back to watching Speed Racer cartoons (you can watch Part II of this episode The Trick Race HERE and Part III HERE) and will try and forget all about this horrible CGI mess.
PS: I'm not interested in THIS bullshizz either. From here on out, it's only old skool Speed Racer for me.
[Permalink]
The summer of 2008 is only two weeks old, and it already has its first flop. Speed Racer, the Wachowski Brothers' kaleidoscopic retelling of the classic cartoon series, got stuck in neutral this weekend, grossing a mere $20.2 million, according to Sunday's estimates — a disastrous sum for a movie that cost well in excess of $100 mil and that Warner Bros. had considered one of its major summer tentpoles ... Speed Racer (No. 2), which banked less than half of what many in Hollywood had originally expected it would earn over the course of its premiere weekend. Leaked word that the film was tracking poorly coupled with particularly weak reviews made this outcome visible from way down the road ... But that doesn't mitigate the damage. The movie is a wreck on the level of recent memorable summer failures like Kingdom of Heaven (which opened with $19.6 mil) and Poseidon ($22.2 mil) — at the domestic box office, at least. Overseas, well, that's another (possibly sadder) story. While would-be blockbusters that fail domestically usually have a chance to recoup their costs in foreign multiplexes (the aforementioned Kingdom of Heaven and Poseidon both did just that), there are reports that Speed Racer may have gotten a flat tire at the international box office as well; the dust still has to settle before we know the full story there. In the meantime, one has to wonder where the movie — which stars Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, and Matthew Fox — goes from here ... Worse still, Speed Racer could even fall to third place when this weekend's final numbers are unveiled on Monday. That's because its total is a mere $200,000 ahead of the initial No. 3 finisher, What Happens in Vegas, which banked an estimated $20 mil.
Ouch! But to be honest, I am not at all surprised. I saw the film at a midnight screening this past Thursday night and was HUGELY disappointed in how the movie turned out. There really wasn't a single thing that I liked about the movie at all. The awkward spirit of the cartoon was totally lost on the big screen adaptation ... [Source]
... if the movie had turned out more like this ...
... then it prolly would've done much, much better. There is something about the way the original cartoon was presented that gave it its appeal ... none of that was saved for the movie. I will go back to watching Speed Racer cartoons (you can watch Part II of this episode The Trick Race HERE and Part III HERE) and will try and forget all about this horrible CGI mess.
PS: I'm not interested in THIS bullshizz either. From here on out, it's only old skool Speed Racer for me.
[Permalink]
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