Posted on 12/17/2007 7:35:58 AM PST by Constitutionalist Conservative
And in only its second weekend in release, the bottom fell out of costly domestic flop The Golden Compass from New Line, which forked over $200+ million to make it. I know, I know, the pic is doing OK overseas after earning $50.9 mil from 27 territories December 7th-9th. But the fantasy epic is so lost domestically it earned only an anemic $2.6 million Friday and $3.7 million Saturday from 3,528 nearly empty runs for 3rd place and a new cume of just $40.5 mil. I hear studio topper Bob Shaye once again is blaming everyone but himself -- including the movie's director Chris Weitz, and also New Line's own prez of production Toby Emmerich.
(Excerpt) Read more at deadlinehollywooddaily.com ...
I’m betting the likelihood that the original subject matter and author played into it is being completely ignored. I really wanted to see the movie, until I read some interviews with the book author. He has every right to write and believe what he does, and I have every right to make sure he doesn’t get any of my money for it.
I wonder if he blames God.
Note to Movie execs:
Don’t make movies telling people they are evil for believing in God.....
The problem is that The Compass is “the right answer”. Corporate drones will recognize that term. For instance, when I worked for a major retailer we opened a store in S Central LA after the riots. It performed horribly. When we looked at stores to keep open, we were told that the SC LA store was “the right answer”. No matter how badly it performed, it was to stay open.
The Compass will be successful, even if it isn’t. They have invested more than money into it.
You mean people in the US don’t want to waste their time on the first third of a God snuffing trilogy?
What I don’t get is that there are SO MANY GREAT FANTASY TRILOGIES and EPICS out there, why does an anti catholic piece of crap like this get the green light.. and the “Dragonlance Chronicles” is finally getting made as a movie, but only as a cheaply animated direct to video?
If there was a trilogy that deserved a high $$ CGI live action movie, this set would have been a great follow up to LOTR...
Sigh... Hollywood will never learn... besides... FIZBAN is way more fun than Frodo, and far more wise than Dubledore
And Galdalf... bah....
What was that spell again??? Ah, yes... FIREBALL!
Don’t let them fool you it’s not doing all that well overseas, either. Spain is the place it did best coming close to Harry Potter type grosses. In England it topped Narnia grosses only slightly and it earned less than Narnia everywhere else.
There is a reason JK Rowling waited until AFTER the final potter book was out and she had no further responsibility for making any more movies in order to torpedo the series by “outing” dumbledore.
Compass was made as a me too narnia by studio suits who think stories are irrelevent, who think back story does not sell as much as special effects. The story is everything.
Let the tasteless, Godless commies overseas fund it.
We here in America support neither the bashing of faith, nor poorly made epics.
How about blame crappy writing to this Narnia wannabe POS.
Daniel Craig is a weirdo homo who sucked as Bond.
(no pun intended)
Pullman objects to the dogmatism and authoritarianism of organized religion, and that these views play a prominent role in his trilogy of books called His Dark Materials, of which The Golden Compass is the first volume.
This said It also says that the movie is going well in other countries..Other countries do not care what their children see or read some think the same way as Pullman..
What the heck was that????
My daughter and a boy from church are planning to see that, once he gets out of school for Christmas break.
Why would I, or any other parent, spend our money on aa author, director, producer, etc. who are specifically targeting my kids and grandkids to destroy the faith and values that we are try and instill in them?
Answer: We will not.
Apparently tens of millions of others agree. Glad to see it too.
Alvin and the Chipmunks opening weekend take beat the Golden Compass opening with $45 million vs. $26 million.
The Chipmunks beat a $200 million blockbuster. Think about it.
I Am Legend has all the buzz, and kicked ass at the box office over the weekend.
The fact is Will Smith is one of the most bankable ‘stars’ in Hollywood.
Same here. I wanted to see those armored bears.
Exactly.
From what I’ve read, the movie is failing for two reasons - what you stated and the public’s reaction to it, and the fact that it’s not very good.
One FReeper (I forget who) coined it The Chronicles of Yawnia. Too funny.
All I see is the reviewers were tanking I am Legend but it passed records for a december opening, passed Lord of the Rings even at $70mil this weekend. Goes to show reviews are not always right, or the public will watch whatever they please to escape from political warmongering.
Apparently some live action Dungeons and Dragons.
If you really want to see it, why don’t you? I saw it, was pleasantly entertained, and was not subjected to any kind of a message. You should think for yourself, and not let others make up your mind for you.
Actually, based on the numbers in the article above, Alvin's opening weekend whupped GC's cumulative U.S. earnings ($40 million).
Like I told faloi, why not see it anyway, and be entertained and make up your own mind.
The story is everything.
Yep
My guess is soon Newline will be begging Peter Jackson to do The Hobbit after this debacle.
Well shoot, If they had even taken the effort to do Eragon right instead of screwing around with the story line so badly that they could not possibly pull a trilogy out of that mess they created of that film.
That book did better world wide than the Harry Potter series and had a huge fan base waiting for the movie. A hugely disappointed fan base letting everybody know on the net within minutes of walking out of the first movie how badly they has screwed up the story.
They were stupid not to have put there money into doing that one right.
I was the one who posted the article with that quip -- the credit goes to NY Post reviewer Kyle Smith.
Me too! I thought the movie was going to be cool until I started reading about the anti-God theme it had. Those bears do look cool though!
Hey! There are people from Texas in here ya know, and Aggie isnt a bad thing around here! And whats a paggie?
Gig'em Aggies !!!
Gig'em Aggies !!!
I think it means Pagans! I could be wrong!
Just looked it up - it has only made 2.5 million in Canada, so that seems to be inline with the 25 million it has made in the US, given that we are about 10% or so of your population.
Bush’s fault.
The movie has made 90 mill worldwide, with just the first week of foreign box office reporting. It costs 180 mill to make so it probably wont pay for it’s self. However, the final number is far from being in. Then there’s DVDs, cable etc. It may break even
But you have to look at what their message is.
The Narnia series has languished and suffered multiple low budget remakes because of its message. It is KNOWN as a christian based story.
Imagine ANY of the WW II era fims being made today. Heck any of the Erol Flynn movies would have zero chance of being green lighted today.
Look at the slew of anti-american anti-war movie disasters of late. ANYBODY outside of hollywood could have advised those would be spectacular failures.
There is a reason they call it La La Land. Not only do they not live in reality, they don’t even want to hear or see reality. (ironic considering we are talking about picking a good fantasy film script)
Never got into Eragon myself...
Dragonlance Chronicles however are an absolute classic of Fantasy Literature. The collection of characters are like none that have been on the screen in such combinations... and they have a proven fan base. Why this only got a horribly cheap direct to video low frame per second animated green light, is beyond me. Done right, this one would have blown LOTR away... I’m sorry, but I can only take so much of the effeminate self doubting hobbit.
Not the best I have ever read, that would go to Tad William’s “Memory Sorrow and Thorn” trilogy. But I don’t think this one would convert to a movie trilogy well, each book is over 800 pages.. an unprecidented Epic... truly the Fantasy Equivalent of War and Peace.
Who is that about? Can’t read the text.
I am making up my own mind. It just differs from your decision, and agrees with some others. The movie might be great, and I’ll likely see it someday. But I’m not going to spend “extra” money (above and beyond what I already pay for cable and Netflix) to watch it.
Why are you attacking Daniel Craig on this thread about a dreadful movie?
Besides he was hitting Sienna Miller for which we can only accuse him of bad taste. As in she has no class.
For years I’ve been thinking that the Thomas Covenant trilogy would be fantastic in film especially since they can do a really good job with all the necessary special effects now. I loved reading that series of books.
They did green light an Errol Flynn movie in recent years. It was called Pirates of the Caribbean. It didn’t do too badly at the box office.
This is what happens when you make a movie that alienates a lot of people. You can get away with alienating 5% or 10% of the audience. It gets dicey when you alienate 25% to 33%.
Alienate half or more, and you’ve got serious problems. As people learned about the themes explored in this series of books, they turned cool to it.
It’s not unexpected, really. That being said, the film is doing worse than most expected even with low expectations.
Now Hollywood knows how large is the market for aethist films.
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