Mortal Engines | December 14, 2018 | Universal

[Macleod]

2 hours ago, jedijake said:

Read the article about the "franchise machine". It's actually pretty sad and it's discouraging for anyone wanting to make movies that are fantasy, sci-fi, or have any sort of bigger budget. It tells a tale of being stuck in a continually dwindling environment of franchise films where no original films can break through and more and more franchise films will begin to fade.

What is this article you're referring to?  Can anyone point me to this? 

[The Futurist]

Make peace with that fact, there are all (new)(and old) franchises.

 

Avengers

Cap America

Thor

Black Panther

Doctor Strange

Ant Man

X Men 

Wolverine

Deadpool

Spiderman

Spiderman Multiverse CGI

Venom

 

Batman 

Wondy

Joker

Shazam

Harley Queen

 

The (superhero) franchise age is merely beginning and there is no new high concept on the horizon to change this fact of life.

 

 

 

[Litio]

3 hours ago, Valonqar said:

It's good that ME can't cut it cause YA is mostly crap and it's good to see it's flopping in movie format. Hopefully Chaos Walking crashes and burns too.

 

What movies need are original franchises. Star wars was an original franchise once. So was F&F, Indiana Jones, etc. They were not based on pre-existing source. 

 

 

Star Wars was based on Valerian HQ. 

 

Regardless of whether Mortal Engines is based on a book, this movie does not come from a big brand. To the audience, this is a new world. I consider a valid entry. It should be making better numbers.

 

This talk that every YA movie is the same thing coming from a fan of superhero movies sounds very ironic.

 

[Barnack]

4 hours ago, Valonqar said:

What movies need are original franchises. Star wars was an original franchise once. So was F&F, Indiana Jones, etc. They were not based on pre-existing source. 

What was the last one after Fast and Furious ?

3 hours ago, The Futurist said:

The last big somewhat original franchise was like ....POTC ?

15 years ... and counting ...

A yeah POTC in 2003. The Kingsman ?

 

Avatar 2 could obviously reboot the counter to 0 if it ever get out.

 

3 hours ago, jedijake said:

But do we have the climate for an original franchise?

It is really hard because you have to compete with non-original franchise entry 200+m budgets and budget that can be kept down with people accepting to work with little infront money being certain of the success, elements and technologies already made from other entry of the series, etc... a bit like a chain production type.

 

That the possible beauty of the Marvel MCU model, you can have higher safety net by being attached to it and make it possible to have people ready to spend 200m on a Guardian of the Galaxy even more for a Black Panther, it give a lot of latitude on some aspect at those price even if in some other aspect the box is really limited.

 

 

 

 

[Barnack]

23 minutes ago, Litio said:

This talk that every YA movie is the same thing coming from a fan of superhero movies sounds very ironic.

 

The average level of production quality/budget/talent involved is quite higher in the superhero movies than YA movies.

 

Not every YA movies is the same, Love Simon/Perk of being a wallflower are really different than say Ready Players One or this, not less different than SH that are quite different like an Aquaman, Logan, Venom and Ant-Man.

 

But the Distopian post apocalypse sci-fi subgenre of YA, can feel like sharing quite a lot of similarities.... then again Ready Players One felt really different than Hunger Games.... so it can be confirmation bias.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Barnack

[Litio]

27 minutes ago, Barnack said:

The average level of production quality/budget/talent involved is quite higher in the superhero movies than YA movies.

 

Not every YA movies is the same, Love Simon/Perk of being a wallflower are really different than say Ready Players One or this, not less different than SH that are quite different like an Aquaman, Logan, Venom and Ant-Man.

 

But the Distopian post apocalypse sci-fi subgenre of YA, can feel like sharing quite a lot of similarities.... then again Ready Players One felt really different than Hunger Games.... so it can be confirmation bias.

Of course budget and production are bigger for SHM. This is the genre on the rise.

 

Mortal Engines looks like Hunger Games and Divergent as much as Ant Man looks like Guardians of the Galaxy and Venom. They share quite a lot of similarities.

[Valonqar]

Toldja, the movie isn't faithful to the source so fans rejected it and changes made to attract GA (pretty-fying the heroine) failed miserably. When there's no fanbase to pull it through if GA doesn't show up the whole thing crumbles. It's very rare that GA embraces something that fandom entirely rejects. 

[The Futurist]

Some visuals were nice but damn, everything falls flat in this.

The girl tries hard, she s decent, the boy is a joke, the rest of the cast is sadly hilarious (the blonde girl dear god, straight from a bad CW show), Mr Smith sent his performance from snapshat it seems.

Sad.

The backstory of the young heroine with

Spoiler

Terminator

is something to believe trust me.

Hopefully, Alita has more weight and meat.

 

But I gotta say one thing, a movie like this is always an impossible thing to pull off, when you try to introduce such a huge world with so much History, places and characters.

I always feel giving 2h to films like this is a bit unfair, PJ had 3 or 4h per film in his LOTR trilogy to give depth to everything : characters, places, different tribes, backstories  etc

I am not saying making this longer would have made it a better film, but I guess I am kinda saying it, I dunno ...

 

How low Peter Jackson's career can go now ?

Begging to Kev to direct MCU movie Number 27 ? 

Begging to Netflix to direct a LOTR episode ?

 

These are trying times for him.

 

Also movie probably cost more than the rumored 100m figure, I d say 150m at least but who knows really.

Edited December 15, 2018 by The Futurist

[Barnack]

16 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

Begging to Netflix to direct a LOTR episode ?

 

These are trying times for him.

 

Also movie probably cost more than the rumored 100m figure, I d say 150m at least but who knows really.

Amazon I think the LOTR, Deadline said they heard 150M for it yes.

[REC]

I just saw this movie, it truly is a giant mess.  3 people in the screening on opening night besides myself.

[Litio]

Quote

 

Mortal Engines, directed by his Oscar-winning VFX protege Christian Rivers isn’t one of them with a disastrous domestic opening of $7.5M. This reported $110M production was co-financed by Media Rights Capital and Universal (the latter which reduced its exposure to around 30% thanks to participants such as slate financier Perfect World and also Legendary). 

 

https://deadline.com/2018/12/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-mortal-engines-clint-eastwood-the-mule-weekend-box-office-1202520137/

[Elessar]

Peter Jackson as a producer should sue Universal for lack of promotion.

[Litio]

1 hour ago, Elessar said:

Peter Jackson as a producer should sue Universal for lack of promotion.

Universal tried promote it.

https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/mortal-engines-tops-studios-tv-ad-spending-1203037282/

 

I blame "From producers of The Hobbit". That phrase is poison.

 

 

[Eric Prime]

On 12/2/2017 at 11:04 AM, That One Guy said:

Bold prediction: I think this gets near 300M.

 

[Elessar]

Can't remember the last time a blockbuster flopped this hard. Even something like Warcraft had like over 3-times its opening day.

 

I didn't expect anything after there being zero hype yet i'm still shocked at the result. It's disastrous. There will be books written about it.

[dudalb]

It's going to be beaten for second place opening by Clint Eastwood's "The Mule". To beaten by a movie icon is no reason for shame, but still for a big budget Sci fi epic to be beaten by a serious  drama does not happen very often.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dudalb]

1 minute ago, Elessar said:

Can't remember the last time a blockbuster flopped this hard. Even something like Warcraft had like over 3-times its opening day.

 

I didn't expect anything after there being zero hype yet i'm still shocked at the result. It's disastrous. There will be books written about it.

I doubt there will be books written about it. Nothing that dramatic happened during the fiming of it. It's not a "Heaven's Gate" or "John Carter" level of disaster,it's just a run of the mill big budget flop.

And everybody but the hardcore PJ fans saw this flop coming from a long way off.

Now watch the PJ fans,who were talking about how despite not being the directo this was a Peter Jackson film,blame the director for  this flop.

 

 

[Zakiyyah6]

27 minutes ago, Elessar said:

Can't remember the last time a blockbuster flopped this hard. Even something like Warcraft had like over 3-times its opening day.

 

I didn't expect anything after there being zero hype yet i'm still shocked at the result. It's disastrous. There will be books written about it.

None of it's competition opened up big enough to prevent a 10-15mil opening and yet here we are with a sub ten opening weekend. It was always going to flop but to see it pull in The Girl in the Spider's Web numbers is just humiliating. Peter Jackson's best days seem to be behind him even as a producer. 

[jedijake]

"Original" or first time fantasy/big budget/sci-fi/potential franchise films can only stoop so low before studios just stop putting them out for theatrical release. This is what has been happening and what will happen for a short time before it all ends and films like this go straight to streaming.

 

The downward trend has been devastating for new properties this year. Wrinkle In Time, Nutcracker, and now this. Not a whole lot left to do but bury these ideas.

[Zakiyyah6]

Nutcracker looked like garbage, it looked like those terrible Alice in Blunderland movies. I'm glad that isn't going to become a franchise. A Wrinkle in Time doesn't need a sequel. Still I think it deserved better.