Posts Tagged ‘Monster House’

With so many bombs like "The Green Hornet" trying to sell 3D (converted no less), which don't even warrant a normally priced ticket, why should we not still consider 3D to be a money-grabbing gimmick that doesn't add enough to the viewing experience to justify the higher ticket price?

Dear Hollywood,

Please stop pushing 3D.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides has underachieved in terms of earning first weekend grosses for 3D showings, with more audiences opting for 2D prints. Now, with $90.1 million earned its first weekend in just the U.S., and over $400 million to be earned worldwide by the end of its first full week, the film can hardly be considered unsuccessful. However, numbers show that American audiences’ interest in 3D could be waning. What everyone is trying to figure out is whether fewer 3D tickets sold means audiences are no longer seeing the value in 3D technology or they are becoming less inclined to fork over the extra cash for a 3D ticket.

Guess what Hollywood – if Americans are indeed sick of 3D it’s because of both reasons.

The list of recent movies released in 3D where the extra dimension actually added to the viewing experience is extremely short, including only Avatar, Tron: Legacy, How to Train Your Dragon, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Coraline, and Monster House. Notice how four of those six are 100% animated, and the two “live action” films are ones which were greatly reliant on digital effects to the point where one could justifiably consider them mostly animated as well. This is not a coincidence, and such a pattern does not help the argument that 3D is the future of the medium. Personally, I won’t give that claim any consideration until I see a truly live action film wow me like the six just mentioned.

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Director Robert Zemeckis, head of motion-capture animation company ImageMovers, has an uncertain relationship with Disney

ImageMovers, the motion-capture effects studio headed by Robert Zemeckis, is being dropped by Disney. The “shingle” is known for producing computer animated movies such as Monster House, Beowulf, as well as the recent Jim Carrey vehicle A Christmas Carol, which was produced by Disney. The Mouse House has only financed the last of those three, and began production of a remake of Yellow Submarine, but appears to consider such financial commitments as too costly with the current market. A Christmas Carol, directed by Zemeckis, had a budget of around $200 million but had a domestic gross of only $137 million (the film totaled $323 million all in all).

“Bob [Zemeckis] and the entire [ImageMovers] team successfully built a state-of-the-art studio and produced an amazing film, A Christmas Carol, at a time when the dynamics of the industry are rapidly changing,” Disney Studios president Alan Bergman said in a statement. “But, given today’s economic realities, we need to find alternative ways to bring creative content to audiences, and [ImageMovers] no longer fits into our business model.” – Hollywood Reporter

Disney does not want to lose Zemeckis and his team, however, more or less saying that they want to keep such high-quality talent in house so they can continue to work on Yellow Submarine. As late as Friday, however, there has been no reported deal.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Quick Opinion: As disappointing as the news is, it doesn’t come as too big of a shock. Financially speaking from Disney’s standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. For not only does a motion-capture film like A Christmas Carol cost a lot of money, but a lot of time as well. And being that any studio usually limits itself to financing so many projects at any one time, money used to produce such a supposedly fiscally unrewarding project as a motion-capture animated one might keep Disney from financing a project that would deliver better returns. So why would Disney continue production for Yellow Submarine? Well, the project is fully into pre-production, as it is already cast, has a workable script, and the FX team is no doubt already deep in focus to provide the film’s animation and 3-D effects. In other words, they’ve sunk too much money into the film to just scrap it at this juncture.