Cartoon Brew preview of 2011 animated films

[GeorgeC]

It's sad that there are so many sequels in that list.

It means the mentality that go for broke for the path of least resistance has won...

... and the people who still bother to go to movie theaters are rewarding that line of thinking.


3D and sequels upon sequels are not the way to maintain, let alone grow business.

The only reason studios made more money last year was because of ticket prices. Attendance was way down and that was reflected by severe declines in parts of the year when there should have been more people going to theaters.

Look behind the hype of the totals and you'll see people were staying away because of the lack of quality films available during Christmas time...

[carlminez]

This list doesn't look too interesting to me. Hop looks rather fresh and original. Other than that the list seems to consist mostly of crappy sequels.

[Randall]

How does one know if they're crappy? None of them are out yet.

[Ben]

Carlminez. The new EricJ?

[Whippet Angel]

Possibly. The only major difference is his style of bluntness over crypticness. Which I appreciate. Much easier to read.

[American_dog_2008]

I can't wai for Hop!

[EricJ]

Possibly. The only major difference is his style of bluntness over crypticness. Which I appreciate. Much easier to read.

Nah, just trying his new teeth on "I hate Pixar, isn't that iconoclastic, isn't it, huh? "
C'mon, this isn't Usenet.

(By now, whenever we get "Hey, why's Pixar making so many sequels, are they greedy or something?", it's a noobie red-flag--
I was going to repeat the whole FAQ Disclaimer about Circle 7 and Bob Iger for his benefit, but, y'know...just seemed like it'd be falling on deaf ears.)

[Ben]

Phew.

[Dacey]

And so, in "Mars Needs Moms," we have what might be the biggest flop in Disney history:

http://boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/?s ... -11&p=.htm

Seriously, this is VERY bad, especially since "Moms" apparently cost $150 million to make. I'll wait until Sunday numbers come in to post this on the front page, but from the looks of things, the movie's going to open to under $10 million this weekend. Ouch indeed!

[GeorgeC]

The film's failing because many people HATE the look of animated features done entirely with mo-cap. It's eerie and inhuman. Works well for fighting games if you don't pause them too often, though!

Zemeckis keeps on doing these films because he probably hates working with large camera crews and casts. This is basically a George Lucas dream (nightmare to the rest of us) come to life. Few people, all mechanical! Zemeckis is still probably at least 12-15 years ahead of himself.

Doesn't help that the stories for most of the mo-cap films weren't particularly well-scripted.

Looking at the trailer for Mars Needs Mom, it sure looked like a real "winner"!

I'm beginning to think those Forrest Gump Oscars were a fluke...!



There used to be an art to making trailers where editors could convince most anybody to see just about any crappy film. It's definitely been lost, or some films are so bad there's hardly any good footage to make a good trailer from.

[estefan]

Me thinks that Yellow Submarine remake won't be green-lit any time soon. Thus, leading Zemeckis to make the Roger Rabbit sequel his next project. And I guess Simon Wells will return to DreamWorks. It's the only place he's ever delivered a hit (though, I quite liked Fievel Goes West, which failed more due to a poorly chosen release date).

In regards to motion-capture, I think WETA is the only visual effects studio to truly accomplish it and know how to use the technology. Hence why Gollum and the Na'vi are the few motion-capture creations to have not fallen into the Uncanny Valley. I expect Tintin to follow suit.

[EricJ]

And so, in "Mars Needs Moms," we have what might be the biggest flop in Disney history:

http://boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/?s ... -11&p=.htm

Seriously, this is VERY bad, especially since "Moms" apparently cost $150 million to make. I'll wait until Sunday numbers come in to post this on the front page, but from the looks of things, the movie's going to open to under $10 million this weekend. Ouch indeed!

Now, now, it's only Friday's numbers (as in "Nobody ever goes to kids' movies on Fridays, until the Sat/Sun numbers shoot up over the final weekend tally")--
We've already made this same mistake a hundred times, getting our hopes up prematurely. (Christmas Carol, appropriately enough, for one.)

Not that I think it's suddenly going to turn around into a smash by Sunday night, but saying that it's singlehandedly outdone Atlantis and Black Cauldron is a bit early.
Zemeckis was already a Dead Studio Walking when MNM came out, so Disney doesn't have anything to lose by it, just that they had enough invested in it to bump it up to the sweet lucrative Easter slot, rather than the February throwaway slot that the Garden-Gnome movie got.

(My only tear shed for Zemeckis is, "Darn, if there's no Yellow Submarine remake, what excuse are they going to have to release the original on Blu-ray??? ")
-----

As for the other lucrative Easter-slot contender, in the last week or two, I've seen both mainstream-store marketing, and shots of character-marketing at Universal Studios for Russell Brand in "Hop", and my one and only reaction was "Dear gods, they're actually serious about it... 0_0 "

[Dacey]

But Eric...it made less than $2 million on it's opening day!!

Of course it's going to see a "boost" on Saturday and Sunday, but that won't be nearly enough to save it. Considering the HUGE budget here, anything under $20 million in its first three days was going to be seen as bad, and now we're not even probably looking at a double digit weekend.

Long story short, production budget is everything, and since "Moms" isn't going to come anywhere near what it cost to make unless some miracle happens, then it's going to be an even bigger money loser than "Treasure Planet" was. And "Hop" is easily going to take away whatever audience this movie has left when it comes out in a few weeks...assuming that it's even still playing then.

[EricJ]

Long story short, production budget is everything, and since "Moms" isn't going to come anywhere near what it cost to make unless some miracle happens, then it's going to be an even bigger money loser than "Treasure Planet" was.

Just FTR, Treasure Planet opened fourth in its original opening, with 007 and Harry Potter ahead of it. (While "Eight Crazy Nights" opened fifth, and had Treasure Planet ahead of it.)
So far, Mars is fifth place, and if you can call Battle:LA and Red Riding Twilight "competition", that's stretching things a bit.

And "Hop" is easily going to take away whatever audience this movie has left when it comes out in a few weeks...assuming that it's even still playing then.

Yeah, just as a precaution ahead of time, let's not make the same "Gnomeo" mistake of thinking something was a "hit" just because it opened during an empty season.

[American_dog_2008]

Does "Mars Needs Moms" look Razzie award out?