'Transformers' Live Action Movie from DreamWorks? 432
mr_don't writes "Apprently, CNN is reporting that Dreamworks might be in talks with Michael Bay (who directed the bomb Pearl Harbor) to direct a live action Transformers movie. The article says: A November 17, 2006, release date has been set. Bay's credits include the two "Bad Boys" movies, "Pearl Harbor," "Armageddon" and "The Rock." Well, as a child of the 80's I must admit I am interested, but could the movie be directed by Robert Rodriguez instead?"
Old news (Score:4, Informative)
I'm mixed on this.. if its done right, it could be truly awesome...
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
This is old news (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.transformerland.com/transformers-the-m
Why do I say it's been around for months? Because they have already secured the voice of the ORIGINAL Optimus Prime! Not that crappy one on the new cartoons, the ORIGNAL voice. The TRUE voice of Prime !
Rodriguez is not an option. (Score:5, Informative)
And AFAIK, it works kind of like a union thing, the major studios only hiring directors from the DGA.
Rodriguez will no doubt have little trouble finding work... but expect it to be via indie studios.
Re:I knew this was coming (Score:3, Informative)
Only less Citroen C4 and less dancing.
The ad is here: http://uk.download.yahoo.com/ne/fu/oa/eurcncs1850
The "Bomb" Pearl Harbor? (Score:5, Informative)
From boxofficemojo.com [boxofficemojo.com] this is the breakdown:
Pearl Harbor:
Production Budget: $140 million
Est. Marketing Costs: $70 million
Domestic gross: $198,542,554 (44.2%)
+ Overseas gross: $250,678,391 (55.8%)
-----------------
= Worldwide gross: $449,220,945
So... it cost $210 million to make and market the film, it took in $450 million from the box office ALONE (not including the millions that selling tv rights brings, DVD/VHS sales, pay-per-view spots), and I'm sure the producers are really crying about this "bomb" - crying all the way to the bank...
Dude, Give Credit Where Credit's Due (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Live Action? (Score:2, Informative)
That's because the original Transformers was really just a 22 minute advertisement for a cool toy line. There was only just enough actual plot to keep things moving. And it wasn't always that coherent. The CGI ones, while also being about the marketing, actually did have a strong plot in their own right.
Of course, that's just my opinion.
Re:There is more than meets the Eye (Score:4, Informative)
Much, much more info here [wikipedia.org].
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sombody's Got A Bone To Pick (Score:5, Informative)
Y'know, if you're gonna troll, at least take the time to make sure your claims aren't completely wrong. [the-numbers.com]
Released in US: May 25, 2001 :$45,000,000
Total US Gross: $198,539,855
Production Budget: $135,000,000
Prints and Advertising Budget
Worldwide Gross: $450,500,000
Assume that roughly 50% of gross goes back to the studio, factor in things like DVD/Video sales and merchandise, and you've got a seriously profitable movie.
Re:The "Bomb" Pearl Harbor? (Score:2, Informative)
You're right that Pearl Harbor made money, but the story is a little more complicated than adding up the grosses and comparing them to the production budget and marketing costs.
First, grosses include money that goes to studios and exhibitors. So, for the $450 million that Pearl Harbor grossed in theaters, a good chunk of that went to AMC, etc. The formula to determine how much the studios get is complicated -- studios make a higher percentage in the first weeks and a lower percentage deep into the run -- but it's about a 50-50 split. Next, there's distribution fees. Disney produced the film (through Touchstone) and released it in the U.S. via its subsidiary Buena Vista, but internationally there's probably a foreign distributor that gets a cut of what the film earned in its country. That's probably 10% of the international gross. So, Touchstone's theatrical gross is about $450 - $225 - $25, or $200 million.
Second step: Gross participants. This movie was a Jerry Bruckheimer production and starred Ben Affleck, and you bet your ass that they got gross percentage points. This means that they get a certain % of the studio's revenues before the studio takes costs into account. (These are NOT counted in the production budget or marketing costs.) I'll take a rough guess of 30% for total gross participation points. Now Disney's take is down to $140 million.
Third step: Cost of capital. A dollar three years from now isn't worth as much as a dollar today. For a studio, this cost of capital is more or less 10% annually. Marketing costs are thankfully paid nearly during the theatrical run, but production costs are paid two years in advance. So the "real" production budget, in year-of-release relative dollars, is more like $170 million.
So Disney is paying $240 million and getting $140 million. Sounds bad? Yeah, but like BTWR noted, Disney gets TV rights, DVD sales, Pay-per-view, HBO ... that adds up. Plus, it's pure cash flow -- in current Hollywood contracts, people like Affleck and Bruckheimer don't get much of a slice of that pie. (For DVD sales, the store gets about 50%, and of the remaining 50%, the studio gets about 80%). How many DVDs did Pearl Harbor sell? Try
$130 million worth in its first week. [dvdfile.com] Disney makes 40% of that, or about $34 million, in pure cash.
All in all, Pearl Harbor is almost certainly already a profit for Disney. If it's not yet, continuing DVD sales will push it over the hump very soon.
Re:Rodriguez is not an option. (Score:4, Informative)
So Rodriguez dropped out of the DGA. That move cost him the opportunity to direct Paramount's sci-fi adventure A Princess of Mars. (The union forbids non-members from signing onto projects already in the works at a member studio.) He can, however, make movies independently and distribute them through a studio. His friendship with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who headed Miramax but split from Disney this week to start a new company, practically guarantees he will continue to direct movies.
So it looks like the old having-powerful-buddies thing will still happen for Rodriguez. Sure, it won't be as good as it would if he was in the DGA, but who knows.
Re:There is more than meets the Eye (Score:2, Informative)
It really depends on what kind of experience you're looking for---relatively few (sane) people are into anime because it's anime; more are into particular genres that happen to be more commonly produced in animation, or into Japanese or Asian mass-media in general, of which anime's the easiest to obtain in the US.
That said, with a few assumptions about genres you might like given that you're posting on Slashdot, here's a somewhat recentish list.
If you're looking for something like the cartoons of your youth, but with a bit more depth and darkness: Go for Full Metal Alchemist, currently running on TV in the US.
Running immediately after that is the cyberpunk cop show Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's significantly less action-oriented than the movie it's a sequel to.
If you're looking for a war miniseries with sci-fi elements, try Gundam 08th MS Team. Gundam is an overhanging series name comparable in runtime and quality variance to Star Trek; while you may've caught various incarnations on TV that tried to be a gallery of prettyboys, a kung-fu movie, or a rehash of the original, 08th MS Team can be best summed up as "'Nam with Huge Robots".
On a similar basis, but with a heavier focus on the political end of things, Zeta Gundam is a good suggestion, but it's a heavy investment at $150 or more for the whole 2-season TV series at once. A film trilogy is currently being produced in Japan, but it's incomplete, with no US release date set, and will have a variety of story changes to make it "less depressing".
Record of Lodoss War is a classic high fantasy show---to give some idea of the style, it's based on a series of novels based on the author's D&D campaign. There are two different iterations; the one to go for, in my opinion, is the two-disc direct-to-video version, rather than the 4-disc TV version.
(Without even going into the moral issues of copying or of paying a third party to copy for you, the video and translation qualities typically suck donkey balls.)
Old news (Score:3, Informative)
Quick guide to Transformers TV shows (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. The projected release date has always been 2006. 2005 was just a date picked by the fans to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the first movie. On the web forum, Don Murphy mentions they were shooting for a summer 2006 [d13satellite.com] release. More information on the movie can be found on the TF - The Movie roundup [tfw2005.com] page. If the first movie is successful, they plan for Unicron to make an appearance in the third one.
Though many people do not realise it, over 500 episodes of Transformers have been made in their various incarnations.
Here is a brief rundown of the various Transformer shows that have aired in the last 20 years.
American shows
Transformers Generation 1 TV show [bwtf.com] (American written show, set during 1985-86 and 2005-06)
2) Transformers Generation 2 TV show (modified version of the G1 series that added an annoying 3D space cube animation.
Japanese only series
Transformers: Headmasters [digiserve.com] (Japanese). Available as an official or partial fandub.
Transformers: Masterforce [digiserve.com] (Japanese). Available in official dub or sub-titled versions.
Transformers Victory [digiserve.com] (Japanese series) Available as an official dub, fan dub, or subtitled.
Transformers Zone [digiserve.com] (Japanese). Available in subtitled or dubbed versions.
Though transforming robots remained popular in the East, the Transformers line was 'rested' for a few years.
The Beast Era
In 1996 the toy line was relaunched. After the disappointing sales of the Generation 2 series, vehicle modes were abandoned and animal forms introduced. Optimus Primal transformed into a gorilla and Megatron became a dinosaur. The Beast era was set years after the original series 300-1000 years, depending upon your source) and introduced two new factions - the Maximals and Predacons.
Beast Wars [bwtf.com] - The Autobots and Decepticons are gone and the Maximals and Predacons have made peace. This peace is broken by Megatron (a namesake, not the original), who travels back in time in an attempt to change the course of history. In most episodes he is thwarted by Optimus Primal and a small band of Maximals. The animation shows its age, but it is probably the most intelligently written TF show made (season 2, in particular).
Beast Machines [bwtf.com] - The Beast Wars are over and the Maximals return to Cybertron. They find that Megatron has captured the sparks (soul) of every Transformer on the planet and created an army of mindless drones called Vehicons. Best remembered for the strong religious overtones, huge explosions and scenes of the Maximals running away.
Japanese Beast series
While the US got the second and third season of Beast Wars, Japan received two spin-off series that focused upon other planets.
Beast Wars 2 [digiserve.com] (Japanese). Leo Convoy (lion) Vs Galvatron (dragon).
Beast Wars Neo [bwtf.com] (Japanese) - The Maximal leader, Big Convoy (a wooly mammoth) faces against the evil Magmatron. Unlike earlier Convoy/Prime toys, Big Convoy has a removable matrix in his chest.
Autobots and Decepticons return
Hasbro's initial plan was to create a followup to the Beast Machines series called Transtech. This would feature vehicle TFs with animal moulding. However, it was later abandoned and Hasbro made a deal