Watchmen 50 Days On, Was It Worth the Gamble? 448
brumgrunt writes "Friday marks the 50th day on general release for what was the long-awaited Watchmen movie. But how much money has it made, and how has it measured up to Warner Bros' expectations? Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "
yes, worth it (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely Worth It (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally worth it. A bunch of my friends who had never read Watchmen, and really aren't the reading types, made it out to see the movie and we all had a long discussion about Rorschach and the Comedian, and how much we loved Dan Dreiberg.
Movie was good, Watchmen is good to make a movie about, end of story.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're ignoring the opportunity cost. Sure, it'll end up returning 3 times the amount it cost to make, which is a decent profit, but could the studio have spent that money making another (or two, or three other) films that would have done better? If so then Watchmen was the wrong choice. In this case would they have been better off making a couple of PG-13 films?
More to the point, what are its knock-on effects? (Score:5, Insightful)
*I know Watchmen was in production by the time TDK arrived in 2008, but a lot could've been left on the cutting-room floor if the studio had seen that year's adult superhero movie flop.
Bad time for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "
It's not worth the gamble, expense, and hassle to go see a movie in the theater any more. Speaking as part of the core audience for this movie (as in, I actually own the graphic novel) there is no fucking way that I'll go to a theater to see much of anything any more. I actually found it cheaper to buy an HDTV than to go to the movies once a month for a year. Unfortunately for the Blu-Ray wankers, I also find that an upconverted DVD looks fucking fantastic. If I were the kind of person who paused stills so that I could bitch about compression artifacting maybe I would feel differently. Finally, I find that I rewatch movies less and less these days, so I won't buy the movie on any form of media. At this point it looks like I'll be renting a DVD from Netflix.
The distributors have been ratcheting up the price of getting the print in your movie theater to the point where diminishing returns are in full effect. My understanding is that pretty much none of the ticket price typically goes to a theater. For the price of two people going to see the movie, you can buy the DVD. Or better yet, get netflix for a month. If they want asses in theater seats, they're going to have to drop the cost to the theater. And if they want people to spread buzz about their movies, they're going to need those asses in those seats. The movie industry is going to slaughter itself, and it can't happen soon enough for me — not because I want less movies to be produced, but because I think that moviestars have too much influence in our culture.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. It will be Serenity all over again.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that ... so what is the problem exactly?
Opportunity cost. $100m invested in The Watchmen can't be invested elsewhere, and if $100m invested in another movie would have given higher profits, then they didn't make as much money as they could have.
it was a commentary on a long running debate: (Score:4, Insightful)
that moviemakers gut the mythology of a work in order to bring it onto screen
they didn't do that here
sure, they got rid of the squid, but peter jackson also got rid of mr. bombadil from lotr and no one seems to give him that much flak for that. both the squid and mr. bombadil are kind of completely out of context of the stories they inhabit, so really, no big deal
obviously, the filmmakers, directors, writers: they had passion for the work. but that's actually the source of the criticism they get: that it was TOO committed to the material. the issue was that they made the movie a slavish devotion to a frame-by-frame reading of the material, which was a herculean task, and also mostly successful, but only on that measure
and yet they get flak for it: that it was hollow, eeriely emotionally empty for being a frame-by-frame remake. that's been the substance of a lot of critical reviews
the lesson: you can't satisfy everyone. if you are adopting a major literary work to film, just go with your gut, be prepared to piss off the fanboy fundamentalists, and be prepared to go over the heads of a lot of the audience. because if you pander too much to the fanbots or the general public, you either water down what makes the material great, or you make a cult movie that you will still be hypercriticized for, because, in the end, there just is no satisfying the fundamentalist fanboys
the best anyone can do is hope for success like peter jackson and lotr. he's pretty much the gold standard now for adapting much loved literary works to screen. meanwhile, watchmen was received lukewarm critical, and lukewarm popular
so the final commentary is: meh, its ok, whatever
Re: Absolutely Worth It (Score:3, Insightful)
Totally worth it. A bunch of my friends who had never read Watchmen, and really aren't the reading types, made it out to see the movie and we all had a long discussion about Rorschach and the Comedian, and how much we loved Dan Dreiberg.
Movie was good, Watchmen is good to make a movie about, end of story.
I couldn't disagree more.
An hour too long, dull and unsympathetic characters, suspension of belief overchallenged, lame ending. I don't see how anyone who wasn't already a fan could have possibly enjoyed it.
Why are you asking us ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle?
Bluntly, it's not my money, or my time, or my movie, so why are you asking me if it was worth it ?
It would be cool if the producers read slashdot, but I doubt it.
Re:Bad time for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
A movie here is $10, per person. That doesn't include the cost of transportation, or the grossly overpriced food/drinks (not that I buy those anymore).
So if you go to 10 movies a year, alone, and walk? Sure. For me, it'd be more like $200, easily. The TV suddenly looks more competitive, since can show a lot more then 10 movies a year.
Re:More to the point, what are its knock-on effect (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh please, step down from your high horse. You just look like an ass.
There's nothing wrong with wanting an intelligent movie. I enjoy them as well. But sometimes I just want something that's just fun to watch, no matter how much the story lacks.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry but that is fucking ridiculous. If you can't make a profit off a 180% return on your investment something is seriously flawed with the business model, and you need to figure out what you did wrong.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:2, Insightful)
And this is why I don't go to the movies anymore.
Why the fucking hell would I pay 10$ to see an INCOMPLETE movie? And it's VOLUNTARY incomplete too?
Fuck you, studio executives.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is this rule of thumb? This is Hollywood accounting [wikipedia.org] by the way where Forrest Gump with a budget of $55 million grossed over $670 million at the box office but was declared "unprofitable" by Paramount in order to avoid paying royalties to Winston Groom who wrote the novel. Mr. Groom unfortunately did not know that most of Hollywood write their contracts to get a cut of the gross not the net revenue because the infamous Hollywood accounting. Paramount later settled their dispute with Winston only because they really wanted to make the sequel.
Re:Bad time for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone involved with movies makes more money these days.
You see it in the way movies have less of everything real (smaller sets, fewer extras, fewer real stunts, simulated exotic locations).
IN the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's, most hollywood types were paid salaries a lot closer to the rest of the country. And they made a *ton* more movies as a result.
Each movie was cheap- the audience paid the same percentage of their income to see a movie a week that we pay to see a movie a month. An actor might be in 15 movies in 5 years.
your criticism is empty (Score:1, Insightful)
there's always cranks, which is what you clearly are
fact is, they could make movie tickets $15/ head, have crying babies and cell phones all the time, and movie houses would still do gangbustersd business
why?
because its still better than sitting at home watching vin diesel on a 17 inch monitor in your basement by yourself
sure, you can talk about home theatre systems, which most people can't afford, and you can talk about inviting your friends over, which is not something easy to coordinate
and finally, psychologists have shown that all of the oohs and aahs and giggles in the audience heighten your experience, so over all, its a win, in spite of all the complaints you can muster
tv was supposed to kill theatres, then vcrs, then dvds, the internet, then hd theatre... bullshit, bullshit, bullshit
the movie going experience has a long and profitable future ahead of it, in spite of all the whiny cranks like yourself
because, in the end, your spoken words don't actually match your actions (that is, you whine, but still go back to the theatre nayways), or, if you actually don't go to the movie theatres for what are actually minor complaints, then you are just a vanishing small minority that can be safely ignored: the chronically unsatisfiable crank
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:4, Insightful)
But I'm also glad that I didn't have a stake in it - It had to be an unsettling investment for those who did. It's got to feel good to have participated, but it was obviously a gamble from the beginning. Watchmen is definitely aimed at a niche market.
On the contrary, it was probably a pretty predictable quantity compared to other movies. Not that any new release is predictable, but this one wasn't anything like 300 or Sin City where they were hoping to pull in people who knew nothing about the source material, or like Persepolis where it was unknown whether the enthusiasm for the books would last through the release of the movie (and where there was probably a lot of doubt that fans of the books would even bother to see the movie.) It was a so-so movie based on a popular and prestigious graphic novel. They knew the size of the niche. They knew that the readership of the graphic novel would contain more movie fans than the general population, and, having test-screened the movie, they knew it wouldn't break out to a broader audience or inspire massive rewatching.
Assuming that the broadcast and rental rights were sold before the film screened, the DVD sales are probably the riskiest part -- how many people want to see it again? Will fans of the graphic novel want to buy a movie that failed to do the source material justice (inevitably and maybe blamelessly, but still)?
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it that marketing costs don't figure into the budget?
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:5, Insightful)
I often prefer the theater cut to the "extended" or "unrated" or "special" edition. Most of the time, the material that I see in the extra scenes drags on, and it is readily apparent WHY that material was left out in the first place.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the math, not on budget, but on earnings. The film "brought in" that amount to theatres, not to the production company.
If you make widgets at $1 a piece, and sell them at $2 a piece, you're not making as much money as people think if the local store is buying them at $1.25 from their distributor and the distributor buys them off you at $1.05 each.
In this case, the movie tickets sold value is what we're seeing, not the price WB got from its distributors who got that money from theatres who are themselves probably making a killing.
If The Watchmen movie was made in 1988 (Score:3, Insightful)
I love how this is tagged (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not want this movie to be financially successful, otherwise the studio will insist on producing a sequel.
Re:It Is Rated R! #6 for Opening Weekend! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Measure up? (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it weird the way people are obsessing about this. I barely noticed it. Dr. Manhattan was clearly intentionally depicted at the very trough of the uncanny valley, barely even human. He looked no more naked than a horse.