Hollywood Cut Down Ninja Theory's Movie Dreams
- Thread starter vansau
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Sorry but it is. A movie only succeeds if it profits. There are quite a few cases of special effects heavy movies that did really well but still flunked because they didn't cover their outrageous costs.Arcane Azmadi said:
This is the opposite. If the movie was cheap but still didn't find a big enough market it'd fail. And there are plenty of costs involved with production, marketing, distribution, licencing etc. that it's not that much of a cost drop.
I'm not entirely sure that game cutscenes -- even super-impressive ones -- would make a good movie. I guess they fear another Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (haven't seen it, but I heard it flopped.)
One can also see this as the ultimate expression of the idea that games want to be movies. I'm not saying that minimalist stories are required for a good game, I'm just saying that games do not need to kiss up to film to be good.
One can also see this as the ultimate expression of the idea that games want to be movies. I'm not saying that minimalist stories are required for a good game, I'm just saying that games do not need to kiss up to film to be good.
I quite liked The Spirits Within..Rawle Lucas said:
Even went to the cinema to see it, granted, the showing I went to on the first day of release was less than half full.. >.>
Hollywood is full of crap, anyway.
Might be better off if they used the money from their game to make the movie themselves... don't have worry about stockholders, then.
Might be better off if they used the money from their game to make the movie themselves... don't have worry about stockholders, then.
Are you kidding? If it had jiggle physics, Hollywood would be over it like lice.duchaked said:
Unfortunately, Hollywood are in the same position as Governments. So far removed from the everyday workings of life that they'll only go with proven track records unless you've got the director-from-hell pushing every step of the way.
And then if it works, they'll want to clone it repeatedly.
That's not to say that Hollywood is always wrong, but with the amounts of money they're talking about, they can't afford to take risks. Which is a shame, because it's risks like non-stereotypical Female/Non-American characters that would get them back half the condemnation they are under.
But you're still using up X PR budget, X distribution, X TV slots, X interviews, and only making 5 million.Sir John the Net Knight said:
Now, if you pitch 100 mil, make back 50 mil using up all the Xs, while also getting Y merchandise... then the maths all add up.
It's not just about how much money you make, it's about how fast you make it.
I like the idea and agree they should have shot for a TV movie of straight to DVD title. Game graphics engines are to the point where decent movies could be made. it might even be the source of a new wave of low-budget genre titles.
Maybe we should set up our own low-budget studio and make really cool movies. Who's with me? We could make a movie about lesbian catgirl mecha piloting space pirates! "I'll form the head" will never have the same meaning again.
Maybe we should set up our own low-budget studio and make really cool movies. Who's with me? We could make a movie about lesbian catgirl mecha piloting space pirates! "I'll form the head" will never have the same meaning again.
I sincerely hope that they don't make a tv short-movie like Red Dead Redemption - while the game was awesome, the tv short was literally just a bunch of cutscenes and bits of gameplay mashed up together - it didn't work at all.
I don't see any way you can call Scott Pilgrim a risk.Jumplion said:
It's a COMIC BOOK MOVIE. Period. End of story. It's a movie based on a comic book. It's a story from a comic book. That's tried-and-true. Hell, that's what's IN right now! Where's the risk in that? I'll tell you what the risk was, and why it flopped. They released it like it was just another comic book movie. Like it was Iron Man or Spiderman -- middle of the summer. No, Hollywood, no, it's not a traditional late-summer action movie blockbuster.
Scott Pilgrim's failure isn't a story about Hollywood taking a chance and failing. Scott Pilgrim's failure is a story about Hollywood refusing to take a chance and it backfiring on them.
A relatively unknown comic from the popular culture, advertised practically exclusively to nerds and video game buffs (if the marketing was decent), going up against one of the biggest action crossover-fic in existance [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320253/] (I don't care if it sucked, you have to admit it sounded awesome on paper) is definitely a huge-ass risk.warmonkey said:
You cannot compare Scott Pilgrim to Spiderman or Iron Man. Almost everyone knows who Spiderman is, he's familiar,we all know that he does stuff that a spider can. With Iron Man, not everyone knew him at first, but his premise was familiar and fun, and now everyone knows him.
Look, I loved Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, it was great, but nobody knows who Scott Pilgrim is. It's some obscure, underground comic thing that takes heavy inspiration from Manga and Video Game references. The general public just has no idea what that is.
I was thinking the same thing. Although it's been 8 years or so since then, this sort of thing tends to stick in Hollywood execs' heads. And now there's only 5 or 6 major studios, there're only so many places you could sell this thing.Rawle Lucas said:
It had very good CGI for its time. There were (not entirely unfounded) complaints of "uncanny valley" effect. Kind of like Polar Express rendered only in grey and brown. Also, it really has no ties to any of the Final Fantasy games. It takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth and the plot is closer to Akira than any FF game, of which VII, VIII and IX would have been freshest in the mind of most gamers. And Sakaguchi wrote the script and seems to have had a lot of creative control, so you can't really blame Hollywood execs for these decisions either.
The end product isn't bad, but most of the characters are paper-thin stereotypes, which combined with the dreary settings sucks so much life out of the film. That might be intentional given the plot, but it makes the story kind of depressing and hopeless.
It's very likely Boll had already recovered the budget of the original before it was even released. Then however little box office it made would have been pure profit. This article [http://www.slate.com/id/2117309/] shows how Hollywood used loopholes in German tax laws to secure film funding. Recently, the German government tightened that loophole to prevent its abuse by foreign filmmakers. But it should be noted that Uwe Boll was one of the few people using that tax law as it was intended: to encourage and support the German film industry. Boll is German and would shoot in Germany with a German crew.Thunderhorse31 said:
I'm not sure if I fully grasp what went on here. Hollywood turned down Ninja Theory--a game company that would do the entire film using a game-engine (I assume by their own hands)--just because they want the film done by a "higher end" studio like Pixar to create the film, at a higher cost? If that's the case, then Hollywood just went over my head with their logic.vansau said:
What's the point in using a game engine for rendering? Aside from a proof of concept (and low cost of development tools) I'd think it'd be lacking in every other manner.
Yeah, I guess that would work. However I don't understand why Hollywood would turn down an offer like this when Ninja Theory might do the entire movie using a game engine. I assume they will be doing it out of their software? So that is money out of their pocket and they might be doing it cheaper. Why turn down a movie that an independent company like Ninja Theory would do (and want to do) with their own hands at a cheaper price so you could have some other, expensive, and definitely busy, company to do?vansau said:
If Ninja Theory wants to have some advertisement muscle from Hollywood, then I guess I see where the issue is here. I don't see any problem with a film being made with a game-engine but considering how this is a "risk", either a TV movie or straight-to-DVD might be better options. Its not like the latter is a bad idea. I thought Blizzard released a DVD collection of cutscenes from Diablo II/Starcraft years ago.
