Well, Beauty and the Beast made a disgusting amount of money. (At times the pair seemed like they were producing a new viral video every day last week.) While the blame can’t be placed on the shoulders of the two stars - hell, for all we know, it might have 100 percent to do with that ultra-generic title - it reinforces the idea that a few famous people, a decent movie, and the inky blackness of space just doesn’t cut it anymore if you’re an original property, particularly when Get Out is playing just down the hall. ![]() Life’s budget was a relatively modest $58 million so the road to profitability still exists, but its opening has to be considered an underachievement, especially after solid reviews, a buzzy rumor tying it to the just-announced Spider Man spin-off Venom, and Reynolds and Gyllenhaal working the press circuit hard to promote it. Its $13 million debut was fourth on the weekend, trailing the megahit Beauty and the Beast as well as Power Rangers and Kong: Skull Island - all, notably, adaptations of incredibly familiar properties. ![]() And like Passengers, Life struggled on its opening weekend. Like Passengers, Life was released by Sony. Like Passengers, Life stars a pair of actors who you’d consider, if not A-listers, then at least A-list adjacent, Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal. For a film with a $110 million production budget that starred two of the most famous human beings on the planet, that’s disappointing (though, in a testament to the value of Pratt and Lawrence, it did manage to bring in nearly double that internationally, giving it a respectable worldwide total $295 million). Sounds like a home run, right? It wasn’t, or not quite: After opening to a disappointing $15 million three-day take over Christmas weekend, Passengers ended up with just under $100 million domestically. Most relevant to Life, though, is Passengers, the Morten Tyldum–directed vehicle for two of our best-liked actors, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, who spent the movie falling in love onscreen, in space, before our adoring eyes. But there were still a number of original films that struggled even with a movie star or two involved: Shane Black’s well-reviewed, Ryan Gosling–starring The Nice Guys comes to mind, as does Robert Zemeckis’s Brad Pitt–Marion Cotillard romance Allied. (Though since it was based on a short story, you could probably throw Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival in there, too.) In fact, you could argue that 2016 was a strong year for non-IP film, especially when you include horror entries like Lights Out, Don’t Breathe, and The Witch. Last year contained a number of successful original films - including the Ben Affleck–starring The Accountant, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, and the ensemble comedy Bad Moms. And what the performance of this weekend’s Life says isn’t great. ![]() Because of that, each new standalone release becomes more and more interesting for what it says about the viability of original movies in the marketplace, particularly when they’re populated with the kind of actors who you expect to bring in an audience. It’s no secret that studio filmmaking has moved further and further in the direction of movies based on familiar intellectual property, and away from original ideas developed exclusively for the screen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |