The Madame Web Failure Thread (And the Success of Dune: Part 2 Thread)
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 16, 2024 01:07
VIEWED: 6818
PAGE 8 of 12
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:These numbers are genius as far as the producers' well-being is concerned once you realize that the producers are stealing most of the money by tricky bookkeeping and kickbacks from subcontractors. The credits at the end of the movies show dozens of special effects subcontractors, each getting squeezed by the producers.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You won't see any argument from me there. Hollywood budgets (including Dune: Part 2's budget) are stupid.
Is Hollywood accounting legal?
https://www.google.com/search?q=is+hollywood+accounting+legal
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I'm sure everybody steals when they think that they can get away with it in these production companies. But I'm not sure it's as bad as you believe it is, simply because everyone involved except for the nameless help is seriously overpaid for their jobs. Especially the actors.
It would be one thing if these companies were privately owned, but for the most part they're not. They have shareholders that they're accountable to.
Now... In Disney's case, I think they got a little too drunk off the Hollywood Accounting and probably took that a little bit too far. There may just be a hostile takeover in their future as a result of the severe mismanagement that's been going on for a very long time. As long as they were putting out multiple billion dollar plus movies every year and the stock prices were high and continued rising, people were more than happy to look the other way. This is no longer the case for them.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Why does Hollywood not know when to quit? Because each new movie is a new opportunity to steal money via creative accounting. Hollywood producers won't stop until the studio they happen to be temporarily working for loses so much money on a particular idea that even the dumbest studio head realizes he can no longer afford to make another based on the same tired, old material. In this case: Dune, which has been made over and over and over.
‘Dune 3’ Has a Big Challenge: The Next Book Isn’t That Great
'Dune Messiah' has plenty of fans, but it’s a philosophical palace intrigue story without the cinematic scope, epic stakes and action set pieces of the first novel.
March 8, 2024, 1:30pm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dune-3-messiah-pro
blem-book-1235845611/
Fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune saga agree: The first book is extraordinary — a planet-hopping hero’s journey with compelling characters, riveting action set-pieces, and clear story and character arcs. For all the talk that Dune was impossible to adapt, the core elements to make great cinema have always been in the 1965 book. (Previous producers on Dune-based movies have chosen the wrong directors and scriptwriters to slap together crappy versions of Dune. This time the producers accidentally chose a director who was a Dune fan and competent, so the results were not the usual crap that has always been habitual for Hollywood.)
But Herbert’s other Dune books? Well …
The remaining books have their fans and detractors, but the general consensus is the saga never comes close to achieving the dramatic heights of the first novel. Dune director Denis Villeneuve himself has said the books become increasingly “esoteric” and therefore he only wants to adapt the next one, Dune Messiah. He is said to be nearly finished with a script for a potential Dune: Part Three.
It’s not that 1969’s Dune Messiah is bad, per se. It’s just not as overtly dramatic and doesn’t directly connect to the previous story as much as one might like. As one reviewer griped, Messiah is “a lot of sitting around and talking.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Regarding the above post...
I was just talking with my old man about that a few days ago. Neither of us have any desire to see Dune: Part 2 or have seen the original. He never even suffered through the Alan Smithee (David Lynch) 80's flick like I did.
So I was surprised to find out that not only did he read the book, but at the time in his life when he read it he remembers thinking it was one of the best books that he had ever read.
But then he read the sequel (which he couldn't even remember the name of now) and said he made it about 20 or 30 pages in and quit. His exact words were "It was like it wasn't even written by the same author. I hated it."
So, here would be my suggestions if they do make Dune 3...
1) CUT THAT BUDGET
2) Do what Hollywood always does here and take extreme liberty with the source material. It's 2024. I doubt very much that a vast majority of people who saw and loved the first two flicks actually read the book. This means you've got new fans.
Get some ACTUAL talented writers without checking off boxes for your ESG scores, keep the woke shit out of it, and just tell a good fucking story. It's possible to use the original written work as bullet points for the main topics while transforming it to something much more palatable on screen without completely ruining the work.
Also... don't stray too far from the original that you break the story and it doesn't fit in with the later books. Those bullet points are important. Use the original work as guard rails that bring you to the same conclusion so you can fluidly make a transition to the next book, which was hopefully better than "Messiah" was.
This means that you need actual fans of the original work employed on the production of the 3rd movie. None of this hiring a bunch of no-names and never-was "talent" and telling them specifically NOT to read the original works and come up with whatever they want. This ain't a Kindergarten class headed by a tranny teacher here. It's now a Billion dollar franchise that you don't want to fuck up with a bunch of otherwise unemployable pink-haired idiots running the show.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Well the bad news for Dune: Part 2 is that it got cremated by Kung Fu Panda 4 on its 2nd weekend, making only a projected $46 Million in the US vs. KFP4's $58.3 Million.
The good for Dp2 is that it only dropped -44% from Weekend 1, which is really only a -35% drop when you eliminate Thursday Previews from Weekend 1. This helped it trend back up toward the center of the Legs chart from the bottom.
As I suspected, it appears that KFP4 had very little overlap with the Dp2 audience. KFP4 made $16 Million more than Bruce predicted it would, and Dp2 made $10 Million more than Bruce predicted. Cabrini did just about exactly what Bruce predicted, and Imaginary made a few million more. It was a pretty great weekend at the box office with over $131 Million grossed on the top 10 flicks when Bruce only predicted $104 Million.
The really good news for Dp2 is that the international number is really pulling away from the domestic number. It's now grossed $210,500,000 internationally in 10 days. That's going to be about 110% of opening weekend added to the totals which is quite a bit better than most movies I've tracked internationally. My guess though is because even though Bruce doesn't show any new numbers for China this weekend he's already got them and they're in the "Rest of World" number that is sitting now at $132 Million.
Grand total now is $367,528,000, which is $107,472,000 shy of breaking even. This shouldn't be a problem now. It should have that in another 10 days, but we won't actually see it happen until the international numbers are updated 2 weekends from now unless there's still more international numbers that Bruce hasn't added showing up in the next 2 days or so, or it makes enough in the US in that time to show up earlier than that, which probably isn't likely.
YOLO is looking at $479 Million worldwide now, so Dp2 is catching up, but Bruce has been behind on reporting for the Chinese movies and that one could actually have quite a bit more than that which he just hasn't reported yet.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Somehow, Madame Web is at $96,620,000 worldwide right now, up from $80 Million 9 days ago. Bruce must have found some international money again, because that $16 Million didn't come from new money. Only about $4 Million of that was from the US in the last 6 days, so I find it very hard to believe it pulled in an additional $12 Million internationally in that time.
It will hit $100 Million now for sure, so at least it won't lose over $100 Million for Sony.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:Save your advice for a brand-new movie trilogy. Dune is an old trilogy and the same old people, including the producers, for Dune 1 and 2 will be working on Dune 3, assuming the producers can bamboozle the Warner Bros. studio heads into squandering money on it. As for your suggestion "1) CUT THAT BUDGET" that will NOT happen because it is the same old people. Out of self-interest, they will insist that the weak story from the second book Dune Messiah (6ix's Elder says "I hated it.") needs an even bigger budget and more advertisement than a strong story.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
But then he read the sequel (which he couldn't even remember the name of now) and said he made it about 20 or 30 pages in and quit. His exact words were "It was like it wasn't even written by the same author. I hated it."
So, here would be my suggestions if they do make Dune 3...
1) CUT THAT BUDGET
2) Do what Hollywood always does here and take extreme liberty with the source material. It's 2024. I doubt very much that a vast majority of people who saw and loved the first two flicks actually read the book. This means you've got new fans.
Get some ACTUAL talented writers without checking off boxes for your ESG scores, keep the woke shit out of it, and just tell a good fucking story. It's possible to use the original written work as bullet points for the main topics while transforming it to something much more palatable on screen without completely ruining the work.
Also... don't stray too far from the original that you break the story and it doesn't fit in with the later books. Those bullet points are important. Use the original work as guard rails that bring you to the same conclusion so you can fluidly make a transition to the next book, which was hopefully better than "Messiah" was.
This means that you need actual fans of the original work employed on the production of the 3rd movie. None of this hiring a bunch of no-names and never-was "talent" and telling them specifically NOT to read the original works and come up with whatever they want. This ain't a Kindergarten class headed by a tranny teacher here. It's now a Billion dollar franchise that you don't want to fuck up with a bunch of otherwise unemployable pink-haired idiots running the show.
Who decides how much Dune 3 is budgeted by Warner Bros? Toby Emmerich Out As Warner Bros Motion Picture Group Chairman; Michael De Luca & Pam Abdy To Lead Studio
June 1, 2022 9:19am
https://deadline.com/2022/06/toby-emmerich-warner-bros-departure-12350
36598/
Since taking over the studio in July 2022, De Luca and Abdy have struck some pricey deals ‘Joker 2’ Budget Hits $200 Million
Feb 21, 2024
https://variety.com/2024/film/news/warner-bros-spending-joker-2-budget
-tom-cruise-deal-1235917640/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
As for your suggestion "1) CUT THAT BUDGET" that will NOT happen because it is the same old people. Out of self-interest, they will insist that the weak story from the second book Dune Messiah (6ix's Elder says "I hated it.") needs an even bigger budget and more advertisement than a strong story.
Well that's the same kind of cynical attitude that lead Hollywood ultimately down the DEI path to their own downfall.
Big budgets and huge advertising campaigns with weak stories only worked for 2 movies last year. WB heads had better ask themselves if Dune 3 is worth it.
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Dune Director Says TV Has ‘Corrupted’ Movies
By Ben Campbell | Published: Mar 11, 2024
https://www.screengawk.com/dune-director-says-tv-has-corrupted-movies/
Villeneuve Hates TV
Director of the blockbuster hit “Dune” and its highly anticipated sequel, Denis Villeneuve, said television has corrupted the quality of movies.
In an interview with a British media outlet, the director argued movies have experienced a decrease in quality in recent years as Hollywood continues to worry more about a release date than the film itself.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/denis-villeneuve-on-dune-part-two-y
oung-people-want-films-to-be-longer-jd0q2rrwp
Dune: Part Two
After Villeneuve’s success with “Dune,” an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel of the same title, it wasn’t long before the sequel was set in motion.
In the wake of the release of “Dune: Part Two,” Villeneuve has received plenty of praise for his role in directing the movie.
'Movies Have Become Corrupted by TV'
Speaking in an interview with The Times, Villeneuve talked about the sequel before sharing his thoughts about the decline of movies.
“Movies have been corrupted by television,” said the “Dune” director.
Villeneuve Is Not a Fan of Dialogue
The “Dune” director explained this problem stems from movies focusing too much on dialogue and not the overall experience.
During the interview, Villeneuve expressed his dislike of dialogue, stating, “Frankly, I hate dialogue.”
Dune Director Argues Dialogue Is for Theater
“Dialogue is for theater and television. I don’t remember movies because of a good line; I remember movies because of a strong image. I’m not interested in dialogue at all.”
Villeneuve continued, per Variety, “Pure image and sound, that is the power of cinema, but it is something not obvious when you watch movies today. Movies have been corrupted by television.”
Villeneuve Aspires to Make a Movie Without Words
As the interview continued, Villeneuve spoke of his desire to make a movie without dialogue.
“In a perfect world, I’d make a compelling movie that doesn’t feel like an experiment but does not have a single word in it either,” he said.
Dune Director Says Viewers Would Enjoy His Movie Without Words
The “Dune” director explained that while a movie without words would be an unusual experience, the viewers would be captivated by the end result.
“People would leave the cinema and say, ‘Wait, there was no dialogue?’ But they won’t feel the lack,” he said.
Villeneuve Toys with Idea of Making HBO Show
Villeneuve’s recent comments suggest he is not a fan of the television industry. Yet, the director was in talks with HBO last year about the possibility of directing a show.
According to reports, the “Dune” Director was in talks with HBO to bring Jo Nesbo’s novel**, “The Son,” to life and had even planned to make Jake Gyllenhaal the main character.
Dune Director Trashes HBO Plans
Speaking about the potential project with HBO, Villeneuve said, “It’s a project that I absolutely love. And I love the book. I love that writer, very strong writer.”
Yet, at the beginning of 2024, Villeneuve announced that he would not be going through with the project as it was simply not the right medium for him.
Villeneuve Earns the Respect of Critics for Dune: Part Two
It appears that for the time being, Villeneuve will stick to movies. “Dune: Part Two” was released at the beginning of March and has already earned the director respect among critics.
With a run time of over three hours, it’s one of few movies that have opted for the bold length and been successful.
Dune Director Trusts the Audience
When asked by The Times whether or not he was nervous about such a long run time, the director replied, “I trust the audience.”
He continued, “This story’s too dense. I would never make ‘Dune’ as one movie. This was the only way I could succeed.”
Potential for a Third Dune Movie in the Future
Villeneuve has
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“In a perfect world, I’d make a compelling movie that doesn’t feel like an experiment but does not have a single word in it either,” he said.
Okay... So he's a crazy person. Got it.
Good luck with your silent movie in 2024 buddy.
Hell... good luck even getting funding for that idea.
Exposition dumps are a real problem in Hollywood though. The constant spoon feeding the audience that they think (and probably are often right about) are too stupid to understand what's going on if somebody isn't always spelling it out for them. Or always telling us about something that happened with boring dialog instead of actually showing it on screen. He's not wrong about that.
But what he's talking about is the extreme opposite and nobody is going to pay to see that either.
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Quote:I don't have a copy of the script, but I suspect there are fewer than 1,000 words spoken in the hours of Dune: Part Two.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“In a perfect world, I’d make a compelling movie that doesn’t feel like an experiment but does not have a single word in it either,” he said.
Okay... So he's a crazy person. Got it.
Good luck with your silent movie in 2024 buddy.
Hell... good luck even getting funding for that idea.
Exposition dumps are a real problem in Hollywood though. The constant spoon feeding the audience that they think (and probably are often right about) are too stupid to understand what's going on if somebody isn't always spelling it out for them. Or always telling us about something that happened with boring dialog instead of actually showing it on screen. He's not wrong about that.
But what he's talking about is the extreme opposite and nobody is going to pay to see that either.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Quotes from Dune: Part Two
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15239678/quotes/?ref_=tt_trv_qu
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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