Serenity still has a chance to break even at the Box Office
POSTED BY: GatorMarc
UPDATED: Saturday, February 4, 2006 02:37
VIEWED: 20095
PAGE 3 of 5
What's life without hope?
Seriously! As previously mentioned, we got a FEATURE FILM out of a show that a select few people saw when it initially aired, and we got the BDM just by keeping this fandom going and keeping it fresh.
Keep something going for long enough, and eventually, someone notices.
I'm babbling like a moonbrain.
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I find it interesting that in every incarnation, FF/SERENITY gets held back by a company with cold feet. Both FOX and UNIVERSAL have dropped the ball, and in a sense in similar ways. When FF was first airing, FOX marketers saw that they had a highly original, funny, but ultimately rather dark and serious sci-fi drama. They didn't really know how to market it. So, they refused to air the pilot, told Joss to write "The Train Job" and lighten the mood, and aired a slew of commercial pitching the series as a wonky, comic space adventure. As well all know, this misadvertisement dropped the ball.
Then along comes UNIVERSAL. They seem the potential and take a gamble. They give Joss a fair budget to make an inventive sci-fi action-drama, with Joss's trademark dark humor. But, as the release date nears the studio once again gets cold feet. The marketers don't know how to market this unusual film. So its release gets shunted until after the big summer season and its entire advertising budget gets sunk into 2 weeks of fairly ineffective pre-release commercials. And just like FOX did with FF, UNIVERSAL markets the film as a wonky, comic space adventure, emphasizing the jokes in the commercials and downplaying the drama.
UNIVERSAL's cold feet were not validated by the critical response. SERENITY was one of the best reviewed films of its season, with over 80% positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes (even higher among professional critics for major media outlets). UNIVERSAL should have held half its advertising budget for the second weekend. They should have hit newspapers and television stations with ads trumpeting "SERENITY is the #1 new film of the week," "SERENITY is the biggest action film in the country," and "SERENITY is the best-reviewed sci-fi film of the year! Ebert and Roeper give it two thumbs up!" This is how you move a cult film into the mainstream...by saying, "People who know like this movie, and you don't want to miss it."
I fear that even if SERENITY is giving a new lease of life in some other outlet, whoever is producing it still will just mess things up.
* * *
Do the job. Get paid. Keep flying.
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And let's not forget that there is the current rumor that a Serenity sequel will be filmed and shown for the Sci-fi network. Although that's yet to be confirmed, I think that's probably the most realistic possibility right now.
The fact that the DVD is already selling well (#17 overall at Amazon) over a week before its release just makes a future project all the more likely. Again, it's really all about momentum. After The Bourne Identity didn't live up to expectations at the box office (at least based on its high budget), any continuation of the series was suspended. Then, the DVD sold like crazy and was the top DVD of the year, spawning a sequel that absolutely exploded at the box office (with a 3rd film currently in production).
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Any mathematically inclined people about?
It would be interesting to see the figures "per capita". My rough calculations in my head have us Australians kicking the worlds ass! Whats with that? Some of these little piss ant countries like Norway, Sweden and Switzerland must have only had half a dozen people attend..
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Isn't there a way to get this guy banned? This is spam. A message that continues to be repeated, word-for-word everytime the issue of a Serenity sequel comes forth. I think you can disagree on the BDM but you can't just post THE EXACT SAME MESSAGE.
Quote:
Originally posted by Byrd101:
What a bunch of bull....
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ShepherdScott,
Boy you spoke exactly for me. I don't think Universal was figuring for the great reviews and still hasn't today. Go to Wal-Mart and look at the Serenity poster for the DVD. There is a one review on the poster, from the SF Chronicle I believe. Oh, my gosh, is that the way you promote a film that has had the good reviews the film has had. It has a two thumbs up from Ebert and Roeper for crying out loud. Using a SF Chronicle review instead of an Ebert and Roeper.
Now anybody knows that I am not anwhere a fan of the BDM as I am of the series but how this film was marketed is truly a tragedy. I don't understand how you have a sci-fi movie with the reviews it has had and you market it anyway other than that. In fact why even have a single picture of a cast member. None of the cast are stars (with the exception of old TV fans of Barney Miller) so just have a black poster with a small picture of the ship and reviews. After all, there are no start to appease so just sell the darn DVD.
What made Matrix into a DVD phenomenon was the number of good reviews about the movie. Remember the Matrix was a box office dud and wasn't even released on VHS. The DVD had tons of great features, dual commentaries and really set the stage for future DVD releases.
Quote:
Originally posted by ShepherdScott:
I find it interesting that in every incarnation, FF/SERENITY gets held back by a company with cold feet. Both FOX and UNIVERSAL have dropped the ball, and in a sense in similar ways. When FF was first airing, FOX marketers saw that they had a highly original, funny, but ultimately rather dark and serious sci-fi drama. They didn't really know how to market it. So, they refused to air the pilot, told Joss to write "The Train Job" and lighten the mood, and aired a slew of commercial pitching the series as a wonky, comic space adventure. As well all know, this misadvertisement dropped the ball.
Then along comes UNIVERSAL. They seem the potential and take a gamble. They give Joss a fair budget to make an inventive sci-fi action-drama, with Joss's trademark dark humor. But, as the release date nears the studio once again gets cold feet. The marketers don't know how to market this unusual film. So its release gets shunted until after the big summer season and its entire advertising budget gets sunk into 2 weeks of fairly ineffective pre-release commercials. And just like FOX did with FF, UNIVERSAL markets the film as a wonky, comic space adventure, emphasizing the jokes in the commercials and downplaying the drama.
UNIVERSAL's cold feet were not validated by the critical response. SERENITY was one of the best reviewed films of its season, with over 80% positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes (even higher among professional critics for major media outlets). UNIVERSAL should have held half its advertising budget for the second weekend. They should have hit newspapers and television stations with ads trumpeting "SERENITY is the #1 new film of the week," "SERENITY is the biggest action film in the country," and "SERENITY is the best-reviewed sci-fi film of the year! Ebert and Roeper give it two thumbs up!" This is how you move a cult film into the mainstream...by saying, "People who know like this movie, and you don't want to miss it."
I fear that even if SERENITY is giving a new lease of life in some other outlet, whoever is producing it still will just mess things up.
* * *
Do the job. Get paid. Keep flying.
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it is not o strange that Norway and sweden had so low numbers since we have not had the series aird on tv or had any time off commercial for the film
hell the film was aired in the smalles off the cinemas in my town and was allmost impossebel to find.
so this i think had more with peeps not been informed then about peeps not wanting to see it
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Thanks to GatorMarc, the most important issue of all has popped up again.
Viking is right to defend Norway & Sweden---how can anyone see the film if the promoters only show it at 12 tiny cinemas in the whole country, like they did in the Netherlands? And $93,477 from only 12 cinemas is fantastic, isn't it? Especially when Fox's "In Her Shoes" was on at 80 cinemas there. Instead of just looking at the money, look at the numbers of cinemas compared to other films---it's all there in Box Office Mojo, Calhoun.
ShepherdScott and Hartmeister are also right to point out the real problem: appalling promotion. It's more than cold feet---it seems deliberate.
And surprise, surprise, StaketheLurk keeps a watchful eye, always ready to jump in whenever anyone criticizes the promoters, trying to steer us all away from that and divert us into what Universal wants us to do: "Buy More DVDs". Why does he never, ever criticize the promoters or the ad campaign, I wonder? And why should we all keep shelling out money to reward them for doing a bad job?
Let's get down to brass tacks here: as others have pointed out, somebody in Hollywood wanted this whole thing to fail. Who knows why? Maybe so that none of the cast would become big stars. Maybe it's just envy, ugly old envy and rivalry, at the bottom of this. But it's absolutely unfair to blame the fans or the people or the film for the games these promoters are playing with us all.
Sorry, I just couldn't help sticking my oar in again, but all your comments inspired me. I'll keep quiet and go away now...
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Quote:I don’t criticize the advertisements because, A) their failure speaks for itself and B) it doesn’t do any good. Complaining about the adverts achieves nothing but a group hate-in, which, while sometimes cathartic, does not really help our BDHs in any way. I agree that it’s f**king idiotic that they haven’t put the Ebert & Roeper quotes on anything--so anyone putting together guerrilla marketing should feature them prominently.
And surprise, surprise, StaketheLurk keeps a watchful eye, always ready to jump in whenever anyone criticizes the promoters, trying to steer us all away from that and divert us into what Universal wants us to do: "Buy More DVDs". Why does he never, ever criticize the promoters or the ad campaign, I wonder?
I don’t, however, believe that there was this vast conspiracy among studio execs to ruin the film. I think the studio was faced with an unusual product to sell and made some poor decisions in trying to sell it, but c’mon folks, they’re suits. They don’t poor millions of dollars into a film just to spite the fans; it’s not good business sense. They’re not FOX. They didn’t tamper with the film, they didn’t put it up against Star Wars where it would have been swamped, and organized all the pre-screening to reward the fans and produce some additional buzz. I think that their advertising department overall failed to market the film properly, but as Joss has repeatedly noticed, it is a tough film to market. Because it lacks some easily sellable premise, it is something the advertisers haven’t dealt with before and their lack of experience shows. They screwed it up, but I sincerely doubt it they did so with malicious intent.
Quote:Why should we “reward” Universal for taking an incredible gamble on a show widely regarded in Hollywood as a commercial failure? Why should we reward them for giving Joss complete creative freedom? I’ll tell you why: because they have the rights to the BDM. If you’re like me and you want more of the ‘verse, Uni is really the only place you can turn to. They may have fumbled the advertising, but they still have a big stake in the film. If “Serenity” is viewed as a failure and disowned by Universal, nobody’s going to take a chance on a franchised that failed its second chance as well. On the other hand, if Universal thinks there’s money in it, they’d be interested in doing more--because they’re execs. As I noted above, Joss has said the DVDs sales will decide whether there will be a sequel. It all comes down to that. If you want more of our BDHs, help boost the DVD sales. If you want to abandon any chance of a continuation so you can spitefully stick to Universal, the studio without which we would never have gotten the BDM in the first place, you can do that as well. But I know where I stand on the issue.
And why should we all keep shelling out money to reward them for doing a bad job?
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