Posted on 10/11/2014 2:01:19 PM PDT by Perdogg
I have been doing box office reports of this nature in one form or another for almost seven years. This is the first one I’ve ever had to write without the aid of Box Office Mojo, which apparently got swallowed into IMDB yesterday without any warning or official explanation. I’m waiting for some kind of official word from either party before I write any sort of obituary, but said site has been a peerless resource for every single person who writes about film in almost any capacity. In the meantime, The Numbers is helping to fill the void.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
The trailers I’ve seen about “Dracula” have been pretty absurd. Dracula is, in my belief, a cerebral villain not a super villain who can brush away hordes with the wave of a hand. Not interested.
What is “Dracula Untold” about? His homosexual side? I can only imagine what hollywood would love to inject into a movie like this.....if indeed it’s a hollywood product.
no, it has NOTHING to do with homosexuality.
Zombies and vampires. Does Hollywood collectively have an original idea?
Today in Weakly World News:
Dracula’s deadly addiction to sunlight.
How it started.
How he copes.
The terrible effect on his looks.
Can he conquer this hideous curse?
Solar Rehab refuses to admit he is patient...
No, it is not the typical “vampyre movie”. It is more original than “twilight” movies.
I found the trailer confusing. On the one hand it’s supposed to be about the “real” Dracula, right (as in, Vlad the Impaler)? And yet he still has all kind of supernatural powers?
Ehhh... the vampire thing has been done to death (no pun intended) and I’m not interested. I’ll be glad when we can move on from zombies, too.
From the look of the trailers, it looks somewhat like Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula movie. At least part of it.
As far as its story structure, "Dracula Untold" is reminiscent of the last truly great movie M. Night Shyamalan directed way back in 2000, "Unbreakable." What we have here is the first act of a superhero film spread out over feature-length. The problem with "Dracula Untold" is that you have no desire to see act two.
As we've seen in films like Angelina Jolie's summer hit "Maleficent," the closest Hollywood is able to come to a fresh idea nowadays is reimagining its legendary villains as misunderstood heroes. This time its Count Dracula, or Vlad, as he's known until the fateful moment.
[...]
The only interesting aspect of the story is that the Turks, who are obviously Muslims, are portrayed as bloodthirsty marauders against a benign and very Christian Transylvania. In this politically correct day and age, that is at least an original and noteworthy choice.
If you had a choice of investing 50 million dollars of your money on what experience shows you is a sure thing to make a profit versus investing in something you have no idea how it will do, which would you choose?
But if I considered myself an astute investor I may look for that low risk potentially high return long shot. Those make the most memorable movies.
Believe me, I miss good movies, too. But those smaller movies simply don’t make enough money to interest them. And they’re harder to sell overseas, where more and more of the profit comes from. And while you speak of memorable movies, they speak of licensing deals, theme park attractions and franchise possibilities. Unfortunately, this is where the drive for profit and return on investment has gotten us. And everyone in Hollywood knows it and hates it. I know people in the business and they’d far rather work on an interesting drama than another Transformers movie, but the bean counters and MBAs reign supreme.
Just saying.
If American movies weren’t all leftist in view, the studios would get a whole lot more profits from American viewers.
Saw it today during a rare opportunity to get to a movie with my hubby. It was just okay. It wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but by far not the best. But, we didn’t really see anything that is out right now that looked like it was going to be any better.
But there must still be investors around who are willing to risk it all for the love of the art form alone. Otherwise we would have never been able to enjoy film gems like your screenname-sake.
"Pharaoh gobbles donkey goobers"
Gone Girl is great as is The Judge. Will be seeing Dracula Monday
Since you hold up my namesake film, I’ll say just say that it was made 12 years ago, and it’s a different business now, and that it didn’t really make that much money back then.
Maybe they should have just remade “Love At First Bite” instead.
I heard they're remaking Army of Darkness, ironically enough.
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