Crash and Burn: "Flight of the Phoenix" Remake Bombs

Industry Tracker | 1/7/05 | Hollywood Watcher

[pabianice]

As I predicted, the "remake" of the classic "Flight of the Phoenix" is yet another case of the doofuses running Hollywood thinking they can better their betters.

"THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX" (2004)

Production Cost: $ 25 million

Marketing Cost: $ 20 million (est.)

Total since release: $17,537,973 (three weeks)

Viewer drop-off since release: 85%

Daily revenue per screen week of 3 January: $ 97

Who but the liberal morons running Hollywood would think that they could replace Jimmy Stewart, Hardy Kreuger, Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Peter Finch, and Ronald Fraser with yucking-it-up Dennis Quaid, "rapper" Tyrese Gobson, and Miranda Otto?

[Noumenon]

More concaine-fuled garbage from the self-congratulatory Hollywood elites.

It's just us ignorant red-staters who can't appreciate their drug-soaked self-indulgent PC rehashes of the classics. Boo hoo. Go sell it in Europe - they eat that crap up there.

[retrokitten]

I need to start researching things before I post. I had no idea that he did Donnie Brasco, too. Everytime I heard his name mentioned they list Mona Lisa Smile and Four Weddings. That movie is great. It gives me a glimmer of hope.

The thing that always gets me about Donnie Brasco is the scene where he refuses to take off his boots because that is where his tape recorder is hidden and they beat the holy hell out of the maitre'd (sp?). It is difficult to watch.

[retrokitten]

I guess director for #5 is picked, too. Now this guy I am positive I have never heard of or seen any of his movies. David Yates

[superiorslots]

That is an impressive list of actors who served in the armed forces. Probably never to be repeated.

Today though our heroes(sarcasm) are Ahston Kutcher from "Dude where's my car?"

We are in trouble folks.

BTW: Charles Durning was an Army Ranger? Boy did he let himself go in later life.

[labowski]

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=flight+of+the+phoenix%2C+paul+mantz&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3Ddce9afab9ab07f52%26clickedItemRank%3D1%26userQuery%3Dflight%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bphoenix%252C%2Bpaul%2Bmantz%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fstripe.colorado.edu%252F%257Esteinerd%252FPhoenix.html%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPTop%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fstripe.colorado.edu%2F%7Esteinerd%2FPhoenix.html

[discostu]

That's mobsters for ya. Donnie Brasco is an excellent movie. Only reason I looked it up at IMDB (favorite place) is that I found myself in a sentence that read "that guy and that other guy" and I hate those kind of sentences... and no I didn't look up the guy that did 3. I've never heard of any of David Yates' movies.

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

Some are much worse:
...
Gunfight at the OK Corral (Wyatt Earp)

I would submit that Tombstone is a very worthy successor to all movies dedicated to the Earp/Cowboys feud.

"I'm your huckleberry." ;^)

[BibChr]

King did not write the screenplay for that remake, which was dreadful. The original was better; of course, the book was better still!

HERE is the review I wrote at IMDB, in case you want a chuckle.

Dan

[monday]

So it really has nothing to do with how good a movie is. You hate all movies made in Hollywood today because they are made by todays actors instead of old and dead actors.

Remember how many communists there were in Hollywood during the McCarthy era? You think things have changed in Hollywood, while I suspect actors have always been nit witted when it comes to politics.

Incidentally, old Hollywood actors would have been committing career suicide if the had been unpatriotic during the second world war. Similar conditions haven't existed since the end of that war.

[DM1]

any idea if Oceans 12 bombed and if so how badly?

[discostu]

109 million US gross, 214 million world gross, 85 million to make, 40 million in advertising. Not a bomb but probably not as good as they wanted.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I couldn't sit through "Tombstone" though. As the gunfight at the OK Corral seems to be the "story" filmed most often, it may not be correct to call these "remakes." (Except for "My Darling Clementine" and "Frontier Marshal" where footage from the latter was used in the former which was actually filmed later.)

Even "The Outlaw" had Doc Holliday in it.

Sherlock Holmes seems to be the most often portrayed character though.

[skeeter]

I had assumed the SL remake was another attempt by King at true adaptation of his book, as was the second 'The Shining' (which, IMO, was awful).

BTW enjoyed your review.

[Borges]

You're thinking about 'The Aviator' not 'Flight of the Phoenix'. It's a good film btw. I thought LD was pretty convincing. Surprised me.

[Tanniker Smith]

Christopher Walken as Willa Wonka? That's a pretty inspired choice. Gene Wilder was just...off...enough to make the part unique, and Walken is one of the few guys who could add the same sense of weirdness without being over the top.

Indeed. I wish it could've happened.

TS

[Rockingham]

In Hollywood's classic years, immigrant and first generation Jews from eastern Europe -- Goldwynn, Cohn, Warner, Mayer, Thalberg, Lasky, and others -- ran the studios. They were mostly crude and poorly educated, and businessmen first rather than entertainers, but they had unreserved love for America and a canny respect respect for their audience's values and their hunger for entertainment and affirmation of what was best in the country.

With exceptions like Mel Gibson, Pixar Studios, and Spielberg and Lucas on their good days, Hollywood today scorns that formula even though it founded the business and still works extraordinarily well. Actors and talent agents have had the upper hand for the last several decades, a sure recipe for ruin. By the nature of their craft, actors as a group tend to be vain and driven by emotion and their own personal issues -- not the kind of people one would deliberately put in charge of anything of consequence.

Nevertheless, change is in the air, for even Hollywood is not immune to the bottom line. The success of Gibson and Pixar and better judgment by Hollywood's New York bank lenders is beginning to have an effect. Cheer on Hollywood's bombs, for nothing in business inspires change quite as well as financial pain.

[katana]

No, the ending is exciting but if I recall correctly it's based on an actual event. Very entertaining film. Having seen the trailers for the new one I'm not surprised that it's floundering. It will probably be on HBO next week.

[SMARTY]

Even in old films, duologue was made of sentences with a subject and a predicate. Music was made and played by persons who tuned their instruments and stayed on key. Look for that today in film. Stories were, whether or not totally understood by their producers, at least loosely and sometimes closely based on classics in literature (old and new). You will not find that now. None of the Hollywood types now has probably EVER read anything remotely approaching 'classic' literature. None of them even understands history, that is history, philosophy, or any discipline in any depth so they all know a 'little' about a lot of things. If they know history at all it is revisionist. I'm tired of their fantasy land version of the world. Their efforts have NO dimension and neither do the characters they depict.

[XJarhead]

Pixar is amazing. They make great family films that parents can enjoy as much as kids. What a great, great company.