ISLAND DESERTED - CHOCOLATE FACTORY, WEDDING TAKE CAKE (DreamWorks "The Island" BOMBS!)

BOX OFFICE MOJO.COM ^ | 07/25/2005 | BRANDON GRAY

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

A candy man and a couple of randy men handily squelched a weak attack of the clones, though overall business suffered. The year-to-year down trend returned as the top 12 pictures generated an estimated $128.9 million, down seven percent from the comparable frame last year.

Intended as a summer tent-pole, DreamWorks' The Island transplanted a meager estimated $12.1 million from 3,122 theaters. Director Michael Bay's $122 million clone thriller, co-produced by DreamWorks and Warner Bros., earned a fraction of such similar summer science fiction events as I, Robot and Minority Report and stands as a massive misfire along the lines of XXX: State of the Union or Rollerball.

"Clearly, this is a disappointing opening," said DreamWorks' head of distribution Jim Tharp. "The tracking had indicated that we were looking at this kind of opening, but it is still disappointing. I liked the movie. We can only hope the film finds an audience down the road." According the studio's exit polling, 51 percent of the audience was male and 52 percent was over the age of 25.

The Island marked Michael Bay's first movie away from mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and his first outright financial failure. Guided by Bruckheimer's slick, crowd-pleasing aesthetic, Bay's track record was five for five with the hits Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II. The Island looked like Bay's past movies superficially, replete with cacophonous pyrotechnics and choppy editing, and it carried over the Bruckheimer tradition of off-beat casting with leads Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson.

Gone from the equation were an appealing premise and savvy marketing. The Island had a genre identity crisis, crudely mixing futuristic sci-fi with present-day action in what looked like a cross between Logan's Run and The 6th Day.

[BurbankKarl]

Did you read that review that listed all the movies that The Island stole from, from The Matrix all the way back to Logans Run....

I should post it....its like 20 pages long.

[dfwgator]

Home Theaters are one factor, why shelve out $10 to see a movie one time, when the DVD is only a few bucks more. And with the quality of Home Theater equipment nowadays, it just doesn't make sense to go to the theater.

[Borges]

The last really original SF movie I saw was Primer...which was apparently made by the son of a FReeper.

[denydenydeny]

Yeah compare to how much it was made for it is techically a flop

Please. That $200 million doesn't count foreign grosses, which are over $200 million. As much as I would want it to be, given the despicable things said by the filmmakers ("the aliens represent the American troops in Iraq"), it's hardly a flop. It will gross around half a billion dollars worldwide ultimately. And that's before DVD sales, etc.

The producers of this film will make a fortune.

[Windcatcher]

(shrug) If a "cutoff year" is important to you, then I suggest *you* go find one. It's been "on", if you will, since the mid-sixties at the very least, and that's good enough for me. I don't need a cutoff year to gauge what they've churned out since and the amount of leftist propaganda contained within, nor do I need to see any more damage than that to decide that they well and truly deserve to go under.

[monkapotamus]

The End Of An Act

Team America

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark,
When he made Pearl Harbor.
I miss you more than that movie missed the point,
And that’s an awful lot girl.
And now, now you've gone away,
And all I'm trying to say,
Is Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you

I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school,
He was terrible in that film.
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part,
He's way better then Ben Affleck.
And now all I can think about is your smile,
And that shi**y movie too,
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you,

(Interlude)

Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies.
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked,
Just a little bit more than I miss you.

[Borges]

The film was clearly about 9/11. There are blatant references to it in the film itself. Writer David Koepp said that people in other parts of the world will probably interpret it differently without our immediate cultural references.

[Borges]

Since you made the comment I asked you. The mid 60s? There goes The Wild Bunch, The Godfather, Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now...and about 200 other American classics.

[Rastus]

I'm pretty sensitive to leftist messages, and am usually right in the trenches with you guys calling for boycotts or, at the very least, refusing to go myself. But, I didn't detect much of a message in the movie itself. I don't know what Spielberg might have said, but it wasn't in evidence in the film. There was one part where a character says, "History tells us that occupations don't work!" If that was their commentary on Iraq, it was done in a foolish way: the character saying it was clearly insane at the time he said it. Just as a side note, that character was true to the book, in that he was a composite of two vivid characters from the Wells original.

[Borges]

Writer David Koepp said that people in other countries may see the aliens as American troops. And sad to say knowing what so many tinpot countries think of us...anyway to me and every I know it was clearly about 9/11.

[birbear]

WOTW... (according to www.boxofficemojo.com)

Has made $208 million (Domestic) and is still in 6th place. It cost $132 million to produce. That's a gross profit of $76 million.

Internationally it's another $255 million, for a total of around $463 million.

I'm not sure what business school you intended but where I come from, that's not a flop.

[RandallFlagg]

One of the reasons I refused to see War of the Worlds because Robbins is in it. It had little to do with Cruise's cult.

(btw, I'm not following you. HONEST!)

[birbear]

intended = attended.... cursed late night

[TET1968]

The same people who trashed The Passon of Christ are trashing this one. Why? It's an anti-cloning, anti-stem cell film if ever there was one.
By word of mouth,I think this film will pull a Batman, The Beginning".
This is Blade Runner Two.

[k2blader]

I've never understood why some conservatives gripe about movies so much.

[rawcatslyentist]

>"Writer David Koepp said that people in other countries may see the aliens as American troops. "

So the bacteria would be Eyeslime?

Thank God for anti-biotics

KIll A Commie For Mommie

Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes

[ARCADIA]

I'm not sure what business school you intended but where I come from, that's not a flop.

Probably not; but, don't forget to deduct for a very large and expensive marketing campaign.

[Rastus]

Sorry, but I never saw it.