Dwayne pees in bottles, causes $50 million budget increase

[Monterey Jack]

https://www.thewrap.com/dwayne-johnson- ... -problems/

[AndyDursin]

I was wondering what was holding this up...crazy but typical. This kind of thing with certain big stars happens all the time, but Amazon/MGM, not used to paying for movies of this nature, probably had zero control.

[AndyDursin]

Must've been a great set during the midst of COVID no less...

[AndyDursin]

Man I hope it's all worth it for this.

[Monterey Jack]

[snicker]

[Monterey Jack]

Good God, does this look like garbage. Shame that the talented Kiernan Shipka's going down with this ship.

[TaranofPrydain]

Looks like its getting the scarlet score of shame on Metacritic. I feel sorry for MGM; they have had a run of bad luck for the last 60 some years, and now, in the 100th anniversary of their founding, they get stuck with this superbomb.

[AndyDursin]

Couldn't they have just given us the Bond movies on 4K UHD instead? At least Bezos can absorb tbe bomb this time around.

There's going to come a point and probably quickly where they're not going to make anything but sequels and something like this will be a streaming movie made for a fraction of the price. We are basically there already.

Again not good for movie theater owners but theyve had little reason to celebrate anything for the last bunch of years.

[Monterey Jack]

Have people finally become sick of The Rock's one-note schtick? Good thing he has Moana 2 coming right on the heels of this, because this one's a bomb.

[AndyDursin]

Movies are dead. Look at the garbage they're floating for Best Picture -- GLADIATOR II??? WICKED?? lol.

For a lot of us we're going once every few months when something decent comes out -- but they have no way out of this because:

1. They need audiences on a consistent week to week basis and they're not getting them (hence the move to throw "specialized" content like concerts, Broadway performances, old movies on screens).

2. Adult audience has abandoned them as they've moved so many projects into streaming series, putting that content at home where a lot of us are happy to stay home and not pay the extra for a night out. Something like GOODFELLAS would be a series now, not a movie. This is a big issue because getting them back requires some stupid PR-driven concept like "Barbenheimer" but it's not a reliable strategy to change viewing habits.

3. Their play to keep audiences they do get -- families especially -- going is to recycle old IP or overpay for "high concept" projects like this but it either catches fire or bottoms out.

4. There's no more word-of-mouth. Movies either come out and make coin or they're dead, buried and going to digital within weeks.

As for RED ONE, who was this movie aimed at? The PG-13 rating and action-centric ads didn't speak to kids. It looked too "lite" for adults with Santa running around...kind of in no man's land. As Arnold found out with JINGLE ALL THE WAY back in the day, action stars don't always result in commercially popular Christmas blockbusters.

[TaranofPrydain]

Movies are dead. Look at the garbage they're floating for Best Picture -- GLADIATOR II??? WICKED?? lol.

Movies are indeed on life support at the very best. There is so little that it interesting being made right now and the movies are often so preachy. I'd say that the many nominations last year for the hideously bad Barbie showed just how poor the situation in Hollywood is.

It is a particularly shallow field for the Oscars this year, which makes it even more glaring now that they have to fill 10 slots for Best Picture. Gladiator II is reportedly out of the running for a nod though because the early word from audiences is mixed at best. Wicked will probably snare a nomination though because there's not much out there.

At this point the Best Picture nominations seem like they will be Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, Dune Part II, Emilia Perez, The Nickel Boys, Wicked, The Substance, Sing Sing, and A Real Pain. Most are films audiences will never care about again after the end of the Oscar season. Some (like the transgender themed Emilia Perez) are not even well liked by their target audiences. I personally have only seen one (The Substance, a body horror film with a strong turn from Demi Moore)

For a lot of us we're going once every few months when something decent comes out -- but they have no way out of this because:

1. They need audiences on a consistent week to week basis and they're not getting them (hence the move to throw "specialized" content like concerts, Broadway performances, old movies on screens).

Yes, there has definitely been an uptick in rereleases of older films recently. It helps to fill a screen, but not too many come out for them....

2. Adult audience has abandoned them as they've moved so many projects into streaming series, putting that content at home where a lot of us are happy to stay home and not pay the extra for a night out. Something like GOODFELLAS would be a series now, not a movie. This is a big issue because getting them back requires some stupid PR-driven concept like "Barbenheimer" but it's not a reliable strategy to change viewing habits.

And the other deadly issue for films is that many of these miniseries get more hype than the new movies. And thoughtful content has largely disappeared in theatrical films. It's a horrible catch-22.

3. Their play to keep audiences they do get -- families especially -- going is to recycle old IP or overpay for "high concept" projects like this but it either catches fire or bottoms out.

Yes, and the result is impersonal lumbering spectacles that feel like betrayals of the original films that were quite wonderful originally.

4. There's no more word-of-mouth. Movies either come out and make coin or they're dead, buried and going to digital within weeks.

Almost completely true, but if a film is really bad, word of mouth can still kill it even more. Exhibit A: Joker II.

As for RED ONE, who was this movie aimed at? The PG-13 rating and action-centric ads didn't speak to kids. It looked too "lite" for adults with Santa running around...kind of in no man's land. As Arnold found out with JINGLE ALL THE WAY back in the day, action stars don't always result in commercially popular Christmas blockbusters.

Your comments here remind me so much of another disastrous PG-13 flop set around Christmas time that was caught in a no-mans land beith too blunt for children and too childish for adults: 1992's Toys, a film with astonishing production design and a hard working cast that could do nothing to save a hopelessly misconceived script . (On the debit side for children: sexual moaning heard from off screen events, Robin Wright throwing her bra off, Jack Warden mumbling about penis size, LL Cool J kissing Debi Mazar's cleavage, the cold war allegory, the scene with all the cute toys getting exploded, robot Joan Cusack's head flying off. Problems for adults: it was agressively cutesy at times, Robin Williams and Joan Cusack were very childlike it it, and the whole thing was naned Toys).

If anything, Red One feels like the heir to that film.

[AndyDursin]

Great post!

I remember TOYS well, it came out during my senior year of high school. We used to go to the movies every week and TOYS looked so bad -- and got so many bad reviews -- we (wisely) decided to skip it. I rented the laserdisc when it came out a few months later and couldn't finish it...and never tried again!

They had tried to get it made for YEARS, Columbia put out fliers every year in the '80s announcing it was in preproduction. Putting it into turnaround was probably one of the only smart moves David Putnam did during his disastrous run at Columbia.

[TaranofPrydain]

Great post!

I remember TOYS well, it came out during my senior year of high school. We used to go to the movies every week and TOYS looked so bad -- and got so many bad reviews -- we (wisely) decided to skip it. I rented the laserdisc when it came out a few months later and couldn't finish it...and never tried again!

They had tried to get it made for YEARS, Columbia put out fliers every year in the '80s announcing it was in preproduction. Putting it into turnaround was probably one of the only smart moves David Putnam did during his disastrous run at Columbia.

Thank you. I noticed afterwards some spelling errors made when I was typing quickly, so I will apologize for those.

I've seen some of those 80s advertisements from Columbia online recently (and I could swear there was an even earlier one announcing Toys from yet another studio.... Maybe Orion?), and it always seemed like it was being announced but wasn't made. It wasn't a good film at all, but it still deserved the Oscar nomination it received for Art Direction. What is astonishing though is that it was director Barry Levinson's pet project! He basically used all the leverage he had from doing Diner, The Natural, Young Sherlock Holmes, Tin Men, Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man, Avalon, and Bugsy to make a film that received some of the worst reviews of the early 90s. His career never fully recovered.


Ah, yes, the Puttnam era at Columbia. How he butted heads with and alienated so many Hollywood power players! Columbia went through several rough years as a result.....

There was a book about Columbia written in the early 90s that broke down that period by revealing which films Puttnam gave the go light to, and which ones were inherited from previous regimes at Columbia. I am pretty sure that Puttnam was fired before any of the films he approved made it to theatres......

Puttnam initiated or picked up distribution of: The Big Town, Someone to Watch Over Me, Hope and Glory, The Last Emperor, Housekeeping, White Mischief, Zelly and Me, School Daze, Things Change, Rocket Gibraltar, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Me and Him, Things Change, A Time of Destiny, Pulse, Stars and Bars, To Kill a Priest, The Big Picture, The Adventures of Milo and Otis, Bloodhounds of Broadway, Eat a Bowl of Tea, Time of the Gypsies (and Earth Girls are Easy, which ultimately left Columbia to go to Vestron)

Inherited from previous regimes: Ishtar, Roxanne, White Water Summer, La Bamba, Happy New Year, Leonard Part 6, The Big Easy, Vice Versa, Little Nikita, The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking, Punchline, Vibes, Physical Evidence, True Believer, Old Gringo

[AndyDursin]

Not to mention he was one of the reasons why it took GHOSTBUSTERS II 5 years to get made.

BTW there are 2 really good books on Putnam I recommend...I was always fascinated he was going to produce a movie version of Gary Larson's FAR SIDE strip which ended up not happening.



https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Fade-Columb ... s_li_ss_tl



https://www.amazon.com/Out-Focus-Prejud ... s_li_ss_tl

[Monterey Jack]

Epic. Fail.