And this is why we can't have nice things

Because geeks don't actually *watch* the movies they claim to love.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4739-scott-pilgrim/

Did it really cost more than 30 million in marketing? Because if that's true, then that's just the lol-cherry on top of the fail-cake

Dead accurate on the quick fact sheet.

What Hollywood execs seem to miss is that there's not as many geeks as they might wish. Any hype generated by the geek community *can't* be turned into big money. Near riots at a comic con may SEEM like a sure thing to bet on... but you've probably just managed to sample a significant part of your viewing audience, rather than a statistical representation of wider geek interest.

Add in being hard to please and you have two strikes against you going into a geek release. The third strike will range from geeks liking to download things for free instead of paying for things to something they want to see more is coming out to competing with new comic day. But it will be there.

Though Snakes on the Plane is a bad example to be trotting out. It might not have made the Spiderman, maybe even Titanic!, levels of hypemoney they were hoping for, but I'm pretty sure it came out ahead of projected earnings for a movie about Sam Jackson on a plane. With snakes.

The irony is, if Scott Pilgrim were real he'd have been totally excited for this movie but would have been too occupied with video games and slacking off that he'd have missed it, too, thinking he'd just download it later or something.

At least I can say I did my part. I watched it, brought friends to watch it, promoted the heck out of it on Facebook, and generally let the world know I'm in lesbian with the Scott Pilgrim movie. *sigh* I'm sure it'll do better on video.

I went to the theaters with a crapton of friends, so I did my part to support it. Sad to see it bombed on sales, though. I absolutely loved watching it.

I doubt Cracked knows exactly how much was spent on marketing. $30 million is probably around par for a typical Hollywood movie though.

However, for Scott Pilgrim, "marketing" costs may include the video game and the multiple soundtracks, all of which will help the studio recover some money in the ancilliary market.

However, one thing about Scott Pilgrim's cost to make that bugs me is that most of that money probably went into SFX. It always baffles me (heh) to see as SFX and CGI become more and more common place that the price to get movies made is not decreasing, but increasing. I thought I remembered in my basic economic's course that as a good becomes more manufactured (and how it gets made should become more "simple" and "easy"), the price of said good should decrease.

Now, of course, with SFX/CGI it is a service, not a good, but it isn't like there is only one or two major SFX studios anymore and they are teaching computer graphic courses in college now. So why has a movie effect that is entering its second decade of constant use driving movie prices up?

Serenity...how many screens was it on? I know it wasn't in my local theater (along with a boatload of other movies, but damn if they can't get the latest formulaic chick flick).

Scott Pilgrim. It had the downer of a main "star". My word, I've seen toast that has more personality and charisma than that kid.

Personally, I've been too ridiculously broke the last 5 or 6 months to watch much of anything. Now I have a new job, I'll be looking to rectify that, although, probably moreso with rentals than going to the theaters. If only ticket prices up here were dirt cheap like they are in America.

Why would you base success on a minor part of sales that is slowly dying and any rational person would see that it's largely a waste of money to give to?

Why would I spend $20 on a movie in a theater and be annoyed by people while only getting the chance to watch it once when I can just wait spend $2 (rental) -> $30 and watch it as much as I want in my preferred setting AND get extras?

And why you would spend $30m on advertising is beyond me... it just screams of the person running the company being an idiot.

Wow, $30 million on advertising. See that's also a bad sign. Wasn't there also an ad blitz for Airbender? Also they didn't focus on selling it, the 30 second spots simply all looked like live action DBZ. The longer theater trailer was better, giving you an idea of the movie but the TV ones were just flashing lights and sound. How do you get people to a movie without telling them what kind of movie it is?

The poster in the infographic is 100x better than the Cera with guitar on red background that we got around here. If you weren't familiar with the comic you would have no clue what the movie was about looking at that. It wasn't until someone put up a trailer here, months before it's release, that I developed an interest to see it.

And you know what hurts. SP made more money per theater this week than Vampire Sucks, Lottery Ticket, Nanny McPhee Returns and Piranha 3D yet it's SP that gets kicked out of half of it's theaters.

Sadly the economics dictate that if you are going to do a movie or TV series with a limited following then you have to keep the budget under control. Sadly this is tough with SciFi or Fantasy. We've come to expect a certain level of "reality" in our special effects and short changing the CGI effects budget is easily spotted by gamers.

As for comic book movies, the big name titles had 30, 40 years of pent up demand from fans willing to go see them but small recent titles simply haven't developed the enough of a following to support a movie with a medium size budget.

Crack's conclusion of that list with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was just sticking the shiv in.

As for SPvtW, it's going to struggle to earn back its production budget in terms of its worldwide gross, but in the end, it's going to be classified as a "disappointment" rather than a bomb or a flop.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Father Xmas And you know what hurts. SP made more money per theater this week than Vampire Sucks, Lottery Ticket, Nanny McPhee Returns and Piranha 3D yet it's SP that gets kicked out of half of it's theaters.

At least SPvtW is remaining in selected theaters, where, one hopes, it will continue to draw good business per screen. This was, after all, the year of MacGruber and Jonah Hex, two films that were among the top five fastest yanked from cinemas (justifiably) of all time.

While Scott Pilgrim has been a disaster, Jonah Hex was a full-scale catastrophe

Well going from 2818 theaters in week 1 to 1269 in week 3 to 802 in week 4 isn't exactly slow either.

Vampire Sucks was in 3233 theaters in week 1 to 2434 in week 3.

And that's the thing. 2nd week box office per theater for SP was $2825 and it lost 1500 theaters. Vampire Sucks 2nd week box office per theater was $2068 and it only lost about 800.

And now the nearest theater to me that is showing SP is in a different state and an hour away while VS is still at all my local theaters.

I don't think Kick **** should be on that list. That movie made 96 million in worldwide box office, and according to Box Office Mojo, Old Dogs only outgrossed Kick by $700,000.

Old Dogs Box Office
Kick **** Box Office

so, don't listen to geeks and always pander to as many people as possible regardless of the quality of the product. got it. i feel all learned now.

If you want the most money, Veritech? Yes, actually, that is exactly what you do, pander to the mainstream.

Sometimes the art wins. But it's lightning in a bottle.