Breaking down Transformers 2
A couple of things ought to be clear by now, even if you don't tend keep up with this stuff yourself. First and foremost, Revenge of the Fallen set a record for Wednesday openings with about $16.4 million to spare, over Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.But unlike Phoenix, which got very favorable reviews from critics and fans (71/100 on Metacritic), Fallen was savaged by critics (35/100) for having a nonsensical storyline -- even for a Michael Bay film -- confusing effects sequences that leave you wondering what's going on and who is winning, non-existent character development, offensive racial stereotypes and crude humor seemingly detached from any relevance to the film.
And those are the good parts.
Continue reading: Breaking down Transformers 2.
Revenge of the Fallen gets universally bad reviews
Imagine a turd THIS BIG..Michael Bay is going to be living the high life with all the money this Transformers sequel is going to make, but good grief the reviews coming in are brutal as hell. No point in looking up the Rotten Tomatoes or Meta Critic scores or making excuses for typically brainless Bay films, Revenge of the Fallen by all rights should be the year's biggest box office bomb.
It won't be, of course, but it should be.
Movies that feature a mother high on pot brownies and shows the family dogs screwing each other with mildly racist stereotypes attributed to giant robots that are -- even under the best of circumstances -- stupid and insulting, while misapplied appear demeaning and racist, better damned well be the best comedy of the year, if not the decade.
If it's an action movie aimed at kids, and I think you'd have to stretch reality pretty far to delude yourself into believing that this movie isn't aimed at teens, somebody has a hell of a lot of explaining to do. And no, I'm not talking about Michael Bay here.
Bay is huggable, mostly bankable, and doesn't really understand what he's doing or what's going on most of the time.
The "writers" (scare quotes included due to the questionable talent of Orci & Kurtzman who are rolling in money and success and yet are mostly responsible for this Gigli moment in their "careers") and Paramount/DreamWorks who are marketing this trash to kids on the other hand have a lot of nerve approving the unquestionably adult themes and language that don't belong in a PG-13 film. And from what these reviews are telling us, 90% of what's in this film doesn't belong in this film anyway because it was so badly written. So you've got problems with the content on multiple fronts that should have been ironed out before this thing even went into pre-production.
Yet this garbage is almost certainly going to make over half a billion dollars this year and we're going to have to suffer through at least one more of these intellectual black holes, if not several more.
More posts about: Transformers 2
Bryan Fuller quit Heroes. Again.
Some of my thoughts on the things happening recently..Ed McMahon died today. Very sad.
Bryan Fuller bolted Heroes again, which has been confirmed. He helped sketch out the third season arcs but won't be writing for the show this year which probably means this is its last season. I don't think you can blame the tumbling ratings entirely on the show since ratings are down all across network television, and this obviously doesn't help. Although he's staying at NBC and is still on contract with Heroes, it looks like Fuller is done with it for all practical purposes. This is part sad, part furious anger.
Cameron Diaz got a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, proving that pretty much anyone can get one of these things.
Continue reading: Bryan Fuller quit Heroes. Again..
Ed Harris adds to growing opposition to SAG contract
I've got a couple of thoughts on the "vote no" video that Ed Harris did arguing against ratifying the tentative SAG/AMPTP contract. First and foremost, Ed sounded a lot like the writers did in the months leading up to and all throughout the WGA strike, which isn't surprising since these new media provisions are basically the same as the ones the DGA and WGA accepted early last year.
It's worth pointing out that the DGA wasn't willing to fight for those provisions at all, and the WGA had to strike to get them in the first place. The AMPTP didn't want to cough them up to begin with so it's not surprising that they don't want to improve those terms now, but that doesn't mean the existing terms were necessarily good.
Ed Harris doesn't seem to think so and based on this unsubstantiated report, a whole lot of actors agree with him.
What I'm wondering is what was the point of throwing out the old leadership. Membership First (MF) didn't think the new media terms were acceptable and that it was an issue worth striking over, but they got tossed by the membership in favor of United for Strength (US) who were basically promising to just take whatever deal the AMPTP was offering so that the whole mess would just go away. And now that the stale deal is back on the table, presumably the exact situation that a majority of the membership wanted, the membership is saying no to the deal and backing the leadership into a corner where the only way out is to strike.
What the hell is going on over there?
If the membership wasn't going to take the AMPTP deal as it was applied to the DGA/WGA, then why didn't they just stick with the MF guys? With the mailing list abuse debacle, one has to wonder if the membership is having serious regrets over the results of the last election.
United for Strength seems just as willing to play dirty to get their favored outcome and equally as inept as Membership First was on many levels, and I feel genuinely bad for actors these days.
My other thought relating to this video is that unions like SAG and DGA have fallen into a habit of looking at these negotiations in the wrong way. First of all they expire too quickly, such that any attempt to make big gains looks greedy since small gains are given every time a new deal is signed. An effort should be made between the guilds to make these things last longer than three years.
Second, they are seen as a chance to improve the existing framework of the business rather than looking at it as an opportunity -- or even a mandate -- to restructure large chunks of it to fix problems that exist at a fundamental level. Instead of trying to improve home video residuals, and instead of trying to tack on new media residuals, the entire residual system should be examined and probably thrown out and replaced with something better suited to cover all mediums at the same time.
Third, the highest priority right now for SAG and WGA shouldn't be new media, home video formulas, pension contributions, or raises in the minimums. It should be aligning the contract expiration dates with each other. A writers strike doesn't have the punch that it used to before reality programming, and SAG doesn't seem capable of hurting the AMPTP unless AFTRA goes along for the ride, which doesn't seem likely since AFTRA has basically become the new DGA. But both of these unions together can put the AMPTP out of business, and I'm not just talking about a plan of last resort where both unions would strike together -- I'm talking about forming strategy sessions for joint negotiations and having permanent liaisons that interact with each other even during non-contract years.
The workers have the unions but the unions might also benefit from an umbrella orginization that encourages them to exploit each other's strengths against the collective weaknesses and assets of the AMPTP.
The biggest threat to the AMPTP would be a SAG and WGA relationship so cohesive that they might as well send a single negotiating committee to the AMPTP to bargain for new contracts. Even the credible threat of that ought to scare the studios into making reasonable concessions on residuals disagreements.
Right now though it seems as if the WGA is the only union that has the guts to go after what it wants, and they can't get anything alone.
It's worth pointing out that the DGA wasn't willing to fight for those provisions at all, and the WGA had to strike to get them in the first place. The AMPTP didn't want to cough them up to begin with so it's not surprising that they don't want to improve those terms now, but that doesn't mean the existing terms were necessarily good.
Ed Harris doesn't seem to think so and based on this unsubstantiated report, a whole lot of actors agree with him.
What I'm wondering is what was the point of throwing out the old leadership. Membership First (MF) didn't think the new media terms were acceptable and that it was an issue worth striking over, but they got tossed by the membership in favor of United for Strength (US) who were basically promising to just take whatever deal the AMPTP was offering so that the whole mess would just go away. And now that the stale deal is back on the table, presumably the exact situation that a majority of the membership wanted, the membership is saying no to the deal and backing the leadership into a corner where the only way out is to strike.
What the hell is going on over there?
If the membership wasn't going to take the AMPTP deal as it was applied to the DGA/WGA, then why didn't they just stick with the MF guys? With the mailing list abuse debacle, one has to wonder if the membership is having serious regrets over the results of the last election.
United for Strength seems just as willing to play dirty to get their favored outcome and equally as inept as Membership First was on many levels, and I feel genuinely bad for actors these days.
My other thought relating to this video is that unions like SAG and DGA have fallen into a habit of looking at these negotiations in the wrong way. First of all they expire too quickly, such that any attempt to make big gains looks greedy since small gains are given every time a new deal is signed. An effort should be made between the guilds to make these things last longer than three years.
Second, they are seen as a chance to improve the existing framework of the business rather than looking at it as an opportunity -- or even a mandate -- to restructure large chunks of it to fix problems that exist at a fundamental level. Instead of trying to improve home video residuals, and instead of trying to tack on new media residuals, the entire residual system should be examined and probably thrown out and replaced with something better suited to cover all mediums at the same time.
Third, the highest priority right now for SAG and WGA shouldn't be new media, home video formulas, pension contributions, or raises in the minimums. It should be aligning the contract expiration dates with each other. A writers strike doesn't have the punch that it used to before reality programming, and SAG doesn't seem capable of hurting the AMPTP unless AFTRA goes along for the ride, which doesn't seem likely since AFTRA has basically become the new DGA. But both of these unions together can put the AMPTP out of business, and I'm not just talking about a plan of last resort where both unions would strike together -- I'm talking about forming strategy sessions for joint negotiations and having permanent liaisons that interact with each other even during non-contract years.
The workers have the unions but the unions might also benefit from an umbrella orginization that encourages them to exploit each other's strengths against the collective weaknesses and assets of the AMPTP.
The biggest threat to the AMPTP would be a SAG and WGA relationship so cohesive that they might as well send a single negotiating committee to the AMPTP to bargain for new contracts. Even the credible threat of that ought to scare the studios into making reasonable concessions on residuals disagreements.
Right now though it seems as if the WGA is the only union that has the guts to go after what it wants, and they can't get anything alone.
SAG's new leadership a lot like the old
I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that the takeover of SAG's national leadership by the Unite for Strength faction and the New York wonks was supposed to make things more civil so that they could get the business of bargaining a new contract with the studios out of the way. These guys (and gals) have been working without a contract for almost a year now.Well, so much for that fantasy.
There were a lot of bad things said about the Membership First people and as someone not at all familiar with SAGs internals, I really don't know how much of it was true, only that enough of it was believed that US gained enough seats to fire executive director Doug Allen and to replace the entire negotiating committee. Had I written about any of that, I would have liked to believe that I would have issued a word of caution or two. New guys or not, good intentions or not, politics is politics and abusive behavior is often only considered abusive when it's being done by the other guy.
When you become the other guy, well, politics is politics as they say.
Case in point: United for Strength allegedly promised not to personally attack anyone that disagreed with their agenda, rebuking the tactics of the previous leadership as unproductive. But when you're in the minority it's very easy to say things like that because there's really nothing you can do to prove it and then be held accountable for what you said, but it's a lot harder when you're the one calling the shots.
US used a mailing list of all SAG members to bash the "vote no" core which would seem to violate their promise not to attack their union's dissenters (presumably because they were attacked in the same way when MF was running the show) and beyond that, it's just a really crappy and abusive thing to do.
It's one thing to use donated funds to present your agenda and aggressively attack your opponents as having the wrong ideas, but to use an internal union administrative list and launch political propaganda on it against your opponents who can't respond in kind, with guild funds, is just reprehensible behavior at best, and maybe even illegal at worst.
Again, it's not surprising at all that the previous minority faction that cried foul over abusive behavior has turned around and become the aggressor now that they are in charge -- that happens all the time especially in national politics -- but it's still distasteful behavior.
Moreover I find it somewhat amusing that the new leadership is finding it hard to get their agenda passed. MF wanted to bargain hard and then strike -- but fouled it up -- because they figured (like the WGA did) that the studios were not going to give in without a strike. US believed that no better terms were possible (especially once the recession went into full effect -- even though the movie business is doing record revenue) and was handed control based on the promise to sit down with the studios and get whatever can be gotten, so that everyone could go back to work.
Only things didn't quite work out the way they had hoped. At first the studios refused to sit down and talk, and once they finally did and the new SAG leadership got a firm offer (I haven't seen it but I'd be shocked if it were anything other than what the WGA got), the SAG membership seems to want to vote it down. Not just by a slim majority, but so overwhelmingly that it would be a huge embarrassment for the new guys who rode to power on the promise of making this mess go away, but has ended up looking equally as inept as the old crew. [Note: follow that link for a report on a recent meeting that has a lot about this current mess.]
However you want to look at the results of the WGA strike, it seems painfully obvious by now that SAG leadership could learn a few things from the WGA on how to conduct negotiations. They may not have gotten everything they wanted and in fact may not have gotten anything they really wanted, but at least they got new contract faster than SAG has and they did it without looking like total lapdogs (hello DGA), so that has to count for something.
Disclaimer: For the record, I am against the latest contract that US is pushing just as much as I was against the contract that the WGA eventually agreed to. Both are garbage for "new media" (Hulu) and cannot be tolerated. The home video debacle cannot happen again with new media and there's little point in even having unions to begin with if all you're going to do is allow management to dictate contracts in all the meaningful ways. How SAG gets there is up to them, but getting there shouldn't be optional.
Some things are better left alone
THR is floating a story that the rights holder of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are looking to bring it back to the big screen. Before you get too terribly excited, you remember that curious and wonderful little inner-child responsible for all your hopes and dreams for the future? Yeah, I need to just stab it directly in the heart with a spoon, flailing and screaming, until it dies a cold, senseless and lonely death.Joss Whedon, the minor deity that wrote the original screenplay (of questionable quality, but hey, even Alex Rodriguez strikes out some times), doesn't own the rights to the "franchise" and so far doesn't have anything to do with this reincarnation, which means you might as well just forget about this news and go on about your day as if none of this ever happened.
Still with me? Yeah, you're a sick bastard, but you're my kind of bastard.
These people do seem to have modicum of respect for what Whedon has done (and supposedly they supported the two television spin-offs which elevated him to said godly-status) and don't intend to freeload off his characters by rebooting the movie or the shows. That's all well and nice, but if you're not going reboot, then why are you "bringing it back" in the first place?
Why not just go off and do something completely new?
Wait a minute, why am I even bothering.
Who cares about why they going through the trouble of bringing something back if they are going to ignore as much of it as humanly possible, why isn't Joss already all over this (Dollhouse issues aside)?
I'm not sure that I would disagree with criticism of the feature film, it was pretty corny and definitely not at all what we've come to expect from one of the foremost social commentary gurus of his generation. Then again, the first handful of seasons of Buffy the TV series and even the first few seasons of Angel were pretty confused and lost.
On the other hand the final season of each of those two shows were perhaps some of the finest television I've ever seen, and we all know what incredible work Whedon and company (Tim Minear, everyone -- obviously television not a one man [or one woman] show) did with Firefly, and Serenity was been very well received critically.
Why wouldn't you want the man back on the job?
Insanity, I tell you, insanity.
More posts about: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon
Watchmen postmortem
(Update blow)
It's been about 11 weeks since Watchmen debuted and I don't see a need to wait any longer to do a very small postmortem on it. Critics hated it, bloggers (who mostly consisted of fans of the graphic novel) loved it. No where near enough people went to see it to justify its budget.
I think that most people seemed to have settled on $150 million for production and an unknown number for marketing, which I guess could have ranged from $20 million to $50 million or more.
The bottom line here is that for what it cost to make, especially with the foreign distribution deals that diluted WB's profit potential, this film needed to make over $300 million domestically just to break even at the box office, and obviously that didn't happen. The domestic take of $107 million (May 21) would mean just $59 million for the studio which is barely a third of what they needed. Honestly, even if this hadn't been the case and Watchmen had been a wild success here at home, they still would have been in a hole due to not getting foreign receipts. And even if they got some of those receipts, it wouldn't have been nearly enough to help.
Fanboys can hush up now because DVD revenue isn't going to save this film either, it may not have been a disaster, but it's about as close to being a flop as you can get without getting fired. (This is the part where you're missing the sarcasm in my non-existent voice, since people fail upwards in Hollywood.)
When people said that Watchmen was "unfilmable" I said they were full of it. This isn't the first graphic novel ever adapted to film and certainly not the longest piece of literature adapted. It may have played better as a television mini-series or even a rehashed trilogy but that hardly means it was impossible to shoot as a feature film. If it didn't work then it was because the people who made it (the studio is just as responsible for that as the creative talent for many reasons) had failed to do their jobs. That doesn't mean it's their fault personally, but it also doesn't mean that if they couldn't do it, that it couldn't be done at all.
And it's not like they won't try to do it again. It was only five years between remakes of The Hulk (both failed in my opinion and nobody has said that The Hulk was unfilmable) and the reboots are coming so fast and furious that it may not even take that long before somebody tries again.
Given the legal dispute between studios over who owned the feature rights, maybe Fox will decide that it can succeed where Warner Brothers didn't.
Update (2009-05-26): A reader left a comment challenging my numbers. Legendary Pictures apparently co-financed Watchmen (I didn't know so here's the correction), but I was unable to verify how big of a percentage they contributed towards production and marketing costs. The commenter says WB was only on the hook for 25%, which, given the relative size of the two studios and the various interactions involved (WB owns the rights which is why they got sued by Fox, not Legendary), sounds somewhat backwards.
Regardless, my conclusion isn't refuted by this new fact because all you're doing is reducing costs and revenue along similar lines. If WB only paid 25% into the budget, their cut is going to be a lot smaller as a result. If you add WB and Legendary's stakes together then you still end up in the same bad place: the pic lost money for the companies that paid for it. Whoever paid for it has to share the domestic distribution only becuase Paramount owns the foreign receipts. The budget was $150 million (cited in the comments) and domestic was only $107 million, and theaters take almost half of that (44% -- $47 million).
The result is still the same, WB lost huge money on Watchmen.
It's been about 11 weeks since Watchmen debuted and I don't see a need to wait any longer to do a very small postmortem on it. Critics hated it, bloggers (who mostly consisted of fans of the graphic novel) loved it. No where near enough people went to see it to justify its budget.
I think that most people seemed to have settled on $150 million for production and an unknown number for marketing, which I guess could have ranged from $20 million to $50 million or more.
The bottom line here is that for what it cost to make, especially with the foreign distribution deals that diluted WB's profit potential, this film needed to make over $300 million domestically just to break even at the box office, and obviously that didn't happen. The domestic take of $107 million (May 21) would mean just $59 million for the studio which is barely a third of what they needed. Honestly, even if this hadn't been the case and Watchmen had been a wild success here at home, they still would have been in a hole due to not getting foreign receipts. And even if they got some of those receipts, it wouldn't have been nearly enough to help.
Fanboys can hush up now because DVD revenue isn't going to save this film either, it may not have been a disaster, but it's about as close to being a flop as you can get without getting fired. (This is the part where you're missing the sarcasm in my non-existent voice, since people fail upwards in Hollywood.)
When people said that Watchmen was "unfilmable" I said they were full of it. This isn't the first graphic novel ever adapted to film and certainly not the longest piece of literature adapted. It may have played better as a television mini-series or even a rehashed trilogy but that hardly means it was impossible to shoot as a feature film. If it didn't work then it was because the people who made it (the studio is just as responsible for that as the creative talent for many reasons) had failed to do their jobs. That doesn't mean it's their fault personally, but it also doesn't mean that if they couldn't do it, that it couldn't be done at all.
And it's not like they won't try to do it again. It was only five years between remakes of The Hulk (both failed in my opinion and nobody has said that The Hulk was unfilmable) and the reboots are coming so fast and furious that it may not even take that long before somebody tries again.
Given the legal dispute between studios over who owned the feature rights, maybe Fox will decide that it can succeed where Warner Brothers didn't.
Update (2009-05-26): A reader left a comment challenging my numbers. Legendary Pictures apparently co-financed Watchmen (I didn't know so here's the correction), but I was unable to verify how big of a percentage they contributed towards production and marketing costs. The commenter says WB was only on the hook for 25%, which, given the relative size of the two studios and the various interactions involved (WB owns the rights which is why they got sued by Fox, not Legendary), sounds somewhat backwards.
Regardless, my conclusion isn't refuted by this new fact because all you're doing is reducing costs and revenue along similar lines. If WB only paid 25% into the budget, their cut is going to be a lot smaller as a result. If you add WB and Legendary's stakes together then you still end up in the same bad place: the pic lost money for the companies that paid for it. Whoever paid for it has to share the domestic distribution only becuase Paramount owns the foreign receipts. The budget was $150 million (cited in the comments) and domestic was only $107 million, and theaters take almost half of that (44% -- $47 million).
The result is still the same, WB lost huge money on Watchmen.
More posts about: Warner Brothers, Watchmen
Not bloody likely
Just caught an interesting story on Patrick Goldstein's blog whilst digging through some old news that is somewhat related to the story I wrote about the Wolverine piracy fiasco from early April. Actually my post was about Roger Friedman getting fired by Fox for reviewing the leaked screener, but I had some thoughts on how Fox was reacting to the situation in there as well. More or less I said they were overreacting like a retarded teenager, but I never really thought much of the specific claim by Fox that 10 minutes of the finished film were missing from the screener, and that people who should go see the movie in the theaters because of it.
I didn't care because missing footage from an incomplete screener is the very definition of a screener, it's common knowledge and not in the least bit significant.
Unless, that is, it's a lie.
I didn't care because missing footage from an incomplete screener is the very definition of a screener, it's common knowledge and not in the least bit significant.
Unless, that is, it's a lie.
Continue reading: Not bloody likely.
Good news for Dollhouse, deceptive news for Ron Brown
So I hear that Fox isn't ready to punch Joss Whedon in the nuts quite yet. Good, it's nice to see them putting away that itchy trigger finger for a while. Fox is the most watched broadcast network and it's well past time they started acting like it, which means not blowing off every struggling show before it has even had a legitimate chance to fail. I shouldn't have to point out that the first season of Cheers was the lowest rated series on television, and yet it went on to secure a top ten position in the ratings in eight of its eleven seasons, winning 26 Emmy Awards on 111 nominations -- an unbeaten record that stands even today.
Whedon promised that Dollhouse was going to get better after a certain number of episodes (a dubious thing coming from most people), and was criticized for it, but I don't think that's entirely fair.
Whedon promised that Dollhouse was going to get better after a certain number of episodes (a dubious thing coming from most people), and was criticized for it, but I don't think that's entirely fair.
Continue reading: Good news for Dollhouse, deceptive news for Ron Brown.
Aaron Sorkin isn't done with you yet
Aaron Sorkin (Sports Night, West Wing, Studio 60) may be coming back for more (AICN)Sony has signed two writers to develop the Spider-Man spin-off Venom, fresh off a zombie flick (Cinematical)
Win lunch on the set of Stargate Universe via a charity auction (Subduction Leads to Orogeny)
Miley Cyrus busts into the weekend box office with a $30 million weekend for Hannah Montana (Media Pundit, THR)
Abraham Lincoln + Vampires = ? (Scifi Wire)
Showtime isn't happy with any of its new pilots (Variety)
Nielsen: Cable net USA had more viewers than broadcast network The CW (AP)
Links are light on a holiday weekend, but I'd note that USA is more profitable for NBC Universal than NBC is, and I don't really think it's all that close. Maybe Bonnie Hammer should be running NBC instead of Ben Silverman.
SModcast mirror updated
I updated my SModcast mirror that I had fallen behind on. There are four new podcasts available if you haven't got 'em yet, here they are:
For Today's Elegant Man (52 minutes)
Paging Doctor Bejerot (1 hour 16 minutes)
R.I.P. (1 hour 11 minutes)
Satan's Dookie (1 hour 11 minutes)
There hasn't been a new podcast since 81 (Satan's Dookie) on March 29th. Enjoy!
For Today's Elegant Man (52 minutes)
Paging Doctor Bejerot (1 hour 16 minutes)
R.I.P. (1 hour 11 minutes)
Satan's Dookie (1 hour 11 minutes)
There hasn't been a new podcast since 81 (Satan's Dookie) on March 29th. Enjoy!
More posts about: SModcast
Once proud Lost, like Heroes, is having problems
I'm sure I could pull in a number of examples -- the networks are all down across the board -- some are far more obvious than others (Terminator: SCC, Dollhouse), but this example serves us best. Does anyone remember when Lost pulled in something like 26 million people for its second season premier?Like Heroes, both critical favorites that fell off the wagon, Lost has been testing new series lows in the ratings. Whose fault is it?
Continue reading: Once proud Lost, like Heroes, is having problems.
Miley Cyrus movie triples expectations
Early success has a priceDon't ask me how, or why, or what it even means, but Disney was only expecting about $17 million for the entire three-day weekend for Hannah Montana The Movie, but the Miley Cyrus pic pretty much destroyed any chance of that when it pulled in an estimated $17 million on Friday alone.
Here I was, all set to write a story about how this flick was going to open in third or even fourth place, but the girl pulled off a minor miracle by putting Vin Diesel on the back burner one weekend after he set the record for largest April opening ever ($70 million). What I was going to say was "welcome to real life", because success with young people only lasts for as long as those fans are still young. People aren't going to go see Miley Cyrus in concert or at the movies in fifteen years just because they liked her when they were younger.
And I still believe that, this movie is still playing off her TV success and that's not going to last forever. Eventually, she's going to have to do an adult movie, and only then will we see if she's just a fad or the next rising media star.
While I'm leaning towards the former, for now anyway, congratulations to Miley for proving everybody wrong.
Monsters vs. Aliens didn't fare as well, debuting in third on Friday for $9 million, proving that DreamWorks' animation unit may be good, but they aren't automatic. Warner Brother's Observe and Report (Seth Rogen, Anna Faris) opened in fourth place to $4.75 million. I'll write about this later today, but right now I'd like to take some heat off of Kevin Smith here by saying that however realistic expections were for Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Seth Rogen isn't automatic either.
No studio, director, actor, and no movie is ever automatic.
More posts about: Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus
House creator David Shore and Katie Jacobs interview
Fox held a conference call for the press with former House M.D. star Kal Penn, and executive producer David Shore, following the "death" of Penn's character and his change in career focus from television to politics (he's swapping acting for acting.)Rather than give you highlights like everybody else does, I'm just going to throw the entire conference call transcript up for you to read. This is really nothing more than a Q&A between Penn, Shore, and media for quote mining and the like. We all knew why Penn was leaving the show right away, so the only real question that anybody had was whether or not the writers were going to let the matter drop, or keep Kutner's death as a recurring issue.
This is the Shore/Jacobs portion of the interview, with the Kal Penn part here.
Continue reading: House creator David Shore and Katie Jacobs interview.
Lengthy Kal Penn Q&A about his new job, post-House
Fox held a conference call for the press with former House M.D. star Kal Penn, and executive producer David Shore, following the "death" of Penn's character and his change in career focus from television to politics (he's swapping acting for acting.)Rather than give you highlights like everybody else does, I'm just going to throw the entire conference call transcript up for you to read. This is really nothing more than a Q&A between Penn, Shore, and media for quote mining and the like. We all knew why Penn was leaving the show right away, so the only real question that anybody had was whether or not the writers were going to let the matter drop, or keep Kutner's death as a recurring issue.
The answer is below.
This is the Kal Penn portion of the interview, with the David Shore and Katie Jacobs here.
Continue reading: Lengthy Kal Penn Q&A about his new job, post-House.
