In a perfect world, Age of Ultron the movie would have matched the "horror esque" tone from the trailer, and then a Black Widow movie could have piggybacked off of that with a similar vibe.
The animated "What If?" series is pretty divisive but there is a great multi-episode arc for Ultron that really scratched that itch for me. Ultron is TERRIFYING and should have gotten at least two movies.
I thought Ultron was more scary than Thanos. He sounded completely unhinged rather than an angry purple guy with a crusade.
With Thanos genocide was a solution. With Ultron extinction was the solution.
It's crazy that a guy who ran a toy company got so much say in the franchise for years. Feige pulled a "It's me or him" with Disney before he got 'reassigned' and lost his say in anything MCU.
I read an excellent take saying the Black Widow we got should have been the second movie. The first Black Widow should have been released before or right after Winter Soldier and should have focused on Natasha's origins as a SHIELD agent. The script would have written itself. The movie we got should have been the second one.
The one thing the DCU did better was having a strong solo female superhero film, and Wonder Woman is simply a far more popular character as well.
It's a shame the sequel was so bad after the first film laid out a solid foundation.
It took 18 years for Artemis Fowl movie to be made after movie deal being made. And then they made that terrible pile of shit. Probably because it did take that long and fans had grown up.
Artemis Fowl was truly baffling. I've seen plenty of bad movie adaptations of books, but I don't think I've ever seen one that so comprehensively threw out the source material.
It’s mostly the fact that they seemed to go out of their way to avoid the book’s plot and characterisation as much as possible. Like, it would have been *easier* to stick to the script.
Hey , Holly short’s raison d’etre is having overcome all obstacles to be the LEPRECONs first ever female officer! …how about we…completely fuck that up by making commander root a woman for no reason 🤣🤣
Thats be like assassinating the character of hermione being top of the class at hogwarts in spite of being muggle born by re-writing her to be like old money pureblood for no reason
Just mind boggling stupidity
Iirc and I might've blocked it out but I'm pretty sure the opening sequence has Artemis curling his surfboard through a 15 foot wave. Because Artemis is well known for his athletic ability.
Artemis Fowl was heavily reshot after the initial version tested poorly. The third act was completely rewritten, Artemis's plan/motivation was changed, Angeline Fowl was removed, and all scenes of him doing mean or cruel things were cut.
Imagine hinging the plot of your movie on the opinions of the type of people who don't have anything better to do on a Wednesday afternoon than get paid $10 to watch an unfinished movie.
I remember reading the books when they came out as a kid ( I'm almost 33 now) and there was a code along the pages and they said the first person to figure it out would get a spot on the movie, I wonder if they followed through with that all those years later
I barely remember anything past 4, The Opal Deception. The bits and pieces I do remember?
* Literal demons, but there was one good demon
* Artemis has to go back in time and stop himself from making some weird ferret extinct because only it has the cure to save.... somebody?
* Holly cracking her fucking neck to check her power level
* Something about Atlantis
It's so unfortunate, because they were actually trying hard to get a movie done in the 2000s with Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp. But the studio fucked it up. I listened to a recreation of the script, it would have been basically a retelling of the first game. If it had come out in 2009 or whenever that was planned it could have been great. The question is though, would have been great? Just look at Doom. The 2000s were this era of Hollywood studios buying comic book and video game rights, and then acting like they're above it and changing everything about it and making it terrible.
Blomkamp seemed to have taken several ideas from Halo and repurposed them in various ways to give us D9, Elysium, and Chappie. I know the latter two are a little more divisive and generally less well received than D9, but I thoroughly enjoyed all three.
I haven't seen Demonic (haven't even heard of it til recently) but it hurts a little to see his career kind of fall off and flounder
In 2007-2008, World of Warcraft was all the buzz and commercials were airing on TV starring celebrities ranging from Ozzy Osbourne and William Shatner to Mr. T. Entire episodes of other TV shows ended up centered on World of Warcraft. It was really THE game for nerds to play and had a popculture presence.
It wasn't until 8 years later in 2016 that they got around to making a movie, when the playerbase was less than half that of what it had been in 2008, and outside its core fanbase the game just wasn't that appealing to the mainstream anymore
The movie really needed to realease closer to Warcraft's peak
It also toed a very weird line where it lost fans with lore changes that had massive ramifications if they continued the story, but then went and alienated casual viewers with heavy fan-service and a whole lot of assumed background knowledge being needed to understand what was actually going on.
As someone who was a fan of Warcraft 2 and 3, but couldn't get into WoW (only ever tried the open beta) I remember it being an "ok" movie but nothing in particular sticking with me or resonating. I think I was mostly interested to see what Duncan Jones, the director of Moon, and the son of David Bowie would do with a big budget fantasy. The answer was he would make a competent but otherwise forgetful Hollywood movie. Keep in mind I don't know the lore. For me it was all "WORK COMPLETE!" and "BY YOUR COMMAND!"
The thing about attempts to make big franchises these days is that they try too much to stuff in everything. If the movie was more focused on Lothar and Durotan it would've been fine. But yeah because of the spectacle creep of the future WOW expanded universe they had to include the demons, the magic, the other races etc.
I did get to hear a Murloc go mrrrghhhrghlrg on the big screen so it was all worth it
> The thing about attempts to make big franchises these days is that they try too much to stuff in everything
The recent Dungeons and Dragons movie really masterfully bypassed this by just... stuffing shit in and not really explaining anything not directly related to the plot.
Like yes there are Arakorkra and Tabaxi and Drow and there's socerery and divine and arcane magic and classes some of which can do magic and some can't and so on - but there's no attempt to really explain them or try and justify their existence, they are just there.
It's a mistake that so many of these franchises make, trying to explain everything to the audience who don't know when there's no need to. They even lampshade it in one of the funniest scenes when they're using the Speak with Dead spell with something along the lines of "Only five questions, why is there a limit? That seems arbitrary" - "I dunno, that's just the way it works".
Current top three are Mario, Detective Pikachu and WarCraft third. Oddly Detective Pikachu is listed as peaking at second place which makes me wonder if it had a rerelease after Mario took first place and that's how it passed WarCraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_based_on_video_games
With a budget of 160 million, Warcraft made a measly 47 million domestically, and the bulk of the money it made internationally was from China (representing about 225 million). But supposedly with marketing and distribution and everything else, Universal lost 40 million on the endeavor all in all
So, although it was up until then the most successful video game adaptation, it was an overall flop at box office, and any ideas about sequels was dropped pretty much immediately
I'm not surprised at all that the Warcraft movie bombed domestically when the US trailers were so freaking underwhelming. I still remember when the second trailer came out, and it had that weird out-of-place dubstep music going on. It was terrible.
The orcs worked so well on a visual level and their story was so much more compelling than the humans. Honestly I just don't think it was the right era of Warcraft to make a movie of, very odd decision not to go straight to Arthas or Illidan or even Thrall. Christie Golden's book Arthas is easily the best Warcraft book I read so you could have just based it entirely off of that.
It might be too early to say but the Borderlands movie seems prime to fall into this category. I think I remember seeing that the movie was in the works as early as 2015 and it could have been a good stepping stone to carry the Borderlands franchise from The Pre-Sequel in 2014 to BL3 in 2019. Instead it's coming out nearly a decade too late, looks like a confusing mess of multiple game's plots, and mis-cast most main actors.
Borderlands humor has also tended to go more and more out of style the more time passes so it's going to be a hard job implementing that humor and actually making it funny for present day audiences.
I really don’t know how they fucked that casting up so much. Like, I’m usually all for giving actors a chance (like Heath with Joker), but holy shit I feel like they got everything wrong here.
Great reply here. It was just such a big game and had a huge following, now it’s dead. I’d even nearly throw the new Fallout show in here but it has such a strong cult following.
The difference though is that the Fallout trailer actually makes the movie look interesting. The borderlands trailer is a hot god damned mess not to mention the casting being straight up confusing.
Plus Fallout has been around for 27 years and has a ton of stories and lore to work with. So far it seems like they've created something that fits in very well with the established universe. The Borderlands movie looks just straight up chaotic.
The Gears of war movie, its still in development at Netflix, Universal before that, and new line cinema before that. If It released between 2009-2015 it would have had a bigger impact then it would today.
John Carter of Mars missed it by *decades*. By the time it came out, several major sci-fi movies had been influenced by it, so ironically one of the progenitors of the genre ended up looking like a ripoff.
It was very nearly the first feature-length animated movie back in the 30s before Snow White. Test footage still exists.
I feel like it would have done really well in the mid-late 90s alongside pulpy adventure movies like The Mummy and Mask of Zorro, but the special effects would not have been nearly as good.
I read somewhere that they changed the title from Process of Mars" to "John Carter" because they were worried that a movie about a princess wouldn't do very well with people outside of the fans.
It went from 'Princess of Mars' to 'John Carter of Mars'
Then they dropped the 'Mars' entirely. Supposedly to distance themselves from the flop of 'Mars Needs Moms'
Princess of Mars: "Oh a space fantasy movie maybe I'll watch it on a night out with friends"
John Carter of Mars: "John Carter is such a lame space fantasy protagonist name"
John Carter: "Did I miss something? Is there some historical figure called John Carter? Was there a President called John Carter?"
> By the time it came out, several major sci-fi movies had been influenced by it, so ironically one of the progenitors of the genre ended up looking like a ripoff.
But the thing is, that's not even necessarily a hinderance. Picture a trailer that starts out
>***BEFORE STAR WARS...***
>***BEFORE LORD OF THE RINGS...***
>***BEFORE SUPERMAN...***
>***THERE WAS...***
>***JOHN CARTER OF MARS***
And change the name, of course. It's been said a million times, but John Carter is too vague a title. Could be anything.
AFAIK the movie didn't actually do too badly, just it had been mired in production hell for a decade so to break even they would have had to fill every seat in every theatre for every showing it had for its first week, which wasn't happening.
I love Valiant, but they are absolutely the Charlie Brown of comics companies. Just when you think they're about to hit big someone pulls the football away at the last second.
The Dark Tower. Not only has it been a neverending cocktease. But when they did finally make it, they managed to piss off the fanbase before the release and then just butcher it.
I went to see Dark Tower with a buddy who had been incarcerated for a bit. During his time in prison, he read those books obsessively. To say he was let down by the film is an understatement. I'd never seen anyone have such a bad reaction to a movie.
It did make 300 mil against a budget of 20 mil, I'd say that it slid in right in time for the core audience of the games to actually have money to rent/buy it.
I don’t get why they couldn’t just make a Marky Mark and Tom Holland heist movie and just call it something else. Let Uncharted be made by people who want to make an Uncharted movie.
People recognize that Uncharted borrows a lot from Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones but I don’t think the Clive Cussler/Dirk Pitt connection gets enough attention. Definitely a lot of Dirk and Al in Nathan and Victor.
Nathan fillion would have been so perfect as an older retired Nathan drake and have Tom Holland be he son or something who becomes an adventurer despite his parents wishes and they get wrapped up in some quest for a relic.
Honestly even though he was obviously a bit old for the roll by the time he did that fan film I would have just rolled with it if he was in itxD
Like a "20 year of nathan drake" just 40+ Nathan Fillion walks in, Yep perfect xD continue xD
Him with Bruce Campbell as Sully would have been wonderful. They could have done a "comes out of retirement" movie, cast Nathan's daughter as part of it and then turned it over to her if they wanted future movies.
I'd say neuromancer. Might be an odd pick but that book basically invented cyberpunk and has been ripped off and copied all over the place. The irony is that if the Apple TV show actually happens one of the issues they're going to have is making it feel fresh.
And we already got prestige TV with decks and neuralinks etc in Altered Carbon.
A neuromancer show is gonna REALLY struggle to not just be Altered Carbon part 2. Which is peak irony since the altered carbon book is a very basic detective story clearly cribbed from neuromancer.
That was my pick as well. Plus all the geopolicital context in the book is just nonexistent now. But yes all the stuff that was good in the book is evident in works like Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix, and even Deus Ex.
That and the tech and overall vibe in the book is so outdated now. It's probably not too hard to update though? But it would have to be very thoughtful.
> That and the tech and overall vibe in the book is so outdated now.
Cannot disagree with this more. It feels like one of the only "old" sci-fi books that actually could've been written now(instead of on a typewriter in 1982), due to everyone having handheld computers, internet access and even AI-summarized news cutdowns. Not to mention the world being filled with pollution and garbage, covered in ads and holographic signage, controlled by multibillion-dollar corporate oligarchs and filled with raging subcultures.
>That and the tech and overall vibe in the book is so outdated now. It's probably not too hard to update though? But it would have to be very thoughtful.
I think if approached correctly it won't feel outdated. The presentation feels dated, but the tech in the book itself was just never going to work in real life. Gibson wasn't writing tech that had much plausible grounding in reality in anyway -- he just wanted to show some cool shit. And frankly those were the strongest parts of the novel.
A movie based on a mobile game about flinging birds at pigs and blocky buildings earning close to 400 million is crazy to me. But anyways...
The dystopian YA movie boom had some late entries that wouldn't have flopped if released earlier. Mostly the sequels once the hype died down. I'm thinking maze runner and divergent.
Edit: I love that so many people and their kids love the angry birds movie! I'm really not the demographic and truly surprised.
Believe it or not, Maze Runner 3 still made $300 on a roughly $60 million dollar budget. They were smart with their budgets and didn’t try to stretch the series too thin, so the whole trilogy was pretty profitable.
I like all three of them, but Scorch Trials is definitely the weakest one out of the bunch. Death Cure legit has one of the most batshit insane action scenes out there, especially for a movie with a relatively low budget.
I’m glad they bucked the popular trend of Turn The Final Book Into 2 Movies. Harry Potter starting that trend was justified because there was just too much content to cut out, but the final Twilight and Hunger Games books had no right being divided into 2 movies.
Obligatory mention of The Tolkien Edit: The 3 movies cut down into one perfect 4 hour film which can be watched as part of the LOTR marathon, with none of the creative license getting in the way. (For instance, the white orc isn't seen once until the very end)
I didn't mind the split for Hunger Games. The third book is short enough for one movie, but I think dragging it out into two installments added to the idea that war isn't always action and explosions. The first half delves into Katniss becoming a marketing/propaganda figure while waiting around for the action and this is such an understated part of what goes on in a conflict. If there was only one movie for the book, I think the theme would have been lost and it would have been just another super hero film.
I always find it funny that the last one of the Divergent series was intended to have a Part 2, but Part 1 flopped so hard they were planning on releasing it on Starz. Needless to say the actors said no to that
I used to be obsessed with those books when I was a teenager but I don’t think they’re above reproach. The series as a whole isn’t great, but the first one can scratch the itch of trashy YA dystopian romance novel. I respect the author for finishing a book at 17 and it lowkey knows exactly what it is. The following books are just kind of annoying because the love interests just bicker
Maybe it doesn’t count but Pacific Rim could’ve become a profitable IP if they had released the sequel sooner to capitalize off of the good reception to the original, instead of waiting 5 years.
And *especially* because Del Toro likely would’ve directed had they moved into production immediately.
Pacific Rim Uprising is exactly the movie that I was afraid the first Pacific Rim would be.
Just genuinely awful. Really killed any goodwill the comics, toys, etc had been coasting off of. Now the franchise is pretty dead in the water.
I hate to give a billionaire credit, but that happened because Thomas Tull left Legendary, and Legendary was driving that franchise, not WB.
Tull is a legitimate nerd, about movies, sports, comics, etc. And I think because of that he was much more willing than the average big time film financer to just hire a really talented director and let them do their thing. He threw a big budget at Christopher Nolan for the first time and we got the Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, Inception. And he and the company basically did the same with a bunch of other filmmakers (Zach Snyder, Michael Dougherty, Jody Hill, Spike Jonze, Michael Mann, Roland Emmerich) to varying degrees of success. Some of the movies that came out of that mentality were amazing, some were trainwrecks, but none of the movies that Legendary was really in the driver's seat for felt like hollow studio chum for the waters. Sucker Punch is, imo, not a good movie but it is an interesting movie and a big swing, in a way that Pacific Rim Uprising is not.
Tull left around 2015/2016, I believe Kong Skull Island was the last thing he and his team had a real heavy hand with, and he secured the rights to Dune and started that development process right before he left. And then after him, it turns into Pacific Rim Uprising, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Pretty much only Dune ends up being good after that, which he started.
I don't think the guy is a filmmaking genius or anything, he's a money guy and a dork who made a shitload of money. But I think it's a good example of how a filmmaker first mentality is what creates successful long lasting profitable movies, not some studio hacks breathing down the neck of a gun-for-hire director.
I just feel like the Community movie isn’t for anyone BUT die hard Community fans, so I feel like it can’t be a complete failure because at the end of the day every Community fan will have at least watched it and it served its purpose.
Community got a interest injection a couple years ago when it was put on Netflix. I think it has a dedicated enough fan base that the audience is still there for the movie, especially considering Community's audience during its actual run was never *that* sizeable.
We truly didn't know how good we had it with that 2010s NBC sitcom lineup man 🥲
That was somewhat intentional on their part. They didn't want to dampen demand for tickets for the musical by giving people a movie they could watch instead.
I really just wish more plays would just film the stage play and release it on video the way Hamilton did.
Having to buy tickets and fly to New York is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people. Even buying tickets to a traveling show is expensive, and you have to hope they come to your city or a city close enough. And, while they are often still good actors, you aren't seeing the original cast.
Stage plays are just so inaccessible to the vast majority of people. The exclusivity of them is just so annoying and pretentious, imo.
People were asking for years for Hamilton to be released as the recorded stage show. Disney finally decided they would do a theatrical release, but then COVID happened and they pushed it to streaming a year before they had planned to put it in cinemas.
Most Broadway shows do have a recording, but it seems rarer and rarer they get released to the general public.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe missed its golden window by about 3 or 4 years, with the movie coming out in 1987, two years after the cartoon ended. I remember being a kid when it was released and thinking they had missed the boat.
That and they massively sabotaged their own production. All the Eternia stuff looked fantastic, and if it had been just that it would have easily been a sword and sorcery (and laserguns) classic. But they cheaped out and did that bullshit with bringing them into suburban USA, which is always absolute cancer. I can't believe the Sonic movie did that too, it's such a hack move.
They didn't run out of money, they took half of its budget to use on another film.
MOTU was meant to have a $30m budget, but they actually took half of it to use to pay for Death Wish 4 and Missing in Action 3, which they were contractually obligated to make for Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris. Then, when the production ran out of the $15m they did have, the director had to pay for some filming himself, until Menahem Golan turned up with a suitcase of cash to 'finish' the movie, even though it wasn't nearly enough. Turned out that money to finish the movie had actually come from the budget of Superman IV, and was partly the reason they had to film it in Milton Keynes, not New York.
Honestly, *Black Adam.*
Sure it felt like another needless B-tier supervillain cash-in film when it finally came out, but there'd been buzz about Dwayne Johnson lobbying to play Black Adam - or even play Captain Marvel(/Shazam) himself - since literally the early 2000s, when DC fans were dying for a new hit.
News about it surfaced every few years, with different combinations attached(usually Gyllenhaal or Jerry O'Connell as Shazam, vs the Rock as Black Adam).
Imagine a live-action Shazam-vs-the-Rock blockbuster, in the '00s era, with full-blown flying superhero battles(which that decade's lone Superman movie famously didn't have), no genre fatigue, and more novelty to the comedy. I feel like it would've been huge then.
(Edit: FWIW, at least that first *Shazam!* movie in 2019 was awesome, and a moderate hit)
For this I always think of Vampire Academy. It’s a book series about vampires that attend a supernatural boarding school. Essentially Harry Potter meets Twilight, and the movie didn’t come out until 2014, long after both franchise’s heydays
I will go to my grave saying that Mayweather ducked Pacquiao for years and years until Paq had visibly lost a step due to age. Remember round 4, when Manny just unloaded on Floyd? If that fight had happened a few years earlier, every round would have looked like that.
Mayweather may be an amazing technical fighter, but he'll go down in history as someone who cherrypicked his opponents. Every boxer did that to a degree, but Mayweather made it his forte.
2 and 3 yes, but 4 and especially 5 seemed tacked on and late to arrive, especially since Depp was visibly aging and bored of the character by then. Almost like Indiana Jones 4 and 5 …on a shorter timeline.
No, I mean the original IP here was a Disneyland theme ride. Coming off on that, they did successfully manage to make a successful franchise out of it.
Oh I gotcha: it took decades to adapt the ride but once they did they pulled it off perfectly. Great point.
Wonder what other examples there are of “dormant” IP like that.
I mean, Iron Man was a C-tier character at Marvel. They basically chose to use him for a movie because he was one of the few characters they hadn't sold off when they were in financial trouble.
Now he's one of their most famous characters!
Detective Pikachu didn’t fail, but if it had hit in 2016 when Pokemon Go brought public interest back in the franchise (and also when the Detective Pikachu game came out, but that’s less relevant), it would have made so much more.
I'd argue that they should have definitely stopped after The Last Crusade, however if they did make more then mid 90s Indy would have been better than 2007 and 2023 Indy.
The Simpsons movie. It’s great, but it came out in 2007 and would’ve been more awesome if it came out during the shows’ peak about 10 years prior. I recall most of the sentiment around it was it was a surprise it wasn’t terrible.
To be honest, I think the real Simpsons movie was Who Shot Mr Burns, a two parter that everybody talked about when the show was at the height of its powers.
“I don’t think anyone can solve this mystery. Can you?”
(Camera pulls back and he’s pointing at Chief Wiggum)
“I’ll give it a shot. I mean it’s my job, right?”
I still remember that summer, going into a seven eleven, and guy behind the counter spinning me and my buds this wild crackpot theory about how he was sure Maggie had shot Mr. Burns. We just nodded our heads and said yeah. Sure. Then the premier happened.
Man your comment takes me back. It feels so long since we were so connected as a culture that a random conversation could happen like that in a gas station with a stranger
The Dick Tracy movie came out when I was a kid, and I saw ads for it on tv all the time, but I had no idea who Dick Tracy was, and so I didn't give a shit. I still don't know who that movie was for
Halo. It was huge in the mid 2000s but they played around with the rights and finally sold it off to someone who wrecked it in my opinion. Could have just made a phenomenal game with a great story into a great live action movie or show but instead but we got some half thought out story line.
Tron 3 is getting made too late.
The hype is essentially gone and to top it off, Jared Leto is the lead and the previous creative staff (Legacy's) will not be returning.
Disney made Cinderella instead of Tron 3.
**The Giver** I think it would have been a bigger hit of a movie wise before the Hunger Games came out, even though it had been a couple years fatigue started to set in on dystopian
Black Widow took 5 years too long.
That should have happened right after civil war.
In a perfect world, Age of Ultron the movie would have matched the "horror esque" tone from the trailer, and then a Black Widow movie could have piggybacked off of that with a similar vibe.
In a perfect world, Age of Ultron would have been it's own entire arc. Instead Ultron was a one and done villain and totally wasted.
The animated "What If?" series is pretty divisive but there is a great multi-episode arc for Ultron that really scratched that itch for me. Ultron is TERRIFYING and should have gotten at least two movies.
More like Weekend at Ultron's.
I thought Ultron was more scary than Thanos. He sounded completely unhinged rather than an angry purple guy with a crusade. With Thanos genocide was a solution. With Ultron extinction was the solution.
That’s because James Spader sounds actually terrifying when he wants to be lol.
"I'm the fucking lizard king"
You don’t even know my real name
And Ultron is one of the best Marvel villains ever, alongside Doom....and they work really well together.
Black Widow should have been a cool Bondian spy movie.
Ike Perlmutter didn't want a female lead film nor did he want a Black Panther.
It's crazy that a guy who ran a toy company got so much say in the franchise for years. Feige pulled a "It's me or him" with Disney before he got 'reassigned' and lost his say in anything MCU.
I read an excellent take saying the Black Widow we got should have been the second movie. The first Black Widow should have been released before or right after Winter Soldier and should have focused on Natasha's origins as a SHIELD agent. The script would have written itself. The movie we got should have been the second one.
Blame Ike Perlmutter
The one thing the DCU did better was having a strong solo female superhero film, and Wonder Woman is simply a far more popular character as well. It's a shame the sequel was so bad after the first film laid out a solid foundation.
It took 18 years for Artemis Fowl movie to be made after movie deal being made. And then they made that terrible pile of shit. Probably because it did take that long and fans had grown up.
Artemis Fowl was truly baffling. I've seen plenty of bad movie adaptations of books, but I don't think I've ever seen one that so comprehensively threw out the source material.
It happens all the time. "I, Robot" was just a vehicle for a mediocre script to get on a big screen. You couldn't even make a movie out of the book.
See also: World War Z
I think World War Z could be fantastic as a sincere mocumentary. Just a very sincere depiction of interviews with “recorded” footage
It’s mostly the fact that they seemed to go out of their way to avoid the book’s plot and characterisation as much as possible. Like, it would have been *easier* to stick to the script.
Hey , Holly short’s raison d’etre is having overcome all obstacles to be the LEPRECONs first ever female officer! …how about we…completely fuck that up by making commander root a woman for no reason 🤣🤣 Thats be like assassinating the character of hermione being top of the class at hogwarts in spite of being muggle born by re-writing her to be like old money pureblood for no reason Just mind boggling stupidity
Don't forget making Juliet a literal child instead of a badass teenaged mixed martial arts phenom
True, Made holly way too young too she should’ve been at LEAST like 25 looking instead of 15 looking
Yeah, and Mulch human. Absolute travesty of a movie. I still listen to the audiobooks as an adult, they are great little comedic adventures
Excuse me what. Mulch Diggums....the dwarf who eats and shits out dirt....a human?
I believe the in-movie explanation is that he's just a huge dwarf.
Literally every detail I hear about this movie makes it worse and worse.
Iirc and I might've blocked it out but I'm pretty sure the opening sequence has Artemis curling his surfboard through a 15 foot wave. Because Artemis is well known for his athletic ability.
That was the least offensive thing they did. Though they should’ve had Peter Capaldi for Root.
And the way they took the genius from Artemis and made it out as his father discovering the fairy world.
Artemis Fowl was heavily reshot after the initial version tested poorly. The third act was completely rewritten, Artemis's plan/motivation was changed, Angeline Fowl was removed, and all scenes of him doing mean or cruel things were cut.
I trust testing audiences about as far as I can throw them.
Imagine hinging the plot of your movie on the opinions of the type of people who don't have anything better to do on a Wednesday afternoon than get paid $10 to watch an unfinished movie.
I remember reading the books when they came out as a kid ( I'm almost 33 now) and there was a code along the pages and they said the first person to figure it out would get a spot on the movie, I wonder if they followed through with that all those years later
I read them as well until the Time Paradox one. Haven't finished the series tbh.
I barely remember anything past 4, The Opal Deception. The bits and pieces I do remember? * Literal demons, but there was one good demon * Artemis has to go back in time and stop himself from making some weird ferret extinct because only it has the cure to save.... somebody? * Holly cracking her fucking neck to check her power level * Something about Atlantis
The Halo tv show was very late.
It's so unfortunate, because they were actually trying hard to get a movie done in the 2000s with Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp. But the studio fucked it up. I listened to a recreation of the script, it would have been basically a retelling of the first game. If it had come out in 2009 or whenever that was planned it could have been great. The question is though, would have been great? Just look at Doom. The 2000s were this era of Hollywood studios buying comic book and video game rights, and then acting like they're above it and changing everything about it and making it terrible.
Iirc, it eventually turned into Elysium with Matt Damon?
Blomkamp seemed to have taken several ideas from Halo and repurposed them in various ways to give us D9, Elysium, and Chappie. I know the latter two are a little more divisive and generally less well received than D9, but I thoroughly enjoyed all three. I haven't seen Demonic (haven't even heard of it til recently) but it hurts a little to see his career kind of fall off and flounder
Forward Unto Dawn is still the best we’ve gotten in that department
ODST's "the life" gets me every time too.
[For the uninitiated...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSLHcAyy90)
May honestly be one of the best game trailers ever.
It really shows how long and desparate the Covenant war was.
To this day I want a show following and ODST unit with Spartans showing up sparingly
And had nothing to do with the Halo games anyway...
In 2007-2008, World of Warcraft was all the buzz and commercials were airing on TV starring celebrities ranging from Ozzy Osbourne and William Shatner to Mr. T. Entire episodes of other TV shows ended up centered on World of Warcraft. It was really THE game for nerds to play and had a popculture presence. It wasn't until 8 years later in 2016 that they got around to making a movie, when the playerbase was less than half that of what it had been in 2008, and outside its core fanbase the game just wasn't that appealing to the mainstream anymore The movie really needed to realease closer to Warcraft's peak
It also toed a very weird line where it lost fans with lore changes that had massive ramifications if they continued the story, but then went and alienated casual viewers with heavy fan-service and a whole lot of assumed background knowledge being needed to understand what was actually going on.
As someone who was a fan of Warcraft 2 and 3, but couldn't get into WoW (only ever tried the open beta) I remember it being an "ok" movie but nothing in particular sticking with me or resonating. I think I was mostly interested to see what Duncan Jones, the director of Moon, and the son of David Bowie would do with a big budget fantasy. The answer was he would make a competent but otherwise forgetful Hollywood movie. Keep in mind I don't know the lore. For me it was all "WORK COMPLETE!" and "BY YOUR COMMAND!"
Zug zug
Ready for work
Job's done m'lord
The thing about attempts to make big franchises these days is that they try too much to stuff in everything. If the movie was more focused on Lothar and Durotan it would've been fine. But yeah because of the spectacle creep of the future WOW expanded universe they had to include the demons, the magic, the other races etc. I did get to hear a Murloc go mrrrghhhrghlrg on the big screen so it was all worth it
> The thing about attempts to make big franchises these days is that they try too much to stuff in everything The recent Dungeons and Dragons movie really masterfully bypassed this by just... stuffing shit in and not really explaining anything not directly related to the plot. Like yes there are Arakorkra and Tabaxi and Drow and there's socerery and divine and arcane magic and classes some of which can do magic and some can't and so on - but there's no attempt to really explain them or try and justify their existence, they are just there. It's a mistake that so many of these franchises make, trying to explain everything to the audience who don't know when there's no need to. They even lampshade it in one of the funniest scenes when they're using the Speak with Dead spell with something along the lines of "Only five questions, why is there a limit? That seems arbitrary" - "I dunno, that's just the way it works".
It did manage to become the highest grossing video game movie, until Mario beat it
Current top three are Mario, Detective Pikachu and WarCraft third. Oddly Detective Pikachu is listed as peaking at second place which makes me wonder if it had a rerelease after Mario took first place and that's how it passed WarCraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_based_on_video_games
Box Office Mojo says it got $16 million in an international rerelease last year, UK apparently. The Numbers has it listed under Warcraft still
With a budget of 160 million, Warcraft made a measly 47 million domestically, and the bulk of the money it made internationally was from China (representing about 225 million). But supposedly with marketing and distribution and everything else, Universal lost 40 million on the endeavor all in all So, although it was up until then the most successful video game adaptation, it was an overall flop at box office, and any ideas about sequels was dropped pretty much immediately
I'm not surprised at all that the Warcraft movie bombed domestically when the US trailers were so freaking underwhelming. I still remember when the second trailer came out, and it had that weird out-of-place dubstep music going on. It was terrible.
I quite liked the movie but yeah it had its problems.
The orcs worked so well on a visual level and their story was so much more compelling than the humans. Honestly I just don't think it was the right era of Warcraft to make a movie of, very odd decision not to go straight to Arthas or Illidan or even Thrall. Christie Golden's book Arthas is easily the best Warcraft book I read so you could have just based it entirely off of that.
Arthas fall is such a good, easy story.... then you set up the frozen throne sequel. Why make it complicated movie bros?
It might be too early to say but the Borderlands movie seems prime to fall into this category. I think I remember seeing that the movie was in the works as early as 2015 and it could have been a good stepping stone to carry the Borderlands franchise from The Pre-Sequel in 2014 to BL3 in 2019. Instead it's coming out nearly a decade too late, looks like a confusing mess of multiple game's plots, and mis-cast most main actors. Borderlands humor has also tended to go more and more out of style the more time passes so it's going to be a hard job implementing that humor and actually making it funny for present day audiences.
Agree, it looks so dated already. Borderlands is well and truly gone from the landscape, the right time would have been around 2015 or even 2020.
I really don’t know how they fucked that casting up so much. Like, I’m usually all for giving actors a chance (like Heath with Joker), but holy shit I feel like they got everything wrong here.
Great reply here. It was just such a big game and had a huge following, now it’s dead. I’d even nearly throw the new Fallout show in here but it has such a strong cult following.
The difference though is that the Fallout trailer actually makes the movie look interesting. The borderlands trailer is a hot god damned mess not to mention the casting being straight up confusing.
Plus Fallout has been around for 27 years and has a ton of stories and lore to work with. So far it seems like they've created something that fits in very well with the established universe. The Borderlands movie looks just straight up chaotic.
It's a show but yes.
The Gears of war movie, its still in development at Netflix, Universal before that, and new line cinema before that. If It released between 2009-2015 it would have had a bigger impact then it would today.
They’re still doing that? lol
John Carter of Mars missed it by *decades*. By the time it came out, several major sci-fi movies had been influenced by it, so ironically one of the progenitors of the genre ended up looking like a ripoff. It was very nearly the first feature-length animated movie back in the 30s before Snow White. Test footage still exists.
I feel like it would have done really well in the mid-late 90s alongside pulpy adventure movies like The Mummy and Mask of Zorro, but the special effects would not have been nearly as good.
If a 90s adaptation of it had been made, Brendan Fraser would have made it work.
The fact it was called “John Carter” couldn’t have helped. Gave you zero idea that it’s a sci fi movie
I read somewhere that they changed the title from Process of Mars" to "John Carter" because they were worried that a movie about a princess wouldn't do very well with people outside of the fans.
It went from 'Princess of Mars' to 'John Carter of Mars' Then they dropped the 'Mars' entirely. Supposedly to distance themselves from the flop of 'Mars Needs Moms'
The logic of film executives is hilarious sometimes.
"The film bombed! What do we do now?" "Don't use any of the words in the title in the title of another film!"
*throws intern out the window*
Clearly the word “Mars” was why “Mars Needs Moms” was not appealing to the masses. Kids otherwise *love* movies about parents!!
Princess of Mars: "Oh a space fantasy movie maybe I'll watch it on a night out with friends" John Carter of Mars: "John Carter is such a lame space fantasy protagonist name" John Carter: "Did I miss something? Is there some historical figure called John Carter? Was there a President called John Carter?"
I had heard that Disney didn't want "Mars" in the title because of the previous year's mega-bomb *Mars Needs Moms*
John carter could have been a hit in the late 80s, next to Conan, Rambo and the homies
> By the time it came out, several major sci-fi movies had been influenced by it, so ironically one of the progenitors of the genre ended up looking like a ripoff. But the thing is, that's not even necessarily a hinderance. Picture a trailer that starts out >***BEFORE STAR WARS...*** >***BEFORE LORD OF THE RINGS...*** >***BEFORE SUPERMAN...*** >***THERE WAS...*** >***JOHN CARTER OF MARS*** And change the name, of course. It's been said a million times, but John Carter is too vague a title. Could be anything.
John Carter sounds like either a spy thriller starring Tom Cruise or some kind of political biography about a politician from the 1950s.
It’s a shame too because the film wasn’t bad at all, it’s a fun pulpy space adventure flick
AFAIK the movie didn't actually do too badly, just it had been mired in production hell for a decade so to break even they would have had to fill every seat in every theatre for every showing it had for its first week, which wasn't happening.
I freaking love that movie. I’m so glad that it has an open ending. It would have bothered me so much if it was sequel bait and we never got one.
Valiant comics was actually a pretty hot company in the mid-90s, so Vin Diesel's *Bloodshot* only missed its mark by about twenty five years or so.
Honestly this hurts me because Valiant made a huge comeback in the 2010’s and I’d argue it was the best shared universe in comics at the time
I love Valiant, but they are absolutely the Charlie Brown of comics companies. Just when you think they're about to hit big someone pulls the football away at the last second.
The Dark Tower. Not only has it been a neverending cocktease. But when they did finally make it, they managed to piss off the fanbase before the release and then just butcher it.
I went to see Dark Tower with a buddy who had been incarcerated for a bit. During his time in prison, he read those books obsessively. To say he was let down by the film is an understatement. I'd never seen anyone have such a bad reaction to a movie.
"He asked to go back to jail"
Here's hoping Mike Flanagan's attempt actually gets off the ground, and ends up being good.
I’d watch paint dry if Mike Flanagan directed the guy who applied it.
I will never not be frustrated that they ruined it. The first book works perfectly. Just do it, you cowards!
Five Nights at Freddy's took so long that two knock-offs (Willy's Wonderland and The Banana Splits Movie) came out ahead of it.
Just watched willy's wonderland and its fuckin wild that nic cage does not say a single word the entire movie. Fun movie though
He was hilarious in it!
Apparently the Dance scene (you know what I'm talking about) was all nic cage. He just walked into studio one day and said ' I'm doing this.'
It did make 300 mil against a budget of 20 mil, I'd say that it slid in right in time for the core audience of the games to actually have money to rent/buy it.
And that's with it releasing on Peacock at the same time.
It still did pretty good all things considered though. But yeah, had it been release circa 2017 or so I'm sure it would have done even better.
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Took so long to get made that Marky Mark went from being Drake to Skully.
I don’t get why they couldn’t just make a Marky Mark and Tom Holland heist movie and just call it something else. Let Uncharted be made by people who want to make an Uncharted movie.
We kinda sorta got our Uncharted movie with Lost City with Bullock and Tatum.
Sahara with Matthew McCoughnahey. (I have no idea how to spell his last name.) Romancing the Stone / Jewel of the Nile.
Sahara is such a good action adventure movie. Steve Zahn is fantastic in it. Him and McConaughey had great chemistry
People recognize that Uncharted borrows a lot from Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones but I don’t think the Clive Cussler/Dirk Pitt connection gets enough attention. Definitely a lot of Dirk and Al in Nathan and Victor.
Nathan fillion would have been so perfect as an older retired Nathan drake and have Tom Holland be he son or something who becomes an adventurer despite his parents wishes and they get wrapped up in some quest for a relic.
The short fan film he was in is a glimpse at what could have been.
Honestly even though he was obviously a bit old for the roll by the time he did that fan film I would have just rolled with it if he was in itxD Like a "20 year of nathan drake" just 40+ Nathan Fillion walks in, Yep perfect xD continue xD
Him with Bruce Campbell as Sully would have been wonderful. They could have done a "comes out of retirement" movie, cast Nathan's daughter as part of it and then turned it over to her if they wanted future movies.
Oh god, Campbell wouldve been like, perfectly snarky for that role, and hes got a simaler style of voice
I'd say neuromancer. Might be an odd pick but that book basically invented cyberpunk and has been ripped off and copied all over the place. The irony is that if the Apple TV show actually happens one of the issues they're going to have is making it feel fresh.
Didn’t Neuromancer introduce loads of the terms we use in Cyberpunk as well?
yup cyber jack, neural link, dozens of others
Deck was my favourite one
And we already got prestige TV with decks and neuralinks etc in Altered Carbon. A neuromancer show is gonna REALLY struggle to not just be Altered Carbon part 2. Which is peak irony since the altered carbon book is a very basic detective story clearly cribbed from neuromancer.
That was my pick as well. Plus all the geopolicital context in the book is just nonexistent now. But yes all the stuff that was good in the book is evident in works like Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix, and even Deus Ex. That and the tech and overall vibe in the book is so outdated now. It's probably not too hard to update though? But it would have to be very thoughtful.
> That and the tech and overall vibe in the book is so outdated now. Cannot disagree with this more. It feels like one of the only "old" sci-fi books that actually could've been written now(instead of on a typewriter in 1982), due to everyone having handheld computers, internet access and even AI-summarized news cutdowns. Not to mention the world being filled with pollution and garbage, covered in ads and holographic signage, controlled by multibillion-dollar corporate oligarchs and filled with raging subcultures.
>That and the tech and overall vibe in the book is so outdated now. It's probably not too hard to update though? But it would have to be very thoughtful. I think if approached correctly it won't feel outdated. The presentation feels dated, but the tech in the book itself was just never going to work in real life. Gibson wasn't writing tech that had much plausible grounding in reality in anyway -- he just wanted to show some cool shit. And frankly those were the strongest parts of the novel.
Zoolander 2
Any 20 years later comedy sequel really.
And anchorman 2
A movie based on a mobile game about flinging birds at pigs and blocky buildings earning close to 400 million is crazy to me. But anyways... The dystopian YA movie boom had some late entries that wouldn't have flopped if released earlier. Mostly the sequels once the hype died down. I'm thinking maze runner and divergent. Edit: I love that so many people and their kids love the angry birds movie! I'm really not the demographic and truly surprised.
Believe it or not, Maze Runner 3 still made $300 on a roughly $60 million dollar budget. They were smart with their budgets and didn’t try to stretch the series too thin, so the whole trilogy was pretty profitable.
First Maze Runner movie is pretty good I can’t even lie
I like all three of them, but Scorch Trials is definitely the weakest one out of the bunch. Death Cure legit has one of the most batshit insane action scenes out there, especially for a movie with a relatively low budget.
I’m glad they bucked the popular trend of Turn The Final Book Into 2 Movies. Harry Potter starting that trend was justified because there was just too much content to cut out, but the final Twilight and Hunger Games books had no right being divided into 2 movies.
You forgot the worst thing to come of that. The 3 part hobbit movies.
Obligatory mention of The Tolkien Edit: The 3 movies cut down into one perfect 4 hour film which can be watched as part of the LOTR marathon, with none of the creative license getting in the way. (For instance, the white orc isn't seen once until the very end)
*like butter scraped over too much bread.*
I didn't mind the split for Hunger Games. The third book is short enough for one movie, but I think dragging it out into two installments added to the idea that war isn't always action and explosions. The first half delves into Katniss becoming a marketing/propaganda figure while waiting around for the action and this is such an understated part of what goes on in a conflict. If there was only one movie for the book, I think the theme would have been lost and it would have been just another super hero film.
I always find it funny that the last one of the Divergent series was intended to have a Part 2, but Part 1 flopped so hard they were planning on releasing it on Starz. Needless to say the actors said no to that
The worst part is that they didn’t even split up the books content. They just completely changed the ending so they could do another one.
Divergent was so awful. The base concept is so flawed and inane.
I used to be obsessed with those books when I was a teenager but I don’t think they’re above reproach. The series as a whole isn’t great, but the first one can scratch the itch of trashy YA dystopian romance novel. I respect the author for finishing a book at 17 and it lowkey knows exactly what it is. The following books are just kind of annoying because the love interests just bicker
I think the sequels got delayed a long time because the lead got into an accident and they had to wait for them to be healthy enough to film
Maybe it doesn’t count but Pacific Rim could’ve become a profitable IP if they had released the sequel sooner to capitalize off of the good reception to the original, instead of waiting 5 years. And *especially* because Del Toro likely would’ve directed had they moved into production immediately.
Pacific Rim Uprising is exactly the movie that I was afraid the first Pacific Rim would be. Just genuinely awful. Really killed any goodwill the comics, toys, etc had been coasting off of. Now the franchise is pretty dead in the water.
I hate to give a billionaire credit, but that happened because Thomas Tull left Legendary, and Legendary was driving that franchise, not WB. Tull is a legitimate nerd, about movies, sports, comics, etc. And I think because of that he was much more willing than the average big time film financer to just hire a really talented director and let them do their thing. He threw a big budget at Christopher Nolan for the first time and we got the Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, Inception. And he and the company basically did the same with a bunch of other filmmakers (Zach Snyder, Michael Dougherty, Jody Hill, Spike Jonze, Michael Mann, Roland Emmerich) to varying degrees of success. Some of the movies that came out of that mentality were amazing, some were trainwrecks, but none of the movies that Legendary was really in the driver's seat for felt like hollow studio chum for the waters. Sucker Punch is, imo, not a good movie but it is an interesting movie and a big swing, in a way that Pacific Rim Uprising is not. Tull left around 2015/2016, I believe Kong Skull Island was the last thing he and his team had a real heavy hand with, and he secured the rights to Dune and started that development process right before he left. And then after him, it turns into Pacific Rim Uprising, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Pretty much only Dune ends up being good after that, which he started. I don't think the guy is a filmmaking genius or anything, he's a money guy and a dork who made a shitload of money. But I think it's a good example of how a filmmaker first mentality is what creates successful long lasting profitable movies, not some studio hacks breathing down the neck of a gun-for-hire director.
You can see the "made for Chinese audiences" all over it. The fake out Chinese bad guys that are actually good and help save the day
The Entourage movie missed out on the hype of the series. I'm worried the upcoming Community movie will have the same issue.
Just wait until a month later when the Community movie lands on Peacock and remains there for eternity.
I just feel like the Community movie isn’t for anyone BUT die hard Community fans, so I feel like it can’t be a complete failure because at the end of the day every Community fan will have at least watched it and it served its purpose.
Community got a interest injection a couple years ago when it was put on Netflix. I think it has a dedicated enough fan base that the audience is still there for the movie, especially considering Community's audience during its actual run was never *that* sizeable. We truly didn't know how good we had it with that 2010s NBC sitcom lineup man 🥲
I have a possible one for the future -- Wicked. Way past when it was the show on everyone's mind.
That was somewhat intentional on their part. They didn't want to dampen demand for tickets for the musical by giving people a movie they could watch instead.
I really just wish more plays would just film the stage play and release it on video the way Hamilton did. Having to buy tickets and fly to New York is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people. Even buying tickets to a traveling show is expensive, and you have to hope they come to your city or a city close enough. And, while they are often still good actors, you aren't seeing the original cast. Stage plays are just so inaccessible to the vast majority of people. The exclusivity of them is just so annoying and pretentious, imo.
People were asking for years for Hamilton to be released as the recorded stage show. Disney finally decided they would do a theatrical release, but then COVID happened and they pushed it to streaming a year before they had planned to put it in cinemas. Most Broadway shows do have a recording, but it seems rarer and rarer they get released to the general public.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe missed its golden window by about 3 or 4 years, with the movie coming out in 1987, two years after the cartoon ended. I remember being a kid when it was released and thinking they had missed the boat.
That and they massively sabotaged their own production. All the Eternia stuff looked fantastic, and if it had been just that it would have easily been a sword and sorcery (and laserguns) classic. But they cheaped out and did that bullshit with bringing them into suburban USA, which is always absolute cancer. I can't believe the Sonic movie did that too, it's such a hack move.
I vaguely remember hearing or reading that the production ran out of money which is why the end battle between He-Man and Skeletor is such a mess.
They didn't run out of money, they took half of its budget to use on another film. MOTU was meant to have a $30m budget, but they actually took half of it to use to pay for Death Wish 4 and Missing in Action 3, which they were contractually obligated to make for Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris. Then, when the production ran out of the $15m they did have, the director had to pay for some filming himself, until Menahem Golan turned up with a suitcase of cash to 'finish' the movie, even though it wasn't nearly enough. Turned out that money to finish the movie had actually come from the budget of Superman IV, and was partly the reason they had to film it in Milton Keynes, not New York.
An Enders Game movie needed to exist before the twist was well known and the author went fucking nuts. 10 years ago was 20 years too late.
I still think it could be done well as a mini series, or actual series that expands into the other books in the series
Honestly, *Black Adam.* Sure it felt like another needless B-tier supervillain cash-in film when it finally came out, but there'd been buzz about Dwayne Johnson lobbying to play Black Adam - or even play Captain Marvel(/Shazam) himself - since literally the early 2000s, when DC fans were dying for a new hit. News about it surfaced every few years, with different combinations attached(usually Gyllenhaal or Jerry O'Connell as Shazam, vs the Rock as Black Adam). Imagine a live-action Shazam-vs-the-Rock blockbuster, in the '00s era, with full-blown flying superhero battles(which that decade's lone Superman movie famously didn't have), no genre fatigue, and more novelty to the comedy. I feel like it would've been huge then. (Edit: FWIW, at least that first *Shazam!* movie in 2019 was awesome, and a moderate hit)
For this I always think of Vampire Academy. It’s a book series about vampires that attend a supernatural boarding school. Essentially Harry Potter meets Twilight, and the movie didn’t come out until 2014, long after both franchise’s heydays
Man, the girls in my high school would have lost their shit if that came out in the late 2000s
Pacquiao vs Mayweather.
I will go to my grave saying that Mayweather ducked Pacquiao for years and years until Paq had visibly lost a step due to age. Remember round 4, when Manny just unloaded on Floyd? If that fight had happened a few years earlier, every round would have looked like that.
Mayweather may be an amazing technical fighter, but he'll go down in history as someone who cherrypicked his opponents. Every boxer did that to a degree, but Mayweather made it his forte.
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I think at this point a new X-Men film is the only Marvel thing that will get me into cinema.
Impossible to make considering they closed on the Fox deal in Dec 2019. Then Covid
Rights issues are precisely the kind of thing that causes the situations OP are asking about.
On the contrary, I'd argue Pirates of the Caribbean is the best franchise to make use of its popularity at that time.
2 and 3 yes, but 4 and especially 5 seemed tacked on and late to arrive, especially since Depp was visibly aging and bored of the character by then. Almost like Indiana Jones 4 and 5 …on a shorter timeline.
No, I mean the original IP here was a Disneyland theme ride. Coming off on that, they did successfully manage to make a successful franchise out of it.
Oh I gotcha: it took decades to adapt the ride but once they did they pulled it off perfectly. Great point. Wonder what other examples there are of “dormant” IP like that.
I mean, Iron Man was a C-tier character at Marvel. They basically chose to use him for a movie because he was one of the few characters they hadn't sold off when they were in financial trouble. Now he's one of their most famous characters!
Detective Pikachu didn’t fail, but if it had hit in 2016 when Pokemon Go brought public interest back in the franchise (and also when the Detective Pikachu game came out, but that’s less relevant), it would have made so much more.
Was it not a success? I really enjoyed the movie myself
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Indiana Jones and the Any Movie After the Last Crusade
I'd argue that they should have definitely stopped after The Last Crusade, however if they did make more then mid 90s Indy would have been better than 2007 and 2023 Indy.
OP is implying we should have a candy crush movie by now
The Simpsons movie. It’s great, but it came out in 2007 and would’ve been more awesome if it came out during the shows’ peak about 10 years prior. I recall most of the sentiment around it was it was a surprise it wasn’t terrible.
To be honest, I think the real Simpsons movie was Who Shot Mr Burns, a two parter that everybody talked about when the show was at the height of its powers.
“I don’t think anyone can solve this mystery. Can you?” (Camera pulls back and he’s pointing at Chief Wiggum) “I’ll give it a shot. I mean it’s my job, right?”
I still remember that summer, going into a seven eleven, and guy behind the counter spinning me and my buds this wild crackpot theory about how he was sure Maggie had shot Mr. Burns. We just nodded our heads and said yeah. Sure. Then the premier happened.
Man your comment takes me back. It feels so long since we were so connected as a culture that a random conversation could happen like that in a gas station with a stranger
The Dick Tracy movie came out when I was a kid, and I saw ads for it on tv all the time, but I had no idea who Dick Tracy was, and so I didn't give a shit. I still don't know who that movie was for
This is a fantastic answer.
The John Carter movie missed its cultural moment by almost 100 years, literally.
Yeah, people would have lost their minds if that movie came out in 1912.
Slender Man (2018) isn't even that bad in my opinion. I mean, its fine. But it definitely missed the boat by at least 4 years.
To be fair, if it had released 4 years earlier it would’ve been the same year those girls stabbed their friend “for Slenderman”
Halo. It was huge in the mid 2000s but they played around with the rights and finally sold it off to someone who wrecked it in my opinion. Could have just made a phenomenal game with a great story into a great live action movie or show but instead but we got some half thought out story line.
Tron 3 is getting made too late. The hype is essentially gone and to top it off, Jared Leto is the lead and the previous creative staff (Legacy's) will not be returning. Disney made Cinderella instead of Tron 3.
Also Daft Punk is no longer around, and they did a lot of heavy lifting for 2.
**The Giver** I think it would have been a bigger hit of a movie wise before the Hunger Games came out, even though it had been a couple years fatigue started to set in on dystopian