DreamWorks' "Home"

[James]

I am now almost positive that this film is doomed...financial analysts everyone saw the trailers and were apparently extremely unimpressed.

Fixed that for ya.

[Dacey]

I've liked the trailers. The cat especially is cute.

What? Who said that? Somebody's whispering around here.

[ShyViolet]

LOL James.

I read the financial analysts part in the Variety article I posted on the Dreamworks thread.

[Ben]

Sorry Vi, but I will venture out and say that I think Home will be DWA's first real bomb.

Sure, they've taken hits in the past, but each film gets a good opening, lasts a couple of weeks and struggles past $100m eventually, with international usually breaking even (it's in marketing and distribution costs that DWA really lose, or rather don't make up, their money).

But I fear Home will die a death at the box-office, with a poor opening and not making it past $50m in the States. Worldwide, you could still make it past $100m, but considering they need $250-300m to break even, it's not going to happen.

So in all likelihood, some early kid-biz make fuel an okay weekend (maybe between $10 and $20m? Ouch!), but it won't have legs, especially with summer creeping up...

[EricJ]

Sorry Vi, but I will venture out and say that I think Home will be DWA's first real bomb.

Just some numbers to take into context:
- Mr. Peabody & Sherman $111M
- Rise of the Guardians $103M
- Turbo: 83M
- Penguins of Madagascar: 82.8M
- Spirit: $73M
- Road to El Dorado $50M
- Sinbad: $26M

It's got tough competition to live up to, but the utter lack of concept, characters, marketing and profitable release slot make it a contender to watch.

[Ben]

Okay, then, Mr Pedantic...of the CG era.

And those are just the US numbers. There are flops and there are bombs. Since Antz and Shrek DWA hasn't had an out and out bomb. I'm predicting that Home will be their first of Mars Needs Moms proportions.

[EricJ]

And those are just the US numbers. There are flops and there are bombs. Since Antz and Shrek DWA hasn't had an out and out bomb.

Even so, I can remember Massacre of Summer '13 analysts looking at Turbo's budget-vs.-grosses loss in the same sentence as RIPD and Lone Ranger saying "What happened??"
Uh, I don't know, what did they think was going to happen? The "shock" at Penguins of Madagascar's losses didn't get quite as many industry headlines, but it got a few.
Even SharkTale, where we all developed our first big mainstream epiphany that, gasp, the two studios were different even though one had made Bug's Life and one had made Antz, and it was now publicly acceptable to admit that, okay, maybe DWA movies might stink and steal their plots, that headline was still watered down by getting some cheap good numbers in an empty October, so they were still "the golden Shrek studio" anyway.

As for Home, it's long past gotten past the point of Vi being "the new Egypt Defender" (who would proclaim in the early 00's that DWA could do no wrong if it had once released POE--which, ironically, also came from importing ex-Pixar talent) into the new cult of "Dragon Defenders"--
And while we could caution her "Don't drink the Kool-Aid", in Home's case, it might be more accurate to say, "Do not drink the lemonade".

[ShyViolet]

Whatever Eric. And by the way, that wasn't even what I'd said back then...I said that 2d films like POE, Spirit and even Sinbad showed that DWA had the potential to make more superior films, because of the good elements in those films. That's all. Also, films like POE had more contributors than just directors! What about the actual animators, the story people, clean-up, and everyone else?! Are they nonexistent or something? Yes, Brenda Chapman eventually went to Pixar (and later came back to DWA) but that doesn't mean she was the only reason POE had beautiful things in it, talented as she is.

(Hey Eric, didn't you demonize her way back when as some sort of feminist megalomaniac when Pixar threw her off of Brave?)

[EricJ]

(Hey Eric, didn't you demonize her way back when as some sort of feminist megalomaniac when Pixar threw her off of Brave?)

Hey--It came as a shock to me too, which fan "betrayal" probably explains the overreaction.
We thought the Only Talented Director at DWA was the Only Sane One, and that would show anywhere.

[Dacey]

I'm just amazed Eric is actually bringing up the old "Shark Tale ripped-off Finding Nemo" thing. Especially since, from the beginning, it was clear those movies had nothing in common besides having talking fish and including a vegetarian shark as a character.

And keep loving DreamWorks, Vi.

[ShyViolet]

Thanks Dacey.

[Ben]

Hollywood Reporter review...not bad, but mostly in praise of the voices, and I'm not sure how much good there can be when one comes away from an animated film marking out Rihanna and J-Lo as highlights:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review ... iew-779961

[ShyViolet]

Yeah, Variety basically said the same thing: cute stuff for little kids, but not a film for adults. I think we're in Penguin territory here again.

[Ben]

As I said above, I think we're in worse territory here...even Penguins, given international gross, home video and merchandise, will just about break even eventually. I just don't see Home making anything after a low opening weekend.

[GeorgeC]

I'll say this for the millionth time:
The numbers that these mega-budget films have to make just to break even are insane!

The budgets have to be more sane and the stories have to be better locked down before films go into production, period. Less of us are going to the movies, period, because a lot of us feel (almost) mugged by bad movies and a lot of films are making less money because of the less-than-legal distribution on the Net. Good films will generally still make money even with bootlegging but a bad film...!

CG's not going away even if certain studios/production units DO shut down for good... The executives are blindly convinced CG is the only way feature animation will work in the US. They still haven't gotten the notice that out-of-control budgets, bland storylines, and unlikeable characters are shoe-ins for disaster regardless of whether the feature is hand-drawn or CG. (Japan hasn't gotten that notice but there have been pressures to do less traditional animation over there even as more CG background and character elements are incorporated into their TV shows as well as movies.)

There have been several times more CG films that have failed than I think the total number of certified hand-drawn failures for the thirty, forty years before Disney pulled the plug on traditional feature animation!