Garfield

[ShyViolet]

I rememeber the Sharry Bobbins - very, very funny!

It's one of my favorites.

Sharry: I'm practically perfect in every way.
Homer: What a coincidence! So am I!

That reminds me of Dave Pruiksma's little parabel story The Emperor's New Greed

That was cute, well-done I thought. I agreed with (almost) everything except for the "heroic nephew" thing. (spare me )

RANT ALERT: Yeah, poor misunderstood Roy. (NOT) Where was the "nephew" when all those artists were getting fired? Did the makers of "Dream On Silly Dreamer?" ever ask themselves that when they were busy making nice with Roy at the premiere?

And you KNOW that Roy had James Stewart in his pocket--OF COURSE Roy was the hero of his book--did you see how many plugs SavDisney.com gave "DisneyWar"?

Both Roy and Stan lie in that book and say they had nothing to do with Katzenberg getting fired. (Yeah, right.) No, Michael never asked THEM about making Jeffrey president.

[WICKEDLY EVIL COMMENTS REMOVED BY MODERATOR FOR SLANDEROUS AND LANGUAGE CONTENT - VIOLET, WE EXPECT BETTER OF YOU! ]


Rant Over

Now, now, Eris didn't need a reason for what she was doing. She's a goddess of chaos for crying out loud. She was just doing her job, you might say.

Besides, Eris starts the Trojan War. Hades would never be able to do that, now would he?

Well, perhaps you have a point. Hades was just so focused on killing Hercules he didn't even realize that he'd never been killed until EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER! (If you go according to the movie)

I'm not exactly sure how Eris started the Trojan War. Could you recap that for me? There were awesome references to the Odyssey in that film, however, like the sirens.

[Macaluso]

She's the friggen GOD of CHOAS.
She can do whatever she wants.
I mean if "I" was a god of Chaos, ho ho ho.
Taste my wrath, world.

[ShyViolet]

Yeah tell me about it.

[Dacey]

In Mythology, Eris starts the Trojan War by dropping the golden apple with the words, "For the Fairest". Then these three vain goddesses argue over who the apple is for. I forget all the details, but they for whatever reason go to Paris, prince of Troy, to decide who it is. They all offer him something, but one of them gives him a shot at "Love", which comes in the form of Helen, who's so not of Troy. Paris of course picks love, so he decides that that goddess is the most lovely, and other chaos ensues, and I forget a lot of it, but the Trojan War has SO started.

Glorious chaos!

[ShyViolet]

I apologize for what I said in my earlier (edited) post. I didn't really think enough when I wrote that.

*feeling really embarassed*

It won't happen again.

[Meg]

Back on the topic of Garfield 2, I just have to say...well...at least they aren't going through with Cats and Dogs 2. Fish, the very mention of that movie makes my blood boil. I hate that film with a passion!

[splinewrangler]

It made something like $80m in America alone, so that was the moeny back for making the film. Internationally, it did about the same if not more, so that was P&A covered and a bit of profit. Total DVD sales - not including the 2-disc that was put out around the world and will come to region 1 eventually - is pretty much pure profit, so of course a sequel is in the works!

Never caught it myself, though it's on PPV at the moment in the UK, so might try and catch it before it goes, just to have seen it.

It doesn't really work that way. I don't know the numbers for this film. But, if the movie made $80 box office, that is only $40 million after the theatres cut. Then the distribution fee comes out of that, so now you are somewhere around $35 million. P&A was probably in the neighborhood of $20 million. That leaves $15 million. I have no idea what the budget was for the movie, but I'd imagine it was a lot higher than that.


BTW- Stuart Little 3 is on the way.

[Ben]

"It made something like $80m in America alone, so that was the money back for making the film"

Um, doesn't that tell you how much the film cost? Actually, Garfield is listed as a $50m movie, so basically the thetarical release domestically and international made back all costs and profit. Video and TV was profit. Cue sequel.

Stuart Little 3 has been on the cards for ages. It was, at one point, going to be a direct-to-video, totally CGI movie.

[splinewrangler]

Like I said, I do not know what the budget was for the film or what money it made. My point is that if a movie captures $80 in BO, that is not $80 profit. The profit is more like $15 *before* the negative cost is deducted. So if the negative cost was $50, that means it needs to make $35 in other sales before breaking even.

So before wwbo and home video, the film is still $35 in the hole. Film makers make even less on wwbo than they do dbo, so a wwbo of $100 million does not equate to $100 million dbo.

[Ben]

Okay... little point in carrying on here.

I'm telling you: the budget was $50m. There... now you know.

Movie takes in $80m domestic. Take off your P&A and costs and you get your -$35m estimate. But the movie made a further $80 internationally. That's a conservative $30m or so profit back. So, going into video/TV/DVD/pay rights/syndication etc, the film is well in the black to start off with.

Given that Garfield was a hit on DVD, then all that money equates to sequel dollars, and we haven't even started to include merchandising...

[splinewrangler]

But the movie made a further $80 internationally. That's a conservative $30m or so profit back. So, going into video/TV/DVD/pay rights/syndication etc, the film is well in the black to start off with.

I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. Just trying to point out some figures that have been overlooked.

So, basically Garfield broke even after its theatrical run. Cause negative $35 plus international profit on $80 return is right around that area.


I'm not trying to dispute that this film made money in the end. I'm just disputing the innaccurate number crunching in its theatrical run.

[splinewrangler]

BTW. You cannot really believe the figures that studios spit out on budgets. They will inflate or deflate a number to make a film seem profitable or not, depending on their agenda.

Take for instance Shrek 2. There is no way in hell that film cost $70-$80 like they have reported. These studios are very good at slipping costs to other places to hide expenses. There are a lot of reasons for doing this. It is very hard to know what a film makes or doesn't make with this fuzzy math.

[Ben]

I believe that taking DreamWorks Animation public around Shrek 2's release was finally accounted in that film's budget, which would certainly bump up the figure.

Plus the talent were on hugely inflated paychecks for an animated film.

[Menace]

Sorry. I only recently found this topic. This is just sad.

It's bad enough that sequels are inferior by default, assuming the first installment was a hit to begin with. So they take a less than average movie based on a very successful comic strip and decide they must make a sequel just because it's cheaper? There must be some hidden predilection here to keep up with the trend of making sequels simply because they can. What story could they possibly come up with? I saw the first one and it didn't really leave any opening for a second. I wonder how Jim Davis feels about the final outcome of the movie.

Now that I think about it, they probably shouldn't have made a first movie either. I mean, is it some sort of intraveneous rule of Hollywood to make a movie out of everything? Just the other day I saw a trailer for a movie about penguin migration. My God, what has cinema come to? And if we're gonna start making movies about everything, why not base it on a comic that would translate to the silver screen a lot better like...FoxTrot or something? Well ok...that would take a bit more work but..

I suppose they made the movie because they figured with a comic strip icon like Garfield, how could we possibly mess it up? Problem is...it's a comic strip. Meaning it's very difficult to write a good story that lasts longer than 10 minutes. Even the animated series wasn't as funny as the comic.

[Ben]

I agree. I finally saw Garfield about two months ago - I was in no hurry - and was amazed at the tripe nature of the story.

It didn't go anywhere, and when it did (try), it was a re-hash of most other kids rescue/fish out of water movies.

I was, however, extremely impressed with the subtleties in Garfield's acting - not the big gentures, but the little things that made him look "there" and reminded us he was a cat.