Evan Almighty, due out in December, is already delayed.
Filed under: Comedy, Universal, Fandom, Distribution, Newsstand
Wow, talk about taking a long view - the
distribution folks at Universal were examining their release schedule the other day and spotted a large, inviting space
in early summer, 2007. To take advantage of said space, they decided to yank Evan Almighty, the Steve Carell-starring sequel to Bruce Almighty, from its planned release at the end of this year
and push it back six months. Now, I don't know much about studio machinations, but something stinks about this. (Is the movie behind schedule? Say it's behind schedule - what's the big deal?) Though the studio is crowing about "an opportunity to get prime summer playtime for the sequel to a movie that did great in the summer," the fact is that they're moving their sequel into direct competition with Transformers: The Movie. Even if Transformers sucks, people are going to see it. Lots and lots of people. And, though it's not a comedy, it seems likely that it will still be fighting Evan Almighty for the much-coveted teenage boy audience. All of which might be worth the risk, if there was direct, hardcore competition in the movie's previous slot - let's take a look, shall we? Ah, I see Charlotte's Web and Night at the Museum. Yeah. Not so scary.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-03-2006 @ 1:49PM
Dan said...
I'm not sure how you'd interpret this as a negative move or sketchy move. Studios don't dump movies on the brink of the 4th of July weekend. That's where you put things you figure will be successful. Universal probably calculated that "Bruce Almighty" was a huge hit with a May release and "40 Year-Old Virgin" was a huge hit with an August release and decided to split the difference.
The bigger concern is that it will now take Steve Carell much too long to capitalize on the "Virgin" success in any big-screen way. I don't know if Universal wants to be relying on "The Office" to keep his buzz going for another 15 months...
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3-03-2006 @ 2:57PM
josh said...
Why do you think lots of people will go see the Transformers movie? Have toy-to-big screen adaptations ever done well? The Masters of the Universe movie and the first Transformers movie, for example, both did pretty badly.
Also, the first poster has a point when he says that July is not generally a dumping ground.
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3-03-2006 @ 3:34PM
Darien said...
Uh Josh.. Master of the Universe came out in '87 and was a low budget mess... no surprise it bombed. And as for comparing the animated '86 Transformers movie to the live action '07 one... I'm not sure that makes much sense either.
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3-03-2006 @ 5:52PM
josh said...
So has there ever been a toy movie that did well? I can't think of many more movies based on toy lines. The closest parallel, I guess, are video game adaptations... but those have rarely proven to be big hits, either (though Tomb Raider and Resident Evil both did well).
As far as comparing the box office performance of animated films versus live action ones, I would think that animated kids movies probably generally do better than live action ones.
Regardless of any of that, I am still curious as to why one would think that the Transformers movie will be a big draw. The toy series seems far less popular than it was in the 80s, and while the cartoon seems to be reborn every few years, it never seems to last many seasons. I would think these are both indicators that there isn't a huge fan base in place for this property.
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3-08-2006 @ 11:11PM
Kyle said...
Toy Story? Toy Story 2?
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3-19-2006 @ 2:56PM
Toby said...
Toy Story 1 and 2 were both about toys. The toys from the movie didn't even exist until the movie was released. At least, I never saw a Buzz Lightyear until after Toy Story was released.
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