That sounds kind of critical to me...

"Universal's attempt to squeeze cash from a stone, Serenity, a movie based on Joss Whedon's TV series Firefly, hits theaters and the million Firefly hard cores could all show up on Friday night."

It sounds like it's only some sort of way of making money as opposed to a great piece of entertainment.

Razor | August 12, 21:54 CET

On the surface that's the way it appears though, and in fact may actually play out that way. I'm very, very nervous to how Serenity will appear to non-fans. I honestly could not seperate myself from being a fan when I saw Serenity, and as such I have no idea how it will actually feel for the critics/movie-going public.

I think the movie will easily make it's money back, but the comment in the previous post about it needing to make $80 million to necessitate a sequel doesn't make me optimistic.

[ edited by ringworm on 2005-08-12 20:01 ]

ringworm | August 12, 22:01 CET

ringworm - "I'm very, very nervous to how Serenity will appear to non-fans."


I don't know about other cities, but I get stopped all the time around the Seattle area by people wanting to know if my homemade Serenity shirt has anything to do with "That Movie" they saw the trailer for and they think looks really cool.

I feel the word of mouth from us "hardcore" Browncoats is working better than people suspect. I am by no means an expert, but I see Serenity making $20-$25 Million its first weekend and 3 or 4 weeks after the International release, I see it making the $80 Mill. mark easily... Just the opinion of a "no nothing" flan. :)

[ edited by SpookyRiverFan on 2005-08-12 21:26 ]

SpookyRiverFan | August 12, 22:13 CET

I'm with SpookyRiverFan on this. I've had people ask me about the shirt, the window clings, etc. I dragged some nonfans to the screenings and they loved it! I've also been checking out other boards, like Sci-Fi's and watching the new fans becoming fans as they watch the 'verse unfold for the first time every Friday night.

zeitgeist | August 12, 22:20 CET

Same here. I took someone who had never even heard of Firefly (or Joss, if that's possible!) to the pre-sreening and he loved it. He honestly thought that was one of the best films he had seen all year. He has since bought the DVD and is converting his friends and family. One person at a time, people, one person at a time! ;-)

Alanna_Wolff | August 12, 23:15 CET

These kind of writers always strike a hipper-than-thou/more-realistic-than-thou attitude. It usually means less than nothing...like most of the thinking that goes on in the Hollywood machine, it's all about trying to fit the square peg of past movie's performance into the round hole of future movie's performance.

Everyone quotes William Goldman, but no one really seems to understand the meaning of "No one knows anything." Because, truly, no one does. Hunches, however, are another matter. And my hunches about "Serenity" are all good.

One thing I've noticed over the years, is that "surprise" hits tend to be movies that recreate genres that have been underserved. "Star Wars" secret was that it wasn't so much the outer space setting, but that no one had made an upbeat action picture in quite a long time. "Titanic" recreated one of the most lucrative of all movie genres, the epic romantic melodrama.

I'm not saying that "Serenity" is going to be THAT kind of a hit, there's a million reasons why that may not happen. What I am saying is that it's been a long time since anyone's made a witty action film with strong characters and potentially broad appeal. It's practically a lost art in the U.S. these days.

[ edited by bobster on 2005-08-12 21:24 ]

bobster | August 12, 23:23 CET

"Squeeze blood from a stone," my foot. Has Poland seen "Serenity?" I recall gossi mentioning in a very recent thread that he/she (sorry, don't know) had just attended a press screening for Serenity. I'm waiting with bated breath for press reaction and reviews. When might we see the first reactions?

phlebotinin | August 12, 23:39 CET

Cash out of a stone! How dare he speak such dirty words about Serenity. He must be castrated, for he is a eunuch with his words!

Apocalypse | August 12, 23:47 CET

And remember, it was 80 million in total, not 80 million at the box office. This movie could easily make 10-15 million in just DVD sales, probably more.

Djungelurban | August 12, 23:51 CET

Had a look at the US release dates for console games for around that time, nothing overtly threatening. I'd be worried if Halo 3 or a GTA sequel was coming out.

Simon | August 13, 01:24 CET

I'm not attacking him by any means, but looking over his predictions for the rest of the movies slated for release, his point of view is critically biased. Any movies that looks capable of turning a profit is automatically artistically suspect or worthless; any tiny indie movie with a name director and some big stars hoping to lure Oscar attention with their daring choice is artistically valid. It's a kind of critical bias that drives me wild -- that Cronenberg automatically makes artistically valid films (even though I find him one of the most emotionally constipated artists working in the medium, which is saying something) and all genre films exist purely for cash purposes.

dottikin | August 13, 03:26 CET

This always makes me ponder about movie as a form of art or as entertainment (consider mindless entertainment as the uber extreme).
Can it be both at the same time, or it necessarily one of both.

What makes a movie worth of artistically praise and other not. So,every artisitically worth movie, will only please people with alternative tastes? So a public pleaser will never be a artistically praised?

I'm not talking about Oscar's here. I think most of us do realize, that a lot of the Academy Awards game, consists in a lot of studio lobby and lots of big bucks.

I tend to think a lot about both the Matrix and The Lord of the Rings movies, as interesting cases of analysis about how genre movies fare in this mess.

I think I'll finish this post here, cause this vagueness is exactly what I'm feeling right now.

Numfar PTB | August 13, 04:32 CET

Gotta second bobster's "hipper-than-thou" remark. I thought this guy was enjoying his snarkiness too much. And again bobster, your William Goldman quote is on the money. I guess these people have such big egos that they can't accept they don't know anything. That and they have to convince the guy who signs their check that they do know something. Goldman said "No one knows anything" over 20 years ago. Guess he didn't say it loud enough.

batmarlowe | August 13, 05:34 CET

Yes I feel good about Serenity's chances too. I don't know what this guy means 'squeeze cash out of a stone'. There are a lot of good signs that Serenity is going to do quite well - I'm not talking huge-mega-hit well, but I believe it will do just fine. As for the $80-million, that's worldwide isn't it? I think it will make that worldwide easy.

forcorreo | August 13, 12:17 CET

Dottikin, I think the real problem is that a lot of writers want to be able to easily categorize things. There's "mindless action" and there's "thoughtful drama" or "art" and it's difficult for them to wrap their minds around anything that doesn't fit very neatly into those categories. Therefore, an action-packed space opera simply CAN'T have any thought behind it -- and, if it does, it's simply being pretentious.

It took David Cronenberg, who's a filmmaker I admire quite a bit, a long time to break out of his box as a horror director and become respectable to mainstream critics -- though he was always a fave of a certain type of genre-friendly critic.

Someone like Joss I think is even more confusing to this kind of pseudo-intellectual today, because he takes forms that they are trained to think of as mindless and tries to do something a little more ambitious. This kind of writer has an innate hatred of creators who they perceive as uppidity. They're much more comfortablity with those who are downnity.

I do think that a lot people are more open today, largely because of the respect that genre films were given foreign writers and filmmakers. In the 90s, "Unforgiven" and "Silence of the Lambs" were both huge Oscar pictures -- an "oater" and a horror film. LOTR got similar respect, though there as still a lot of writers who look down their nose at fantasy. (Joel Stein wrote a somewhat funny, though deeply wrong, column in the L.A. Times a few weeks back saying that if you were an adult reading Harry Potter or reading/watching and enjoying anything else he associated with young people like "Finding Nemo", you were an idiot. I guess we're all idiots here.)

bobster | August 14, 05:07 CET

An idiot? Really, bobster, he said that?

Wow. Judgemental, much? Great post, yours, by the way.

I don't understand how someone in this day and age, with knowledge of the current entertainment community can make such a sweeping and degredating remark. Especially a professional. *Disappointed*

Willowy | August 14, 05:28 CET

Huh. Well, this idiot just tore through the latest Harry Potter book at the beach (loved it) and thinks Mr. Stein couldn't be more incorrect in his assessment of Serenity's chances.

I guess because I'm the aforementioned brainless type, I've never been able to get the hate-on some people have for genre, or supposedly "kid"-oriented books and films being appreciated by a wider, and often considerably older, audience. An inability to connect meaningfully with art forms that speak as well to an open-minded adult as to someone younger seems scarily indicative of a stunted imagination. Would this guy consider "Alice in Wonderland" to be purely intended for children and thus unworthy of adult appreciation, I wonder?

Children are, and have always been, surprisingly sophisticated in their tastes. They understand and adore lots of things (written by young-at-heart adults, it should be noted) that have been scorned by other adults who've forgotten, lost awareness of, or sadly never grasped their own complexity at that age. Where's the magic in a world without wonder, without creative pioneers who expand our collective consciousness by challenging those hide-bound preconceptions of the way things are or "ought to be"? I'm with the kids, and I'm in good company both here and elsewhere. (Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge..." Pretty smart, but then again, it's not like he was telling anyone under the age of 12 (or 18, depending on your definition of "child") something they didn't already intrinsically know.)

I'm thinking JS will be duly surprised to find Serenity does killer box office even without his ringing endorsement. And does he also seriously think there are only a million "hardcore", and that we're only going to go see the movie on opening night? Puh-leeze!

Wiseblood | August 14, 11:22 CET

People who close their minds to things because they think the genre is beneath them, are just as bad as those who close their minds to things because they are called "classics" and must therefore be boring (and elitist.) I am so glad my son has not caught the "Is this movie in color, because I don't watch movies in black and white." disease that I ran across when I was teaching. He also enjoyed his first live Shakespeare. So maybe the trick is getting kids under 10 to explore the old classics, but how do you get them to realize they are never too old to keep exploring the "kid stuff" when they get to be teenagers and beyond?

BTW, has anyone here read the original Peter Pan? OMG it is for adults, not kids, and it is, dark, heart wrenching and depressing as hell. No wonder it is a children's classic.

newcj | August 14, 17:45 CET