What Went Wrong: The A-Team
By Shalimar Sahota
January 3, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
“It was just this really traditional story,” said Alex Young, producer and then co-president of production at 20th Century Fox. “Nothing really original. It was exactly what you’d expect.” Talking about the previous scripts for The A-Team, the film had been in development for around ten years. “We’d tried to polish it but it wasn’t there yet.”
In October 2008, director John Singleton had left the project after Fox wanted to push the release back by a year. After this, writer Skip Woods wrote a draft of the script, which Young used to approach director Joe Carnahan, just to see if he was interested. Carnahan came onboard as a director in January 2009 and worked on Woods’ draft along with co-writer Brian Bloom (who also stars in the film). Carnahan revealed that he and Bloom wrote about over ten drafts. “The TV show was cheesy for sure,” said Carnahan. “We’re not doing cheesy.” Stephen J. Cannell, the creator of the original TV series, was also involved as a producer.
Liam Neeson became action-man material after the success of Taken and was one of the first actors to sign on. Bradley Cooper signed on after hearing that Neeson was attached. Quinton Jackson and Sharlto Copley became involved largely because they were fans of the TV series, with Jackson having already auditioned for Singleton. Interestingly, Cooper and Copley had signed on before their respective films The Hangover and District 9 had even opened. Shooting took place from September 2009 to December 2009 with the production budget coming in at a cost of $110 million.
The story tells of four army rangers - Hannibal (Liam Neeson), Face (Bradley Cooper), B.A. Baracus (Quinton Jackson), and Murdoch (Sharlto Copley) that make up The A-Team. Stationed out in Iraq, they take on a black ops mission by CIA agent Lynch (Patrick Wilson) to retrieve 100 dollar bill plates and a billion dollars in counterfeit money. They complete the mission, but minutes after recovering the plates, they are suddenly stolen by Black Forrest leader Brock Pike (Bloom). Court martialed and believed to be a part of the theft, they are sent to prison. Six months later, and with a little help from Lynch, Hannibal escapes and gets the team together to find out who set them up and to clear their name. Hot on their tails is DCIS Captain Charissa Sosa (Jessica Biel), who also has a bit of history with Face.
The problem with doing any kind of adaptation is the issue of just how “faithful” it should be to the original. With The A-Team, if it’s radically different from the TV series that the fans grew up with, then they’re probably not going to be won over. If it’s exactly the same, then the film would not be offering anything new, just the same old thrills which would ultimately beg the question, ‘What’s the point?’ It’s about finding the balance, which is easier said and often not found at all then actually done.
In January 2010 the first teaser trailer to the film was released, winning and alienating potential audiences in equal measure mainly due to one scene. During those 90 seconds it introduced the characters (including Cooper without a shirt on), it had the iconic theme, it had the van, it had explosions, but it also had a tank… in midair… shooting down two reaper drones. That sequence became such a talking point that I’m surprised the M8 AGS doesn’t get its name on the poster. Carnahan spoke out about the reaction in Empire Magazine, saying, “Look, if you don’t like the idea of a tank falling out of the sky and shooting at a plane, then this movie’s not going to be for you.” The thing is, people had already made their decision on whether or not they were going to see the film based on that audacious action shot alone, with some potential moviegoers already turned off.
As the release date drew ever closer, the marketing became more insane. A few months later in May, stars Cooper, Biel and Copley appeared at Nascar Coca Cola 600 promoting the film, with “that” van driving down the racetrack. In June, just days before the film opened, Cooper, Jackson and Copley also appeared on WWE Raw (with Jackson even doing a little fighting in the ring). During the US premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the stars drove down the red carpet in a tank! Also during the week before its release, a succession of clips from the film appeared online. By making sure that The A-Team was absolutely everywhere, it looked like Fox had a film that would have no trouble reaching the top spot and becoming a $100 million earner at the US box office... except it wasn’t.
Two days before the film opened, Nikki Finke of Deadline published an article citing that there were a total of 11 writers that worked on the film, yet only Skip Woods, Joe Carnahan and Brian Bloom were credited. It also went into detail about how Alex Young of Fox lost control of the film, calling him “one of the most disliked movie execs.” It mentioned how he almost destroyed the film during its development, be it lying to writers, failing to get back in touch with them after they’d handed in a draft and that he even rewrote pages himself. That this appeared to happen before Carnahan got involved would suggest that Young’s supposed actions probably didn’t really have an affect on Carnahan’s film. Nevertheless, a week later Carnahan retaliated and called Finke an “idiot,” saying, “It’s unfortunate that she knows nothing and she just spits out venom.” Adding a little credence that not everything on the page made it in, in Empire magazine Neeson said of the shoot that, “the script changed on a daily basis. Sometimes that’s the problem with studio blockbusters. The writer and director have a slant on it and then it has to go through confirmation from the studio.”
The A-Team opened on June 11, 2010 alongside another relic of the 1980s, The Karate Kid. Both films were expected to do reasonably well, with many predicting The A-Team to win the weekend with around $30 - $35 million. Instead the film landed at #2 with an opening weekend take of $25.6 million. The Karate Kid opened on top, with $55.6 million. The A-Team spent five weeks in the top ten and finished with $77.2 million at the US box office. A take of $100 million overseas gave the film a worldwide total of $177.2 million. As the tagline said, “There is no Plan B.”
While it may not initially look it, The Karate Kid actually turned out to be strong competition. With The A-Team appealing to the Call of Duty addicted guys, The Karate Kid managed to win over the younger generation and possibly even the women (Bradley Cooper’s abs were probably not enough to get females paying for a ticket). For the guys that did want to watch The A-Team, if they had families then they were most likely swayed by their children and their partners to watch The Karate Kid, what with it being the more suitable option for a family.
The A-Team also had to contend with opening just over a month after The Losers. Based on a comic series, it seemed to have a very similar premise and did not fare well at the box office.
The show’s creator Steve J. Cannell had called the show corny and that’s probably part of the problem. If that’s how the source material is perceived, then why turn that show into a film? Carnahan did at least carve the film with a more serious edge, keeping to his word by definitely not making it cheesy. Cannell was also happy with the film. The A-Team film isn’t amazing, nor will it make one rush to the off-license. It comes across as a typical summer blockbustery, abs flashing, container dropping, explodey action flick, summed up by the rather mixed reviews, using words like “fun,” “ordinary,” “awesome” and “soulless.” While it may call itself an action comedy, I have to admit that I only laughed once when watching (during the scene when a 3D movie is screened at an army psychiatric hospital). Carnahan does tend to touch on themes such as loyalty and getting to the truth, which seem to be prevalent in his former films and it was nice to see it crop up here.
When it came to promoting the film’s DVD/Blu-Ray release, Carnahan was interviewed by Collider and spoke out about Roger Ebert’s review in particular, and that he cited Newtonian law in regards to ‘that’ flying tank sequence. “You are supposed to laugh at it,” said Carnahan. “It’s not ever supposed to be taken seriously. No, I don’t think you could fly a tank with the level of success as the A-Team but we ain’t the A-Team.” Weirdly, a video by The Escapist Magazine proved that it could actually be plausible!
In January 2012, Carnahan spoke to Collider about why the film under-performed. “We blew the marketing,” he said. “We blew it, not just Fox, I was part of it.” Timing also seemed to be an issue, as Carnahan mentioned that the film opened the day the World Cup started. “I just thought ,’You know what’s gonna happen? Dad’s gonna stay home and watch soccer, Mom’s gonna take the kids to a movie, what are they gonna see? They’re gonna go see The Karate Kid, they’re not gonna see The A-Team.’” Because mothers are more inclined to have their kids watch a film that teaches them how to fight with their bare hands rather than picking up a gun.
I was actually sold on The A-Team after seeing the shot of the tank in midair, yet I didn’t see it on the big screen, instead opting for Toy Story 3 at the time. This should have been a franchise and Carnahan did have plans for a sequel, but that’s not going to happen. Unfortunately, competition and mishandled marketing means that it barely made enough to qualify for having its own TV series.