Monday Morning Quarterback Part III
By BOP Staff
August 22, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jason Barney: Not much. I am at a loss as to why this project was even made. Maybe it’s because I am not really a tech guy, maybe I tend not to see movies about this sort of thing. This opening doesn’t surprise me and I consider this a fairly insignificant project. In the long run it will match its production budget, so it deserves credit there, but I doubt many people are going to see this. It will be out of the top ten next weekend.
Brett Ballard-Beach: This had "network TV movie of the week" (as opposed to Prestige Cable TV movie of the week) written all over it. I am not a Kutcher fan, but I at least give him dramatic chops props for being willing to stretch as an actor (and I am also an admirer of The Butterfly Effect.) The budget was only $10 million so this can't be counted as a dire loss. Still, who wouldn't want to hold out for the Aaron Sorkin scripted version that is set to begin production soon?
Max Braden: When I saw the first trailer for Jobs, I thought, "didn't they make this movie already?" They did, kind of: I was remembering the 1999 made-for-TV (TNT) movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, which starred Noah Wyle as Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Joey Slotnick as Steve Wozniak. It's interesting to me now that that movie was made years before the iPhone (which only debuted six years ago? feels like forever ago!) and even well before the introduction of the iPod, which helped re-energize Apple. As Brett and others have commented, this just looks like Part 2 of the made-for-TV life of Jobs. That's surprising given his impact on the world. Maybe people outside the tech industry just care more about the products than the man. Oh, also, reviews of the movie were lousy. That's quite a difference from the welcome The Social Network had a few years ago (earning $22.4 million its opening weekend).
Edwin Davies: I think that the idea of "Ashton Kutcher is Steve Jobs" failed the laugh test for most people. Fair play to him for trying to do something different, but unless the film was getting amazing buzz, which it definitely wasn't, there was little chance that people would take a chance on Jobs, especially since everything about it made it seem like a made-for-TV movie that accidentally got sent out to theaters. The trailers were especially uninspiring, since they seemed to center solely on the fact that Ashton Kutcher kind of looks like Steve Jobs, rather than selling what the actual conflict in the story was meant to be.
Kim Hollis: Jobs really did seem to be the movie no one was asking for. I think the story could be interesting, but the moment they cast Ashton Kutcher, all credibility went out the window. Since it's a biopic, Jobs really was going to have to rely on reviews to get people to see it in theaters. When they didn't fall into place, it was pretty much doomed.
David Mumpower: If we take a step back and look at the meta aspect of this, Hollywood is notorious for taking the hot topic of the moment and producing a movie out of it. The buzz around Seal Team Six translated to solid box office for multiple movies. Why? The concepts promised action and real life events mirroring Call of Duty maps. That's marketable. The death of Jobs combined with the attention-grabbing Walter Isaacson biography regarding Jobs' behavior created similar fascination. The difference is that a guy being a jerk boss only works if he gets his comeuppance in the end, Horrible Bosses style. A biopic needs a hook, something Lincoln clearly had since it focused on a particular time during the life of our greatest President. Jobs bounces from era to era, which creates nightmares for the marketing team.
Kim Hollis: Paranoia, which featured Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and a bald Harrison Ford, earned only $3.5 million this weekend and finished in 13th place. Say something funny about Paranoia.
Jason Barney: Hhhhhmmmm….I am not sure I can say something funny about this opening. It isn’t funny…it is scary. This was another project I was surprised even reached the big screen. I suppose on some level there are people who may want to go see a film like this, perhaps because they follow Harrison Ford or Gary Oldman, but the trailer seemed convoluted and unappealing. Maybe the box office has changed too much, but I can’t believe this project took $35 million to make. It hasn’t been all downhill for Ford; he is still doing okay. Despite films like Extraordinary Measures, Cowboys and Aliens, and Paranoia, he was great in 42 earlier this year. Ender’s Game could be hit or miss, as Orson Scott Card sounds like he is trying to sabotage his own movie, but Ford just signed on for Expendables 3, which should do fine. There is talk about a fifth Indiana Jones film, although that may not happen. He’s already confirmed for the next Star Wars film, so it is not like he’s hurting for work.
Brett Ballard-Beach: Funniest thing I can say: Harrison Ford's buzz cut in Presumed Innocent or his "to-the-scalp-cut" here. Choose your favorite!
Also, was anybody really excited for "Indiana Jones vs. Sirius Black" when they could just rewatch **ing Air Force One? (Seriously, I rarely saw it mentioned that, you know, Ford and Oldman had already acted together!). That would be like, "Hey, you're gonna love Righteous Kill, because you've never seen DeNiro and Pacino together ..... (Heat) um, for an extended period of time (Heat) . . . in a shitty cop/serial killer film (okay, got me there)." And the punchline is that Paranoia is gonna throw under that film by about $40 million.
Max Braden: Firstly, there are plenty of men who do bald well. Harrison Ford is not one of those men. If you turn the sound down on the trailer you can imagine some Dirty Rotten Scoundrels scenario where Ford is pissed that Oldman did this to him while he was sleeping. Secondly, Hemsworth looks way out of his depth in this movie. He just looks too immature to be handle the plot or to lead this kind of movie. Charlie Sheen in Wall Street at least looked and sounded like he had the tiger-blood-fueled balls to demand respect from his costars, and he was two years younger while filming that than Hemsworth was filming this.
Edwin Davies: Liam Hemsworth, Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman all felt like they were being watched. Turns out that they were dead wrong.
Kim Hollis: Seriously, how do movies like this even get made? What producer or company looks at the generic story and decides to greenlight it? It just seems like a monumental waste of time, talent and effort for everyone involved.